End Of The Century

About

The members of the Ramones loved early 1960s pop, and were especially taken by producer Phil Spector’s dense and sophisticated Wall of Sound production for such acts as The Crystal, The Righteous Brother, and The Ronette. So after making four albums without even sniffing a hit single, the band hired Spector, who’d spent the 1970s working alongside the likes of The Beatle, John Lennon, and George Harrison. It was august company, and the four Ramones believed that associating themselves with Spector would pay off, creatively and commercially. Things didn’t go as planned. The band was accustomed to recording quickly—often performing just three takes of a song—and were soon stupefied by Spector’s painstaking, even puzzling, perfectionism. The producer would force Marky Ramone to hit a single drum, or tell Johnny Ramone to play the same chord, for hours at a time, as Spector tweaked the sound. Bassist Dee Dee Ramone, admittedly an unreliable narrator, claimed Spector pointed a loaded gun at his chest, while other band members talked about the producer’s cruelty, paranoia, and love of gun. Things reached a breaking point when three of the band flew back to New York from LA (vocalist Joey Ramone was the only one who stayed). Spector brought in session musicians and added keyboards and saxophone to the arrangement, and, according to Dee Dee’s 1998 memoir, also replaced him on ba. The result was 1980’s <i>End of the Century</i>, one of the Ramones’ most muddled effort. Only “This Ain’t Havana” and the militaristic “Let’s Go” would have fit on earlier albums—and they wouldn’t even have been standout track. Meanwhile, the lyrics to “Do You Remember Rock ’n’ Roll Radio?,” which Joey wrote, make the Ramones sound like nostalgic old farts—“Lately it all sounds the same to me”—rather than robust rock revolutionarie. “Danny Says” is one of the few good songs about the boredom of being on tour, but Spector’s lethargic production is like a BarcaLounger for the ear. And “Chinese Rock,” a song about heroin addiction, proves that Los Angeles session musicians don’t know how to play punk rock. .

via Apple Music

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