the ramones

Rocket To Russia - released November 1977; Johnny's favorite Ramones album because "it's got the most classic Ramones hits." Tommy: "When we did Rocket To Russia, we were on a roll, in high gear, touring and everything. At that point, we thought we were gonna make it, that we were on the launching pad." Joey: "'Sheena Is A Punk Rocker' first came out as a single. I played it for [Sire Records president] Seymour Stein. He flipped out and said, 'We gotta record that song now.' It was like back in the '50s; you'd rush into the studio because you thought you had a hit, then put it right out." Tommy: "'Rockaway Beach' was a fantastic song that never got released in the summer, so it was never a hit. That was a Dee Dee thing; he would go down to Rockaway Beach. None of us were real beachgoers except for him." Ed Stasium: "If there is a greatest Ramones song that I recorded, it's 'Teenage Lobotomy.' It's a mini-Ramones symphony. It has every element of what's great about them, in one song: The big drum intro and the 'Lobotomy' chant; the little background harmony oooohs; the subject matter." And, Stasium adds, the dizzying succession of time and key changes in Johnny's acutely chiseled chord progressions, perfectly synchronized to Dee Dee and Tommy's forced-march tempo.

Rocket To Russia was supposed to be the stratosphere shot, the third-time-lucky payoff for four years of rough labor and hot pop. "Each album has its personality," Tommy says, "and with Rocket To Russia, it was the feeling of release. Freedom. The sense of exhilaration." But when the album did not perform to commercial expectations, when the singles ("Sheena," "Rockaway Beach," a cover of Bobby Freeman's "Do You Want To Dance") didn't bust loose on radio, clouds began to gather. "The album that followed," notes Tommy, "has more anger and frustration." Right there in the title: Road To Ruin.

Tommy's decision to stop playing drums and concentrate on production was the first crack in the dream. The songs amplifying that stress-the physical and emotional toll exacted by nonstop gigging; the first, subtle pressures from above to get radio-friendly-were not long in coming: "I Just Want To Have Something To Do," "I Wanna Be Sedated."

"I Wanna Be Sedated" was the result of an especially gruesome road nightmare, when a makeshift humidifier exploded in Joey's face before showtime at the Capitol Theater in Passaic, New Jersey. He was rushed to a New York burn center - only after finishing the show. "That song was about being on the road too long," he said. "Getting burned like that, bits and pieces from different situations, like being on tour in England at Christmas, when everything shuts down: 'There's nothing to do, nowhere to go/I wanna be sedated.' People didn't use terms like sedated then. This was before Prozac."