Great bands are never truly forgotten, and thats true of punks Ramones, who called it quits 15 years ago. Their influence is still felt today, and although its three main members Joey, Johnny and Dee Dee have passed, their legacy persists and is being given a revival by bassist C.J. Ramone.
Born Christopher Joseph Ward, hes revisiting their classic tunes on the road, while offering up his own Ramones-inspired compositions. The last-to-join member of the Ramones unique, musical fraternity, C.J. Ramone felt it was time to remind everyone what theyve been missing.
It was my 20-year anniversary (of joining), and the fact that Ive kind of been sitting back watching punk rock disappear off the map, he said. I realized I could keep the Ramones legacy going and maybe turn on a whole generation of new young kids who never got to see the Ramones. Maybe Ill inspire a new group of young kids, because theres just not a lot of punk rock out there, and the stuff Ive heard is really uninspired.
When he joined the band in 1989, he was finishing up his stint in the Marine Corps well, not technically. He went AWOL to audition, and when he returned to his post, he was locked up for six weeks.
It was very bizarre to be sitting in military jail and get a call from Johnny Ramone from the get-go, let alone the news that I got the gig, C.J. Ramone said. It was classic.
In this endeavor, hes joined by guitarist Daniel Rey, who produced four of the last five Ramones albums, and helped write many of the songs. For C.J., there was no one better suited to be his sideman.
When I first got into the band, he was in the same situation I was in: He was working with his idols, Ramone said. So we kind of had a kind of camaraderie going there. We share a lot of musical influences, and so when I started doing this, he was really the only guitar player I really considered.
Theyre also working on Ramones forthcoming garage-punk solo debut, which is a kind of tribute to his time in his old band. With many songs referring directly to that period, its titled Reconquista, named for his attempt to recapture the punk spirit of his youth and the Ramones.
Naturally, it was strange for him to sit among his heroes. Only 24 when he joined, he remembers them lamenting their lack of commercial success.
It was shocking to me, because in my eyes, they were one of the greatest rock n roll bands of all time. They influenced generations of bands, he said. I was like, Johnny, you cant look at your career and judge it like you would anybody elses. Theres been a million bands whove had huge commercial success for one song and disappeared, and nobody cared about them. Its the influence youve had on music in general that you should be judging your career against.