"Long Day?s Journey Into The Ramones?
On the new Ramones documentary ?End of the Century?

By Steven Rosen

Hey! Ho! They?re gone.

Somehow, it?s hard to accept that the Ramones are over ? broken up for more than six years now, two of their four original members dead.

They still seem so alive, so organic. Because of the consistency with which they plied their humane punk-rock vision ? often-funny three-chord songs kept short and played fast by guys who always looked alike? the Ramones never seemed to get old. They were ? are ? rock in the way that Mount Rushmore is. They were heroic in their very existence; their brotherly solidarity as solid as granite from 1974 to the present. They were family.

As Rob Zombie observes in ?End of the Century,? Michael Gramaglia and Jim Fields? compelling new documentary about the Ramones, ?No matter what weird trends came and went, you?d go see the Ramones and it?d be like, ?What year is it, anyway???

And yet, the Ramones? true story was not quite the same as the image. In fact, there was so much tension and anxiety, so much anger and downright pain associated with this ?family,? that the film could be called ?Long Day?s Journey Into The Ramones.?

?Century? brilliantly begins with the band?s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. Joey, the lanky and intensely yearning lead singer, had died of lymphoma the previous year. Dee Dee, the colorful original bassist who would be dead of a drug overdose in just a few months, is endearing as he thanks himself. One watches and thinks ? what price Hall of Fame?

Key to the band?s tension, and painstakingly documented in ?Century,? was the estrangement of the band?s two leaders, Joey and terse, no-nonsense guitarist Johnny, who together owned Ramones Productions. Johnny had married Joey?s beloved girlfriend, Linda, and Joey never forgave him.

?When he (Johnny) saw the film, he called up and said, ?I come across as pretty bad,?? Gramaglia says, in a telephone interview from his New York editing studio. ?He showed it to a lot of his friends and they said, ?But that?s the way you are.? And he said, ?I guess that?s the way I am. Leave it the way it is.???

Yet at the same time as ?Century? reveals this rift and more, the film consistently celebrates the power of the music. It offers extensive footage from the band?s earliest days at CBGB?s to a tour of Brazil where they were received like superstars.

?We were able to get close to them,? Gramaglia says during a joint telephone interview with Fields. Both are New Yorkers; Gramaglia worked for Ramones Productions and Fields is his high-school friend. ?If you look at their previous interviews, they were never very candid about this stuff. That was because there was so much animosity in the band, yet they felt it was nobody?s business. They were very traditional in that way.?

The Ramones started in 1974 as four music-loving friends from the Forest Hills, Queens, area of New York City ? Jeffrey Hyman (Joey), John Cummings (Johnny), drummer Tom Erdelyi (Tommy), and Douglas Colvin (Dee Dee).

There were changes through the years, although Joey and Johnny remained constant. Virtually all the various Ramones are interviewed in the film. (Dee Dee proves a hilarious yet touching junkie raconteur.) Only Joey, himself, is missing. At first wary of participating in a project that would air dirty laundry, he subsequently begged off on-camera interviews because of his health.

But after performing at a Christmas, 2000, party where he looked and sounded strong, he told the filmmakers he was finally ready. ?And then he slipped and broke his hip going out around New Year?s, and that was it,? Fields says. Joey died a few months afterward, never regaining his spirits.

?Century? takes its title from the album Phil Spector produced for the Ramones in 1980, in which the reclusive, psychologically erratic early-rock legend pulled a gun on the band. Given Spector?s current legal problems, this episode is extremely timely now.

So, too, are Johnny?s typically unsentimental comments in ?Century? recalling his hellish Spector experience: ?A little man with lifts on his shoes, a wig on his head, and four guns.?

(This article originally appeared in Harp magazine.)