


It didn’t quite do the job for them career-wise, but it remains one of their most enduring classics. But it did churn out a couple gems, including this one, a near-perfect combo on nostalgia and jittery teenage energy. Spector didn’t quite get them, and the album turned out pretty limp. Well, it didn’t really work out that way. How could it miss? Every song would chart and they’d finally reap the rewards of their efforts. It was their big rock star move – record an album of should-be pop hits with Phil Spector, architect of the “Wall of Sound”, arguably the most important pop producer of the 60’s. End of the Century was supposed to achieve that. They wanted to be rich, or at least make enough money to afford a big enough bus to hold all of their egos comfortably. Do You Remember Rock N’ Roll Radio? (1980)ĭespite their punk heritage, the Ramones didn’t like being poor. Might be the snottiest thing they’ve ever done, which is saying something.Ħ. But Warthog was a happy accident, a fun little bone-cruncher of a tune that sounds like a particularly scathing satire of ’77 era punk. They didn’t even understand the concept, really. Too Tough To Die was the result and it’s not very good because the Ramones weren’t hardcore. Not everybody thought so at the time – it was nominated for a Razzie for worst soundtrack song in ’89 – but it fits in perfectly with the band’s best 70’s stuff.įor some dumb reason, in 1984 the Ramones thought it would be a good idea to make a hardcore album.

#Ramones best song movie#
The Ramones loved King’s books and were all dyed-in-the-wool horror/kitsch/trash movie and culture fans, so it was the perfect marriage of sound and vision. What, we were supposed to let fucking Dokken keep writing slasher movie themes? The film was based on a Stephen King novel, and he was an unabashed fan of the brudders. Pet Semetary is a goofy clunker of a horror flick, but the Ramones surprise inclusion on the soundtrack not only served as a much-needed reminder that the band was still alive and well, but re-routed horror fans back to the punk/garage genre that embraced all things creepy throughout the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s. A great homage to their 60’s roots and one of the many highlights of 1978’s Road to Ruin. Everybody’s got a fave version – Cher’s is amazing, incidentally – but the Ramones may have captured the awkward teenage longing better than just about anybody. It has been covered many times over the years by everyone from Tom Petty to Stevie Nicks. Not a Ramones original, Needles and Pins is a chewy wad of bubblegum originally (co-)written by Sonny Bono in 1963 and first recorded by Jackie DeShannon a year later. Mostly it’s a jumble of jumpy, paranoid thoughts set to John’s chainsaw riff, but the “rules” count-off is so catchy and so fun to recite – “Fourth rule is… eat kosher salami!” – that it’s gotta make any top-10 Ramones list. Who knows what it was really about? Dee Dee wrote it and he grew up in Germany, so he probably thought about fascism a lot, especially with a bowl-cut tyrant like Johnny Ramone at the helm, and anybody growing up in the 70’s certainly contended with the Vietnam conflict and its aftermath. From Ramones’ second album, 1977’s Leave Home.
