Johnny Ramone

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Johnny Ramone's real name was John William Cummings, and he was born in 1948 in Queens, New York. He grew up in Forest Hills, was a greaser as a teenager and played in a band with the future Ramones drummer Tommy. Before success he worked as a plumber with his father. In the early 1970s he met Douglas Colvin, who would later become Dee Dee Ramone, while delivering dry-cleaning. They turned out to be devoted to both The Stooges and MC5. In January 1974 Johnny bought a second-hand blue Mosrite for just over fifty-four dollars, because it was the cheapest guitar in the shop.

Music and breakthrough

With the singer Joey, Dee Dee and later the drummer Tommy, he formed the Ramones. They all took the surname Ramone. The first gig was on 30 March 1974. The debut album Ramones received good reviews but was not a commercial success: it got no higher than number 111 on the American album chart. Johnny and Joey were the only original members who stayed until the end in 1996 and they appeared on every album. In 2002 the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Influence

Johnny played almost exclusively rhythm guitar and used almost nothing but downstrokes, with full barre chords and the occasional power chord. Together with his amplifier tone, this gave a more aggressive and rhythmic sound than that of his contemporaries and strongly influenced the early punk bands. In 2009 Time put him on a list of the ten best electric guitarists. He also appeared in almost a dozen films and wrote the autobiography Commando, which was published in 2012. He died in 2004.

Listening