RAMONES - ROCKET TO RUSSIA @ 45

 

Released on November 4th, 1977, the Ramones third LP, Rocket to Russia, is celebrating its 45th anniversary today. The album continued the band’s quest for a commercial breakthrough, but despite improved production values, evolved songwriting skills and consistent critical praise, the album failed to generate significant sales and kept the group rutted in the “punk” gutter. Even though they were at the height of their powers and were knocking out songs which should have been taking the charts by storm, the "dog had a bad name" and the band squarely blamed the Sex Pistols for creating a hostile environment within the AM radio industry for anything often lazily labeled “punk”. Radio programmers tarred anyone associated with the genre with the same brush and simply weren’t willing to give the band the chance they so desperately deserved.

The album would be the last to feature original drummer Tommy (Erdelyi) on the skins, though he would return as producer for the next LP, Road To Ruin. His clashes with Johnny were enough that he felt that it was for the good of the band’s moral for him to focus on the production side. The label put up somewhere near $30K for the album and most of that was spent on production while recording was done as quickly as possible to minimize the cost of studio time. The production credits list Tony Bongiovi and Tommy Ramone as head producers, but in reality, the majority of the work landed in the lap of engineer Ed Stasium. Bongiovi, who is the cousin of Jon Bon Jovi, had a reputation for being difficult to work with and Johnny often insisted on only recording when he wasn’t in the studio. Johnny was also the main driver in pushing the production emphasis, going so far as to bring in a copy of the Sex Pistols single, God Save the Queen, at the start of production and stating that they’d ripped off the Ramones and their next album MUST exceed the production values of the Pistols.

Musically, the band went in a more surf & bubblegum pop direction, albeit with their patented buzz-saw edge. Thematically the lyrics focused on humour, often referencing mental disorders and psychiatry. The band were broadening their palette of styles as well, so it wasn’t all rapid-fire tempos all the time for this outing. Critics were enthusiastic for the variety and evolution in the band’s sound. The legacy of the album, like so much of the band’s output, particularly with the first half dozen LPs, is that they left behind an incalculably infectious canon of work which has succeeded in infiltrating popular culture over the ensuing decades, becoming touchstones for a generation and beyond. It’s only sad that they could never reach those heights while they were around to enjoy the success. As the Stranglers said, “everybody loves you when you’re dead”.