Tommy Ramone, who has died aged 65, was the drummer and producer with the band the Ramones, a quintessential New York punk band, famous for their short but explosive sets of brutally minimal songs.
Tommy played on and co-produced the band's first three studio albums, Ramones (1976), Leave Home (1977) and Rocket to Russia (1977), and was sole producer on the 1979 live album It's Alive. These were the discs that created the imperishable Ramones sound, with their frantic pace and skilful deployment of the band's simple guitar-bass-drums format in tracks that sometimes lasted barely a minute and a half.
Songs such as Blitzkrieg Bop (which Tommy co-wrote), Sheena is a Punk Rocker and Rockaway Beach epitomised their gift for distilling melody and lyrics into ferociously concentrated doses, while Teenage Lobotomy or Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue evoked the aura of dumb leather-jacketed delinquency crucial to the Ramones mystique.
‘It wasn’t four morons’ But there was method behind the facade of mindlessness. Tommy explained it like this: “First of all, it wasn’t four morons; second of all, none of it was an accident; and third of all, it’s four talented people who know what they like and who know what they’re doing.”
The Ramones were often cited by British punk bands such as the Clash, Buzzcocks and Sex Pistols as an inspiration, an ideal of a raw and ferocious rock'n'roll stripped of pretence and bombast. As Tommy told Rolling Stone magazine: "Our music is an answer to the early Seventies when artsy people with big egos would do vocal harmonies and play long guitar solos and get called geniuses."
The Ramones grew out of the 1970s new wave scene in New York that also produced Blondie, Television and Talking Heads, and they played regularly at the CBGB club in the city's Bowery neighbourhood. Tommy originally intended to be the band's manager, songwriting partner and record producer, but he found himself behind the drums after the original drummer Joey Ramone (real name Jeffrey Hyman) became the lead singer. When Tommy auditioned new drummers, he would demonstrate what he wanted them to do, but found that nobody could do it better than he did.
Holocaust Like his bandmates, Ramone was working under a pseudonym, having been born Erdélyi Tamás in Budapest, the son of Jewish parents who survived the Holocaust by going into hiding. The family moved to New York in 1957. Tommy first started making music with John Cummings (later Johnny Ramone) in a high school garage band. Tommy played lead guitar, but gave up the band to learn the skills of studio recording.
Even after he stood down from the Ramones in 1978, when he was replaced by a new drummer, Marky Ramone (Marc Bell), he co-produced their fourth studio album Road to Ruin (1978), and returned to the producer's chair again for Too Tough to Die (1984). He is featured as drummer on the live album NYC 1978, which was not released until 2003.
Tommy Ramone’s death closes the page on the original band lineup. Joey died in 2001; Dee Dee (Douglas Colvin) in 2002; and Johnny in 2004. Marky is still alive.
His later work included producing the album Tim (1985) for the Replacements, Neurotica (1987) for Californian alt-rockers Redd Kross and Been There, Seen That, Done That (1988), the debut album of Dublin band Something Happens.
He later formed the bluegrass duo Uncle Monk with his long-time partner Claudia Tienan, and they released an eponymous album on their own label in 2006. After the death of Johnny, Tommy said: “It was highly unusual for three people to pass away so close and in the prime of their lives. It was very sad, depressing, confusing. The way I deal with it is to think of them still being around, otherwise it’s just too baffling.”
He is survived by Claudia, and by his older brother, Peter.