Hey! Ho! Ramones film hits the right chords

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By Glenn Whipp
Los Angeles Daily News

Posted: October 22, 2004

The anti-Bush documentaries might be getting all the attention, but 2004 has also produced one of the great one-two rock-movie punches in recent memory. Following the fascinating, band-on-the-verge-of- a-nervous-breakdown film "Metallica: Some Kind of Monster," comes "End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones," an absorbing, thoroughly entertaining look at the music and feuding of the influential American punk-rock band.

Like "Some Kind of Monster," the Ramones movie demonstrates the difficulties grown men face when trying to sustain their passion for the music of their youth. Indeed, two of the Ramones, fragile singer Joey (a k a Jeffrey Hyman) and manic bassist Dee Dee (a k a Douglas Colvin) died recently, a year apart, casualties of a profession that seemingly requires its workers to live fast, die young(ish) and leave a beautiful corpse.

Of course, there was nothing beautiful about the Ramones, which was part of the band's appeal and why the group proved so influential to so many musicians on both sides of the Atlantic. The Ramones never sold many records, but they left a trail of bands - the Clash, Sex Pistols, the Damned, the Pretenders and scores who didn't make it - in their wake. Their stripped-down, take-no-prisoners sound also came as a blast of fresh air in the mid-'70s, when Spinal Tap-like excesses dominated the FM dial.

"End of the Century," superbly assembled by Michael Gramaglia and Jim Fields, charts the history of the band with interviews from all the principals, along with acolytes like Debbie Harry and the late, great Joe Strummer. The account lacks the typical VH-1 "Behind the Music" struggle-success-excess-rebirth formula because the Ramones never achieved much in the way of commercial success. In its later years, the band ground it out on the road, doomed to know more popularity abroad than at home.

That's not to say the story lacks drama. Hailing from Queens, the band's members were brought together by a shared love for Iggy and the Stooges and the New York Dolls. But that's about all they had in common. Joey was shy, burdened by obsessive-compulsive disorder (which, along with the drugs, would account for the band's chronic tardiness). Dee Dee ate drugs and, along with Johnny (a k a John Cummings), defined the band's hard-core image.

That Johnny and Joey didn't talk to each other for years after Johnny stole and later married Joey's longtime girlfriend (a betrayal immortalized by Joey in the song "The KKK Took My Baby Away") certainly adds to the intrigue, though you won't catch the pathologically stoic Johnny analyzing the roots of the hard feelings. How the "brothers" Ramone managed to stay together a year, much less the two decades they actually lasted, is a testament to the addictive joys of raising a beautiful racket.