• Newsletter Sign up
• Subscribe
• Back Issues
• Sample Issue
• Contact Us

★THE RAMONES

From page 14 of Classic Rock Magazine August 2005

Cover of August 2005 issue.

THE RAMONES Garbage’s Butch Vig bigs up the New York punks’ debut –the album that was the perfect soundtrack to his college drinking sessions.

INTERVIEW: HENRY YATES

“ I was at college when an advance copy of The Ramones

came into one of the local record stores. I remember being in there when the guy put it on, and just being floored by how amazing it sounded. So I went back a week later and was first in line when it went on sale.

At the time, I was living in a party house on the University of Wisconsin campus. It was sorta like [screwball campus comedy] Animal House – there were basically parties every night. I had a kick-ass sound system – it didn’t sound particularly good, but it was really loud. And I swear to God I listened to that record five times a day. I’d get up in the morning and blast it before I went to class. We’d get back in the afternoon and I’d blast it again. Then we’d go to the clubs and everyone would come back around midnight, we’d play it another three times and everybody was just bouncing off the walls. We’d sing at the top of our lungs all the way through, after numerous pints of beer.

It really was a startling sound for that time. There were all these bands like Emerson Lake And Palmer that would do these extended muso solos. The Ramones were the exact opposite of that, they were so stripped-down and bare-boned and so fast. It was a breath of fresh air, an adrenalin shot. In some ways I look at it as an analogy to when I produced Nirvana’s Nevermind. It’s the same kind of thing, where the music sounded fresh and vital and really shook up the music scene. The difference being that Nirvana sold about 25 million records and The Ramones never sold jack- shit. For all their credibility, they never got played on the radio and thus never sold many records.

I love the whole album from start to finish – it’s only 25 minutes long or something. I think 53rd F 3rd was my favourite lyric. After seeing the End Of The Century documentary, I think a lot of that was autobiographical about Dee Dee. It’s the bridge: [sings] ‘Then I took out my razor blade then I did what God forbade. Now the cops are after me.’ Y’know, it ends badly. And in the documentary, they’re asking him what went on with that, and he pooh-poohs it, but I think some of that was true. It’s a pretty dark song.

We have a bunch of Ramones albums backstage [at Garbage shows], and two weeks ago I cranked this one up before the show and it sounded fucking amazing. That’s The Ramones: just turn it up, keep going up. Like most albums, it fades from your memory from time to time. But it always comes back. There’s always a point where I get excited about it all over again. One of these days we should try and write a pure Ramones song: eighth- note guitars and two minutes long. And get Shirley [Manson – Garbage singer] to shout over the top.”