'The Ramones Have To Be The Band With The Worst Luck'

Way back in 1989, a young New York native named Chris Ward – fresh out of military service – found himself in the enviable position of being asked to join one of his favourite bands. Obviously, this would be a boon for any musician, only in Ward’s case the band in question was none other than bona fide punk legends the Ramones.

After a particularly fractious time in the band’s notoriously fractured history (which had kicked off way back in 1974), founding bassist Dee Dee Ramone left the band – although strangely he continued to contribute songs for years after his departure – and his big shoes were filled by Ward, who then got to spend seven years alongside his heroes as CJ Ramone (all Ramones members adopted the band name as their own, helping forge the image of a gang), touring the world and playing the songs that he’d grown up worshipping to armies of equally fanatical devotees.

The Ramones eventually split in 1996, and now sadly all four original Ramones members have passed away, leaving only CJ and later-era drummers Marky Ramone and Richie Ramone alive to carry the flame. CJ was a veteran of three Australian tours with the Ramones – 1989, 1991 and 1994 – and now he’s returning under his own steam, still showcasing the inimitable, anthemic punk for which “the bruddahs” were renowned to a whole new, but equally ravenous, generation of fans.

I really had a good time [in Australia], and I’ve said ever since that if they ever chase me out of the States I’ll be beating a path out by you guys.

“That Australian tour [in 1989] was right after I joined the band,” CJ recalls. “Actually, my first tour was in Europe – that was my ‘break in’ tour, where I got my cherry popped – but Australia, because I already had one tour under my belt, that was the first tour that I could really kick back and enjoy. I really had a good time there, and I’ve said ever since that if they ever chase me out of the States I’ll be beating a path out by you guys.

“That was a really good time to see the band too, because I’d just gotten into the band and Joey and Johnny were more fired up than they had been in a long time with Dee Dee gone. Dee Dee had just gotten pretty difficult there near the end, so they were excited about being out again too and we probably sounded as good as we ever did right there.”

In much of the documentary and archival material that was assembled following the Ramones’ split, the band’s core members – Joey (vocals) and Johnny (guitar/songwriting) – attested that CJ’s arrival revived the band’s spirits after a period of unease, his (relatively) youthful enthusiasm rejuvenating the ranks like a breath of fresh air.

“I didn’t really see it that way, to tell you the truth,” CJ admits. “I got into the Ramones right out of the Marine Corps – I literally left the military and five weeks later was doing my first show with the Ramones, so I was very ‘mission-oriented’. When I got into the band I just saw it as I got hired to do a job and I was going to do the absolute best I could, and I was so focused on doing that that I didn’t really pay much attention to anything else early on. I wasn’t thinking about how it affected Johnny and Joey; Johnny and Joey were two of my heroes, so for me to think that it was having any kind of effect on them would have been a real reach for me at the time. I just came in and said, ‘Hey, I got hired to be in one of the best bands of all time and I’m going to do the best I can,’ and that’s pretty much how I treated it.”

It must have been pretty surreal joining the band that he’d idolised for so long?

“Yeah, I don’t think there’s a whole lot of people who can even relate to that – I probably belong to a pretty small club there,” CJ concedes. “It was fun, it was exciting, but there was definitely a lot of stuff there that was so surreal. Even up until the very end, to look over and see Joey and Johnny standing there – right up until the last show – it was amazing. I just couldn’t believe it, after all those years of being a fan and going to see shows to suddenly be standing next to them onstage was pretty impressive, pretty overwhelming.

“I really felt, like I said, that I just wanted to do a great job. The thing about it is that I was such a big fan – I was so influenced by the Ramones before I ever got into the band – that I knew without even thinking about it what they did onstage and what song was coming next. There was so much that was already so familiar to me that once I got over the initial thing of being onstage with them it all really came to me really easily. Not that playing at that speed came easily, but I really just slid into the role and went for it.”

One of the strange – and somewhat sad – realities of the Ramones’ tenure was that despite the image of brotherhood and camaraderie that they so carefully fostered, the inter-band relationships were as bad as you could actually fathom for a working rock’n’roll outfit. Behind the ‘punk uniform’ of torn jeans, leather jackets and sneakers existed a remarkable level of acrimony, especially between Johnny and Joey: incredibly the pair, who were fighting over a girlfriend of Joey’s that Johnny allegedly wooed from him and eventually married, hardly spoke at all to each other for many years, even whilst touring the world in a band that was at the time viewed by outsiders as a close-knit gang.

With Johnny and Joey ... they had absolutely nothing in common, politically, spiritually, socially… The only thing they had in common is that they both loved the same girl, and that never ends up good.

“Yeah, for the most part it was pretty bad,” CJ reflects, a tinge of sadness still evident in his tone. “They didn’t talk much. There wasn’t a lot of fighting, they just didn’t talk much. It was definitely uncomfortable sometimes, especially having been a fan, but all families are like that, you know what I mean? Anyone who’s got a family knows that there’s always somebody in the family that’s difficult – someone who always causes problems when everybody gets together for the holidays – so you have fights when you’re with your brothers and sisters in a family, that’s just how it is. It’s part of that relationship.

“But with Johnny and Joey it was a much bigger thing – they had absolutely nothing in common, politically, spiritually, socially… The only thing they had in common is that they both loved the same girl, and that never ends up good. That’s how it was – it was uncomfortable sometimes, but not to the extent that I woke up every morning dreading getting into the van with them or anything. I just kind of accepted it and tried to figure out the best way I could deal with it, and that was what I did.”

There’s also obviously many tales of good times in those final years – such as the notoriously conservative Johnny helping CJ with his finances – so there must have been some solid individual relationships among the band members in-between the infighting?

“Yeah, definitely,” CJ agrees. “Johnny was like my teacher or my mentor, I’d say – that was the role that he always played. Me and Joey were more like traditional friends, I guess, we went out to shows together and hung out and talked – we were more friendly like that. It was two totally different relationships, but it was always kind of this thing where Joey would get mad if I spent too much time with Johnny, Johnny would get mad if I spent too much time with Joey… Politically I’m kind of in the middle – I’d be considered a ‘centrist’, although realistically I don’t like politics at all – but Johnny was extreme right and Joey was extreme left, so I identified with each of them on certain things, but I’d try not to have political conversations and stuff like that. I had a different relationship with both of them, and neither was more important or meaningful than the other – they were both good friends and I miss them both equally.”

It must have been devastating for CJ watching his friends and bandmates pass away in such close proximity to each other: first Joey passed in 2001, then Dee Dee (with whom CJ played post-Ramones in The Remainz) went in 2002, followed by Johnny in 2004 and finally founding drummer Tommy in 2014.

“Yeah, it’s crazy – the Ramones have to be the band with the worst luck in the world,” he reflects. “I don’t think there’s a band in history where all four original members died in such close proximity at relatively young ages. I mean, there’s Lynyrd Skynyrd who had the plane crash but a bunch of the guys survived, and individual stars have died in plane crashes and helicopter crashes and whatnot, but a whole band all dying of different diseases all so close together? Johnny, Joey and Dee all passed with only a few years separating them, and then finally we lost Tommy – the guy who built the Ramones and came up with the whole thing – who passed last year.”

Strangely, the Ramones legacy seems to have grown exponentially in their absence. The band strived in vain for commercial success and respect during their actual tenure – largely to no avail, despite accruing a massive cult following – but in more recent times one only has to look at the proliferation of Ramones T-shirts at any gathering of music fans to know that their music is alive and well. Does CJ have mixed feelings about this belated recognition?

It’s a strange thing – people just love you when you’re dead, for some reason.

“Yeah,” he admits. “You know how that is, though – whenever you have a dead star, usually the family and the estates and the attorneys all get together and try to figure out the best way to try to make as much money as they possibly can off the names, and that’s kind of where it is.

"But at least in the Ramones’ case the two estates – Joey’s estate and Johnny’s estate – have something legitimate to fight for, because they were one of the greatest rock bands of all time, ignored for years and survived on their own without any help from record companies or radio or anything. For 22 years they slugged out in the trenches on their own and carved a career out, so they deserve the recognition that they get now. They at least have something legit. But it’s a strange thing – people just love you when you’re dead, for some reason.”

This is one of the reasons that it’s so important for CJ to help keep this music alive and kicking, which he’s currently in the midst of doing with his Ramones-oriented solo project. Onstage he and his band mix Ramones classics with original material, and have just released a new album, Last Chance To Dance.

“I wish I could say that I was that type of writer where I could sit down and say, ‘I’m going to write this type of record’ – or even write a record in a certain period of time – but unfortunately I’m not so skilled a songwriter that I can do it that way,” CJ laughs. “I really just write songs when I feel inspired, and I put them on the record as long as I feel that it’s a song worthy of being on a record. That’s why stylistically the record goes from bubblegum pop type of stuff all the way to ‘80s hardcore kind of stuff, just because everything I’m influenced by comes out when I write – that’s just how it is.

"There’s obvious Ramones comparisons, but you have to keep in mind that I was a fan for all my teenage years, all the way up until my twenties, when I got into the band and then played with them for seven years – they’re probably my biggest musical influence. It’s not something that I could deny – not that I’d try. For me to make a record that doesn’t sound like the Ramones I would have to actually sit down and do that – and I did experiment with that years back when I had a band called Los Gusanos, I got together with some friends from different backgrounds and started doing records and stuff and it sounded nothing like the Ramones – nothing at all like the Ramones.

“But this project now is all me. Steve Soto and Dan Root – my two guitar players from the Adolescents – they each wrote music for one of the songs because I’m trying to open it up a little bit here, but realistically I think that the overwhelming, most-voiced opinion on it is that it sounds ‘Ramones-esque’, and to me that’s a compliment. I do Ramones songs in the set still and I always will – I go out as CJ Ramone, and if people go to a CJ Ramone show they’re going to want to hear the Ramones. I’m more than happy to play it, I love it – it’s still my favourite stuff to play – but I also wanted to prove that I could make great records and put out stuff that I’m proud of that’s my own material. I feel that the good thing with the current set – and I’m not saying that my stuff is as good or as classic or as great as the Ramones – is that it holds up well to the Ramones sound.

“People would be shocked probably [knowing how wide my music taste spreads]. I even listen to a lot of reggae, and I grew up playing in heavy metal bands – where I lived there were two other punk rockers in my whole town, there were no punk rock bands, so I played heavy metal. I’ve always said that Black Sabbath is probably my favourite band of all time, but I’ve always just loved music in general – I’m a music fan, I really am. I love it all, all the different styles from heavy to soft to classical I really like it all, I really do. But writing, when I sit down to write, that’s what comes out.”

A typical CJ Ramone set apparently covers a lot of ground, but mainly sticks to its core values of the staple Ramones classics.

“I put out a record before this one called Reconquista (2012) – I did it myself through a fan funding site – so there will be some stuff off that, then some stuff off the new one Last Chance To Dance,” CJ continues, “but the Ramones songs I do are mostly fan favourites, and me being a fan obviously my favourites. But I also do some songs that I never got to do with the Ramones, and reliastically I think there’s one song in the set from my time period in the band – I really wanted to play my favourite stuff, the stuff that gets me excited, and that’s the early stuff from the first four records.”

Did he have a favourite song to play onstage in the Ramones?

“The obvious one for me is Warthog – because it’s a really fun song and I got to sing it and whatnot – but I also really enjoyed playing Judy Is A Punk, that was always one of my favourite songs to play. To me that really is the perfect punk rock song.”

After the Ramones retired there was this mad rush of negative stuff … and it bothered me. It really bothered me...

Most importantly, as one of the last men standing CJ recognises the need to keep forging onwards to keep this incredible music alive, and allow people to remember the band for its music rather than just the controversy that dogged them after the fact.

“Yeah, absolutely,” he nods. “After the Ramones retired there was this mad rush of negative stuff, like ‘who fucked whose girlfriend?’ and ‘who’s a drug addict?’ and ‘who’s an alcoholic?’ and ‘who did this?’ and ‘who was cheap?’ – all this negative stuff – and it bothered me. It really bothered me, because for years the Ramones had worked really hard to keep their integrity intact and to keep all of the drama out of the public eye and to keep attention focused on the music. And as soon as the band retired and Joey and Johnny and Dee Dee had passed that’s when all of the stuff started coming out, and it bothered me and I complained about it and my wife said to me, ‘Well, you can’t sit around complaining, you’ve got to get up and do something about it.’ 

"At that point, I hadn’t played music for a while – I’d been out of music while I started a family – but then I decided that I was going to get up and go out and do that, and I did that for a while and the response was great and that rolled into me starting to do records again, and here I am with a new record out on Fat Records doing it full-time. But that’s pretty much the genesis of the whole thing, just trying to get people re-focussed on the music and what made the Ramones great and why everyone loved them so much, and not all the drama and negative stuff.”