Not my favourite Ramones album by a long shot but it does have two real good things going for it. Firstly it features one of my favourite Ramones songs in “I Wanna Be Sedated”, a song which I even attempt to play myself at times. Secondly this copy is on yellow vinyl and you must know by now what a sucker I am for that.
This was the Ramones first album with Marky behind the drum kit. Tommy had left the band following disappointing sales of previous album “Rocket To Russia” and because he didn’t handle the stress of touring well. Marky Ramone (or Marc Bell as his mom knew him) had previously played for Wayne County & The Backstreet Boys and Richard Hell & the Voidoids (and almost the New York Dolls it is reported) before being asked to become a Ramone after meeting Dee Dee at a gig in New York City. Tommy did stay on to co-produce this album (as T. Erdelyi, his real name) alongside Ed Stasium.
This is a subtly different sounding Ramones to previous albums. There’s acoustic guitars involved and solo’s and arpeggio’s all sitting alongside Johnny’s trademark rama-lama downstrokes. Both Ed Stasium and Tommy are credited with playing guitar on this record but it doesn’t specifically say on what. I’d suspect Johnny either couldn’t or more likely wouldn’t play some of the parts required (as I’m writing this both this album and “Ramones” are leaning against the wall across the room with Johnny glaring out at me from both so I don’t want to say anything out of turn) and so left them up to Ed and Tommy ?
After the opening double salvo of "I Just Want to Have Something to Do”, which straight away gives us some solo-ish guitar at the end that we’d not heard on Ramones records before, and "I Wanted Everything" the first surprise comes with “Don’t Come Close”. It’s an acoustic song with a hint of Country about it. It was released as the albums lead single and was a top 40 hit in the UK in 1978, even getting them a coveted spot on Top Of the Pops in September 1978 introduced by none other than the Hairy Cornflake, Dave Lee Travis (https://youtu.be/-fw84k3HqY0?si=v5esSjBxHp0uLtIv). It’s a very different version to that on the album, re-recorded for the BBC, who worked under strict Musicians Union rules back then, and then mimed to. The acoustics are replaced with Johnny’s chugging Mosrite and the song has been re-arranged to omit the guitar solo, thus supporting the suggestion that those parts were played by Ed Stasium or Tommy.
A couple of songs later they cover “Needles and Pins” most famously performed by The Searchers in 1964. Again I don’t know how much of a part Johnny played on that one. Over on Side 2 we get as close as the Ramones ever got to a ballad with Dee Dee’s “Questioningly”, another song with a hint of the Country about it. It really does come as a shock sitting as it does between the regular Ramones thrash of “Go Mental” and “She’s The One”.
In between all these acoustic-ed, 60’s pastiches we do get some usual Ramones fare, my previously mentioned favourite “I Wanna Be Sedated”, “I’m Against It” and “Bad Brain” are all what their audience had come to expect from Da Brudders. “Road To Ruin” sees the band trying stretch their wings and flex their muscles a little so as not to get stuck in a rut. Tommy said of “Road To Ruin” that it reflected not only “the Ramones' enduring love for sixties pop, but a nagging desire to expand beyond the confines of 120 seconds…albeit linked to the guitar-crunching sonics established on their first three albums”.
I Wanna Be Sedated - https://youtu.be/bm51ihfi1p4?si=61McNkOSjz0YUAS7
