The Ramones: This January 1978 Interview With Joey & Johnny Ramone Was The Start Of My So-Called Career In Rock Journalism

The Ramones - Rocket to Russia (Sire Records 1977)

Admittedly, this is not the greatest interview you'll ever read with the Ramones. 

Originally published in an obscure San Francisco punk 'zine, which probably nobody saw, it was my second ever interview (I don't like to talk about my first ever interview) and the start of my so-called career in rock journalism.

I'm still amazed that Joey and Johnny were so nice about answering the inane questions of a star-struck teenager desperate to know why Rocket to Russia was poppier than their previous two albums.

Originally published in Widows & Orphans #5 (1978)
Interview and Kodak Instamatic photos by Devorah Ostrov

Q: I've heard a lot of rumors about your face getting burned with oil recently.

Joey: Yeah, I struck oil.

Q: What happened?

Photo: Devorah Ostrov

Joey: Someone hit me with a stove. No, nothing happened.

Q: Do you guys like playing San Francisco?

Joey: It's all right. It's a little laid-back, you know.

Q: There's a lot of hippies.

Joey: Yeah, the more the merrier.

Q: Where else are you playing?

Joey: We're playing a lot of new cities on this tour. We're gonna cover the whole country. We went to Kansas City, we've never been there before, and sold out two shows. We played the State Theatre in Minneapolis and sold out. It's great!

Q: Rocket to Russia has a more commercial sound than your first two albums...

Joey: We've been into music since rock 'n' roll started, and we like everything. It's just press labels. Everything's gotta be labeled, it seems.

Photo: Devorah Ostrov

Q: Is Rocket to Russia selling more than the others?

Joey: Yeah, it's doing really good!

Q: Is it getting more radio airplay?

Joey: Yeah.

There's some incoherent mumbling about the weather.

Joey: We were in the Midwest, you know, all the blizzards and shit. We came out here where it's warm, and I got sick.

There's more mumbling, and somehow the conversation gets around to comparing the English punk scene to the US scene.

Joey: It wasn't like it is here. Here is like the extreme.

Q: Wait, are you saying that American punks are more extreme than English punks?

Photo: Devorah Ostrov

Joey: Over there, nobody looks like that anymore. Everyone has cropped hair, but that's it. Nobody had green hair anymore or black eyes.

Q: Do you think the Ramones are getting commercialized now?

Joey: It happens, you know, there's nothing you can do about it. But we're not into changing to be commercial. We'll never be Fleetwood Mac. We'll never give free concerts in the park.

Someone asks about most punk groups being serious and the Ramones being more satirical.

Joey: I think groups that are serious are a lot of bullshit! I think most of the punk rock groups suck! They just give punk a bad name. They shouldn't exist in the first place.

Q: Who do you like?

Joey: The only group I like is the Clash. They're the only good English group.

Q: What do you think about the seating arrangement of the club? They seated us when we came in.

Photo: Devorah Ostrov

Joey: I felt like I was at a dinner club; like I was a freak at a circus. It felt like a dinner atmosphere.

Someone comments that the opening band, the Dils, are a political band.

Joey: There's no politics in America. That went out with Joan Baez and Country Joe McDonald.

This led into a long and boring discussion about the current political situation in England, during which Joey commented...

Joey: We don't want to depress anybody; we want to have a good time. The English groups are into being depressed. That's why they call themselves the Depressions and all that crap.

* * *

I wandered off to find Johnny.

Q: Do you find since you're gaining in popularity that you're getting hyped and commercialized?

Johnny: Hype? What does that mean? We're getting more publicity, more attention. I thought that hype was when they rave about you without seeing you, or something.

Photo: Devorah Ostrov

Q: Before the show, there was an airplane flying around the club flashing "Gabba Gabba Hey" in neon lights!

Johnny: Yeah, we heard about that. We didn't really know about it; we just heard about it.

Q: Rocket to Russia seems more pop than punk. Is that something you focused on?

Johnny: I don't think it's any particular direction of any sort. We've always liked pop songs. We're able to write better now. In the beginning, even if we wanted to write pop songs, we were incapable of it. So, it would be more punk. We're punk, we're pop, a little of everything. We wanted a well-balanced album that people could listen to. We keep hearing that everything sounds the same.

Q: Do you like being worshiped by fans?

Johnny: At times it's nice, you know. It makes you feel good; people actually care. Sometimes it gets rough on your nerves. You need to relax sometimes. When we go on, we have to walk through the crowd, and everybody starts grabbing onto your arms. That's not much fun.

Photo: Devorah Ostrov

Q: But you enjoy being loved by your fans?

Johnny: Yeah, you want fans! I don't try to let it affect me as far as getting a big ego over it. We're just playing music. It's good, but I don't know how we managed to do it. It just happened.

Q: Do you think that you came along at a time when a change was needed?

Johnny: Yeah, a change was needed. Rock 'n' roll would die if it stayed the same, and it had stayed the same for ten years. It was just a bunch of old disc jockeys playing soft music. Pretty soon, your parents would start listening to the FM radio and like it.

Q: So, your music is really just good, teenage rock 'n' roll?

Johnny: Yeah, it's new and modern, plus its rock 'n' roll. We'd listened to rock 'n' roll all our lives, and we wanted to play rock 'n' roll like it was meant to be. It's supposed to be entertaining and have energy. Nobody was living up to the image of rock 'n' roll.

Photo: Devorah Ostrov

Q: Do you like playing small clubs like the Old Waldorf?

Johnny: No, I like playing big places. The conditions are better; the stage is bigger. You don't have to walk through the crowd to get onstage. This is a nice place, though.

Q: Isn't punk rock supposed to be anti-star trips?

Johnny: No, it wasn't meant to be that. We were the first group they were calling "punk rock," and that's not what we intended. No anti-anything. There's nothing wrong with stars.

Q: Why were you the first band labeled "punk"?

Johnny: Rock 'n' roll was always punk rock since it started with Elvis Presley and Gene Vincent. They just never called it that. That's just a label that they came up with when we started playing three-and-a-half years ago at CBGB's. Some writer just wrote that, and that's what they're calling it now.

Q: When I talked to Joey, he said the scene was dying in England. Is that true?

Photo: Devorah Ostrov

Johnny: It wasn't as big as we'd heard. We expected these groups to be enormous, and they weren't very big. We were playing bigger places than all of them and drawing more people. There wasn't that much excitement.

Q: You guys just got back from a UK tour with the Rezillos. How did it go?

Johnny: Oh, great! We played London on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day in a 3,000-seat place and sold out both nights. All the shows were sold out. We played all big theatres. It just went great!

Q: Are the Ramones bigger outside of New York? Does New York tend to take you for granted?

Johnny: It used to be that way, but it's changed now. We used to play CBGB's, and when you're small, and everybody comes over and talks to you, those people tend to take you for granted because they feel like they know you. But as soon as you become big enough that all the people don't know you, then they stop taking you for granted. We just played the Palladium, and we had over 3,000 people there. The show was great, and they didn't take us for granted.

Photo: Devorah Ostrov

Q: Are there still things you want to achieve?

Johnny: Yeah, I want to get bigger!

Q: How big?

Johnny: As big as you can get! That's what you're in it for. It's fun playing to a lot of kids. You want to feel accepted; you don't really feel accepted till you're bigger.

Q: On KSAN this afternoon, you said that people are asking about your philosophy on punk rock "more than ever." So, what is your philosophy?

Johnny: Joey answered that. He said, "more than ever." I didn't even know what they were talking about. No philosophies. We just want the kids to come and have a good time.

Q: That's a philosophy.

Johnny: All right, that's it then. We don't try to lay something heavy on them.

My ticket stub for the Ramones at the Old Waldorf

January 31, 1978

* You can read my other interviews with the Ramones here:  devorahostrov.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/the-last-time-i-talked-to-joey-ramone
devorahostrov.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-ramones-turn-20-release-all-covers
devorahostrov.blogspot.com/2019/08/in-1992-i-talked-to-marky-ramone