Ramones is the debut studio album by the American punk rock band Ramones, released on April 23, 1976, by Sire Records. After Hit Parader editor Lisa Robinson saw the band at a gig in New York City, she wrote several articles about the group and asked Danny Fields to be their manager. It was placed first in the same publication's list of the "100 Best Debut Albums of All Time" in 2022, and their list of the "100 Greatest Punk Albums of All time" in 2026. It was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 2014 for 500,000 copies sold in the US.
Background
Ramones began playing gigs in mid-1974, with their first show at Performance Studios in New York City. In early 1975, Lisa Robinson, an editor of Hit Parader and Rock Scene, saw the fledgling Ramones performing at CBGB and subsequently wrote about the band in several magazine issues. The group's vocalist Joey Ramone related that "Lisa came down to see us, she was blown away by us. She said that we changed her life; she started writing about us in Rock Scene, and then Lenny Kaye would write about us and we started getting more press like The Village Voice. Word was getting out, and people starting coming down." and became the manager in November 1975.
On September 19, 1975, Ramones recorded a demo at 914 Sound Studios, which was produced by Marty Thau. Featuring the songs "Judy Is a Punk" and "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend", the band used the demo to showcase their style to prospective labels. Producer Craig Leon, who had seen the Ramones perform in the summer of 1975, brought the demo to the attention of Sire Records' president Seymour Stein. After being persuaded by Craig Leon and his ex-wife Linda Stein, Ramones auditioned at Sire and were offered a contract, although the label had previously signed only European progressive rock bands. Drummer Tommy Ramone recalled: "Craig Leon is the one who got us signed, single handed. He brought down the vice president and all these people—he's the only hip one in the company. He risked his career to get us on the label." The label offered to release "You're Gonna Kill That Girl" as a single, but the band declined, insisting on recording an entire album. Sire accepted their request and agreed to release a studio album instead.
Recording and production
thumb|right|alt=A building in a city at night that reads "RADIO CITY" in all caps lit up in various places around the building|Ramones was recorded on the eighth floor of [[Radio City Music Hall.]]
In January 1976 the band took a break from their live performances to prepare for recording at Plaza Sound studio. In 2004, Leon admitted that they recorded Ramones quickly due to budget restrictions, but also that it was all the time they needed.
The band applied microphone placement techniques similar to those which many orchestras used. The recording process was a deliberate exaggeration of the techniques used by the Beatles in the early 1960s, with a four-track representation of the devices. The guitars can be heard separately on the stereo channels—electric bass on the left channel, rhythm guitar on the right—drums and vocals are mixed in the middle of the stereo mix. The mixing of the production also used more modern techniques such as overdubbing, a technique used by studios to add a supplementary recorded sound to the material. The band also used a technique known as doubling, where the vocal line used is sung twice.
Lyrics and composition
The songs on Ramones addressed several lyrical themes including violence, male prostitution, drug use, and Nazism. While the moods displayed in the album were often dark, Johnny said that when writing the lyrics they were not "trying to be offensive". Many songs from the album have backing vocals from different guests. Leigh sang backing vocals on "Judy Is a Punk", "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend", and in the bridge of "Blitzkrieg Bop". Tommy sang backing vocals on "I Don't Wanna Walk Around with You", "Judy Is a Punk", and during the bridge of "Chain Saw". The album's engineer, Rob Freeman, sang backing vocals for the final refrain of "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend". Leon wrote in the booklet for the album's 2016 reissue that when layered background vocals appear on the album, they are primarily Freeman's contributions combined with some of Leon and Dee Dee's, and a great deal by Leigh, "all compiled and compressed to create an effective cyborg backing vocal creature." The album's length is 29 minutes and four seconds and it contains 14 tracks. On the original issue of the album, all the original songs were credited to "the Ramones" collectively.
At the time, Leigh was road manager, stage manager, chauffeur, and head of security. Vega, who contributed to the album's packaging, helped out with the road crew as much as possible. Tommy's friend Monte Melnick occasionally helped with the audio output, but this was typically done by Leigh. The band sold out for their first London performance, with an audience of roughly 3,000. Leigh described the Dingwalls gig as very similar to performances at CBGB. Likewise, these venues in future were headlined by other punk bands like the Clash and Sex Pistols. The band performed over 100 concerts the following year.
Reception
Ramones was released on April 23, 1976, by Sire Records and received glowing reviews. In May, John Rockwell of The New York Times published a rave review, saying: "What the Ramones do is deliver a nonstop set of short, brisk, monochromatically intense songs. ... conventional considerations of pace and variety are thrown calculatedly to the winds. The ingredients are simplicity itself." Rockwell noted: "the effect in the end amounts to an abstraction of rock so pure that other associations get left behind." Nick Kent favourably commented in the NME: "This record poses a direct threat to any vaguely sensitive woofer and/or tweeter lodged in your hi-fi ...". Reviewing that same month in The Village Voice, Robert Christgau said that, while the power of the band's music draws from "fairly ominous sources" like Nazi imagery and brutality, he cannot deny the "sheer pleasure" of the music: "For me, it blows everything else off the radio: it's clean the way the Dolls never were, sprightly the way the Velvets never were, and just plain listenable the way Black Sabbath never was." In July, Paul Nelson of Rolling Stone wrote that the album was similar to early rock and roll, and was constructed using rhythm tracks of great intensity.
In August, Creem dubbed The Ramones as "The most radical album of the past six years", saying: "[it] is so strikingly different, so brazenly out of touch with prevailing modes as to constitute a bold swipe at the status quo." Reviewer Gene Sculatti saw it as "a rock 'n' roll reactionary's manifesto" ... "a sharp wedge between the stale ends of a contemporary music scene bloated with graying superstars and overripe for takeover." Critic Joe S. Harrington declared that the album was a huge landmark for music history, proclaiming that "[it] split the history of rock 'n' roll in half." Theunis Bates, a writer for Time, summed the album up with: "Ramones stripped rock back to its basic elements ... lyrics are very simple, boiled-down declarations of teen lust and need." Kris Needs of ZigZag declared that the album's "mutant vocals and ultra-simplicity of the music and lyrics do take some getting used to, but once you get past the curiosity stage, the effect can be shattering, especially at high volume" and that it was "impossible to mention highlights, 'cos the whole album's a highlight, geared and stripped down for maximum energy and effect." In 1977 Charles M. Young of Rolling Stone regarded Ramones as "one of the funniest rock records ever made and, if punk continues to gain momentum, a historic turning point."