Search Results for: the ramones

Johnny Ramone, guitarist and co-founder of the seminal punk band “The Ramones” that influenced a generation of rockers, has died. He was 55. Ramone, who had been fighting a five-year battle with prostate cancer, died in his sleep Wednesday afternoon at his Los Angeles home surrounded by friends and family, said the band’s longtime artistic director Arturo Vega. “He was the guy with a strategy. He was the guy who not only looked after the band’s interest but he also was their defender,” Vega said in a telephone interview from New York. Ramone, whose birth name is John Cummings, had… Read more »

They represented the anti-establishment, so it was a bit odd to see the Ramones so happy to become part of the music establishment as members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But for the remaining members of the punk rock originators – whose lead singer, Joey Ramone, died last year – Monday night’s induction at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel represented long-overdue respect for the band that helped revolutionize rock with their rapid-fire, guitar-heavy songs. “I’d like to congratulate myself, and thank myself, and give myself a big pat on the back,” joked Dee Dee Ramone. “Thank you Dee Dee,… Read more »

It’s the kind of small moment on which rock ‘n’ roll history turns. It was Fall, 1978. The Ramones had just completed their fourth album, “Road to Ruin,” and the band felt certain it had recorded a hit single: the impossibly catchy “I Wanna Be Sedated.” But the band was overruled; label executives opted for another track, “Don’t Come Close.” That single quickly disappeared, along with the Ramones’ hit-making aspirations. “We really wanted ‘I Wanna Be Sedated,”‘ recalls guitarist Johnny Ramone. “But the record company picked the singles.” So the No. 1 hit in November 1978 instead was the fluffy… Read more »

Linda Stein, the onetime co-manager of Ramones, was found dead October 30 in her Upper East Side apartment in Manhattan. Stein, 62, who was once married to famous Sire Records head/Warner Bros. vice-president Seymour Stein, was found dead in her kitchen. In recent times, Stein was well-known in show business circles as a realtor for high-profile and celebrity clients, including Billy Joel, Calvin Klein, and Bruce Willis. Stein died from blunt-force trauma to the head. Police are treating the death as murder, and are continuing investigations. They say there were no signs of forced entry to her Fifth Avenue apartment.

Fans growing impatient for the release of the Ramones tribute album We’re a Happy Family now have a good reason to turn that frown upside down. The track list for the LP, which is currently being mastered, and a tentative street date of November 5 were announced via a posting on the Web site of Rob Zombie, who is serving as co-producer along with guitarist Johnny Ramone. Although Zombie himself vouched for the accuracy of the most specific details concerning the album since he first announced plans for it in November, a spokesperson for Columbia Records, the label which intends… Read more »

Ramones bassist Dee Dee Ramone died of an apparent drug overdose in Hollywood on Wednesday (June 5). When the group was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in March, some of modern rock’s biggest stars tipped their hats to the legendary band and Ramone himself. Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder said that the group’s arrival in the late-’70s was a monumental occasion. “They were visually aggressive, four working-class construction-worker delinquents from Forest Hills, Queens, who were armed with two-minute songs that they rattled off like machine-gun fire, and it was enough to change the earth’s revolution, at… Read more »