Marky Ramone: Living Punk Legend And The Blitzkrieg Bop

This November will herald the return of true punk rock royalty to our shores, Marky Ramone.

Marky is one of the last remaining members of The Ramones, and the one with the longest lineage, having handled skins duties for the formative punk outfit between 1978 to 1983 and again from 1987 until 1996. An original denizens of the NYC punk scene (Marky also played with Richard Hell and the Voidoids and appears on the classic Blank Generation LP), He is working endlessly to keep The Ramones’ spirit alive, with an extensive world tour featuring a huge haul of Ramones classics.

Currently, in Spain, he's has clocked up a considerable amount of kms on his current world tour, which has seen him performing in front of some incredibly large crowds. “Thousands and thousands and thousands of people,” Marky confirms when talking about the incredible enthusiasm of fans and love for the music. "To me, that’s all that matters.”

“It’s been a lot of fun,” he continues. “The audiences get younger and younger and it’s just a privilege to play to an audience that wasn’t around when we were together. It’s a combination of the older fans and the younger fans. The younger fans are up the front but the older fans, they’ve already done their thing, so they’re just hanging around up the back, having a good time."

During their time, The Ramones released a mental 14 full-length studio albums, not including live albums or compilations. During his tenure with the group, Marky left his mark on several seminal releases including 1978’s I Wanna Be Sedated, The KKK Took My Baby Away, Rock And Roll High School, and 1989’s Pet Semetary. For his current shows, Marky is digging all the way into the Ramones catalogue to deliver an absolute treat for every Ramones fan.

“The setlist is 38 Ramones songs. Every song that we play, people are gonna know. It extends from the first album, [1976’s The Ramones] all the way to, I guess, Pleasant Dreams and the Brain Drain album; right up to there.”

Over the years, Marky has appeared in many different forms. Whether under the Blitzkrieg banner, or as Marky Ramone & The Intruders. As the latter, he released a series of original tunes. Following some less than inspiring fan reactions when it came to road testing the original material, he reverted back to safe territory, “I realised that’s what you’re known for, that’s what you are so play The Ramones stuff that people know and what to hear - I learnt my lesson. I promise no originals.”

Rather than dwelling on the glory days of The Ramones and punk rock as some sort of nostalgia show, Marky has found bringing the Ramones music into the future to be totally exhilarating, “I always enjoyed playing these songs. Playing in front of 18-22 year olds is great because they love the energy and the lyrical content, it makes you feel like it’s fresh and new again.

“My whole thing is, if you have to do it, it’s not good. If you want to do it, then that’s the way to do it. We want to do it - that’s very important.”

Doing what he wants to do means even after all these years, Marky is still experiencing a hefty dose of ‘firsts’.

“We just did two shows in China. There was about 30,000 Chinese kids singing along to the songs. I would have never expected that in a million years. It’s still under some kind of Communist rule, but they knew the songs, they were dancing around. It was amazing. Rock In Rio was 200,000. We did that about two years ago, that was like a small city. They were rocking out there, boy.

“Everyone keeps asking me come back come back come back and here we are - we’re back in November and we’re going to play 5 shows. That’s going to be a lot of fun. What I did in China, Russia, Finland, Dubai, in Japan... It’s non-stop. The show is energetic and I expect to have a great time.”

One of the last remaining true prophets of punk rock will be on our shores this November. Don’t miss it ‘cos as Marky says - it’ll be a hell of a lot of fun!

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