Interview with vocalist/bassist CJ Ramone | By Janelle Jones
I talked to former Ramones bassist and Marine Corps vet CJ Ramone about his current outfit, which also includes the Adolescents’ Steve Soto and Dan Root (guitars) and Social Distortion’s David Hidalgo Jr. (drums). The band’s latest album, Last Chance to Dance, incorporates all the goodness that made the Ramones so great, vacillating between tough, aggressive songs and poppier tracks.
You just got back from Japan. Do you go there a lot?
Well, I was there in 2010 and last year, 2013, I played the Fuji Rock Festival. This time I actually went over to do some songs from my new record and to do a bunch of Ramones stuff for the Ramones 40th anniversary this year.
Who did you have playing with you?
I have Steve Soto and Dan Root from the Adolescents and this time I brought a friend of mine, Joe Rizzo from NYC. He plays with Walter Lure’s band [The Waldos] but he’s played with just about everybody who’s ever been big in NYC. We had five shows and every one of them was unbelievable. I started playing out again in 2008 and I slowly started making my way around the world again. It’s been really great because every year we’re pulling in more and more fans. I’ve done everything pretty quietly; I haven’t been real loud about anything. I released my last record Reconquista through a crowdfunding site. I’ve kept it kinda under the radar for a while but this year we got signed to Fat Wreck Chords, so we’re starting to make a little bit of noise now. My favorite shows are anywhere from 250 to 500, maybe 1000 people. I like playing in those size rooms where it’s a low stage and the crowd’s right there in front of you and you get that energy trade. I guess it’s kinda old school. But we’ve been really lucky. Every year without advertising we’ve gotten more and more offers. I’ve been in Brazil every year for the past three years. We’ve been down to South America every year for six or seven years. We’ve been over to Europe a few times. I’m flying over to do a show in Munster, Germany, with a band called the Donots. I may do a quick stop over in Berlin and do a show over at the Ramones Museum Berlin, but that’s not a definite, it’s whether or not we have the time to coordinate it. It’s nice touring this way because I have three kids and a wife so it’s nice to go out a few weeks here and there and be home for weeks at a time.
About South America, I forget which book it was exactly, I’m not sure if it was the “official” biography or another one, but it said that in South America the people would go crazy for the Ramones.
Yeah. When we went there it was like Beatlemania. The last concert we played there was a soccer stadium. We were really big down there. We were up there with the Rolling Stones and Guns N’ Roses. It was wild. We had to have security guys everywhere we went. We couldn’t go out in public; we’d get just completely mobbed, so it was interesting.
Oh and I noticed on your Facebook page, you were actually in Berlin when the Berlin Wall fell. That’s crazy!
That was my first time over in Germany and the promoter wanted to take us over to the Berlin Wall. We were over there and there was a hole broken through and we peeked through and there were two guards on the other side. I actually bought one of the guys’ military covers and his belt buckle off of him for a couple of bucks and I said to the promoter, “Was that enough money?” And he’s like, “That’s probably a month’s salary for that guy.” I still have them too with a piece of the Wall saved. I was new to the band so that alone was pretty cool. But then to be there for a big historic event like that made it even better. It was just good timing. But the really cool thing was we were the first band to go into East Berlin and play after the Wall came down.
I was wondering, joining such a huge, iconic band was it hard at first?
It was a little weird because I was such a big fan. Dee Dee was my favorite Ramone. That made it kinda strange. But the way I treated it was I got hired to do a job and I was just gonna do it the best that I absolutely could. I didn’t wanna let the band down and I didn’t wanna let the fans down. I didn’t try to be Dee Dee; I didn’t try to take his place. I just tried to get out there and be myself. I definitely took a little flak early on. People just weren’t happy. They felt like it wasn’t the Ramones if Dee Dee wasn’t there, but in the end I guess because the fans didn’t just accept me from the get-go it meant a lot more. I took a lot─I mean, I got hit with everything you can imagine: shoes and handfuls of change, bottles thrown at me. I was covered in spit every show so it wasn’t easy. But I didn’t let it affect me. I didn’t care; I was in the Ramones.
It’s crazy to think that all the original guys have passed. Did they give you any words to live by type stuff? Going through all that, did they encourage you?
Well, when I was going through it no, not really. They didn’t say nothing. I guess they ignored it and Johnny just made sure I stayed focused. Johnny was in charge of the band. He did not accept anything less than doing your absolute best which was good because it kept me on my toes. Realistically out of everybody I probably learned more from Johnny and not just about the industry, but just in general. Joey and me were more like friends, we’d go to shows together and hang out, but Johnny was more like my teacher or my mentor. But I learned a lot from them in general.
And then I know you started doing stuff afterwards and then under the CJ Ramone “solo” name and had Reconquista in 2012 and then this one. What made you go with Fat? Did they approach you?
Nope. Since the Ramones retired, all the books that came out, to me anyway, there was a lot of negativity in it. It seemed to focus more on them being bad people than their actual careers and stuff. I just felt like they weren’t being represented well out there and that people lost focus of what made them great and what made everybody like them. I figured the best thing to do was to go out and start playing their music again and remind everybody about what made them great and take the legacy back, so to speak. There’s been a lot made of Joey and Johnny’s relationship and people not getting along and all that stuff, but I always tell people it’s just like a family. With families, sometimes you get along, sometimes you don’t. Johnny and Joey had other issues but they understood that the Ramones were important. Before their own personal feelings, they always considered the band and their careers first. To me, that’s the real story. Not who fucked whose girlfriend or who was a drug addict or drank too much. All that stuff to me is trashy stuff. I was never into that type of information on bands. All I cared about was the music. That seemed to be the sole focus of everything that came out after Joey and Johnny had died.
Yeah, then it’s like, look at how long they’d been together. Of course there’s gonna be some differences and arguments.
Yup. Twenty two years is a long time to work any job, and no matter how cool it is it’s gonna get a little boring. Most marriages don’t even come close to lasting 22 years. If you consider how many shows we did a year and the fact that we traveled together, ate together, had rooms next to each other, we couldn’t get away from each other if we wanted to. To me that shows a lot of commitment and drive. That’s really the story.
Are you planning a U.S. tour?
Hopefully next summer we’ll be out to support the record. Like I said I’ll be over in Europe before the end of the year. Right now, none of this is written in stone, but I think March we’re gonna be in South America, April we’re booking some stuff over in Europe and hopefully in January and February we’ll be going down to Australia and maybe back to Japan for one or two shows.
So about this record, one song “Mr. Kalashnikov,” is that one of your more political ones? I know he died last year, but this is more to do with gun policies?
Yeah, it’s got more to do with the gun policy thing. It’s really like a double-edged thing because in some places everybody owning a gun is good because at least the average guy’s got a chance if anything goes down. In other places it ain’t so good. It’s just a way for the bad guys to keep control. But I’m a big fan of the Kalashnikov, I always have been. It’s such a simple little piece of machinery I just happen to be a fan of. I grew up around guns, I’ve always had guns. I maintain at least having one gun in the house forever. I’m a hunter, so it’s not like I do it just because I’m a fan of guns. I’ve written a couple songs in the past about guns. With the Ramones on the last record [Adios Amigos!] I have a song “Scattergun” so it’s a subject I write about every once in awhile.
What about choosing the song “Last Chance to Dance” to be the title of the record?
When I went into the studio to record I didn’t have a title for the record and as we were sitting around in the studio and I started looking around for artwork and thinking about what I wanted to do I came across the photo which is now the album cover. And when I started to come up with a title I felt that song went with the artwork really well, so I just figured that was the best way to go. The title and the image go so well together that the more I thought about it the more I liked it. It just stuck.
You end it with the super hardcore “Cluster Fuck.” Did you know from the beginning that’s gonna close it out?
Dan Root wrote the music for that one and that’s actually the most political song on the record, probably the most political song I’ve ever written. I’m not too big into politics, I’m really not. I vote but I don’t really preach or talk about it that much. I feel like it’s a personal opinion type of thing, but I just felt that song really fit the end of the record well. What we were talking about before, about learning from the guys in the band, that’s one thing Johnny taught me: Your live set and the way you put tracks on your record, the way to do that is to take people through a little bit of an emotional rollercoaster. That’s what I try to keep in mind when I make a set list or when I do the tracking on the record. That one is just really powerful and quick and I felt like it was a suckerpunch at the end of the record.
What about “Won’t Stop Swinging”? There’s something really powerful about that song.
That one Steve Soto wrote the music for and I wrote the lyrics. That one is about kinda growing up here on Long Island. When I was younger I worked at Republic Fairchild, it was an aircraft factory. I worked there pretty much right out of high school. I was only there for a little while and they started closing down the factory, so I lost my job there. That was a really good union job. My dad had worked there for years. He got me in there and I thought that was my security blanket, I wouldn’t have to look for another job because I’d be there until I retired or at least until I did something with music. And it closed down and the economy on LI was really crap back then. There weren’t many good jobs. I was landscaping and just not doing much with myself and I woke up one morning and was like I gotta get out of here and enlisted in the Marine Corps, so I got out of here and funny enough, when I was in the Marine Corps is when I got the audition for the Ramones. So it was a really weird chain of events. That song relates to that whole time period in my life where I just felt like I didn’t wanna give in and do nothing and just live and die in my hometown. I wanted to get out. I wanted to see the world and experience stuff. And that’s where “Won’t Stop Swinging” came in. I just promised myself I wouldn’t give up, I’d keep going. I’m glad I did. I’m lucky enough it actually happened for me.
Working on this record, how long did it take you to write and record?
I never stop writing songs─ I almost have an entire record written right now. So right after we finished recording Reconquista, we went out on the road and I started writing. Writing the record didn’t take me all that long. The good thing about that is you have plenty of time before you record to tweak it and make changes, come up with harmonies and melody lines. We did all the tracking in two, three weeks and then of course the mixing and mastering took another couple of months. But it’s not a real difficult process for me. I love doing it, I love writing songs, I love recording. It’s a painless thing for me. I know people who hate being in the studio, writing a new record is like pulling teeth for them, but I really enjoy it.
How did you first got into punk and hardcore?
Black Sabbath was always my favorite, the first band I fully got into. I come from a total metal background, but I picked up punk rock along the way and got into all the old punk-rock staples, but I never played in a punk rock band, I only played in metal bands. In my town, Deer Park, it was all heavy metal. Anybody who played, [they] played metal. There wasn’t anything else to play. But when I got the audition for the Ramones it was really strange because I didn’t play with a pick; I always played with my fingers. The one good thing is a lot of their stuff is kind of aggressive and live they played really fast, so it wasn’t a hard thing for me to do.
At least from, like my boyfriend he was born in 1969, your era, and he’s into everything, metal, hardcore punk, but there was a time when it was partitioned: you couldn’t be in the different scenes. And that time when it merged, like DRI and Corrosion of Conformity. Were you into that?
Yup, absolutely. It was a really weird time period. There was total separation of everything back then. Everything existed in its own little bubble. But some time in the ‘80s you started to see a lot of crossover stuff and a lot of people that just straddled two scenes and it wasn’t like that before. I always was a music fan. My dad brought me up listening to country and ‘50s music when I was really young. All the ’60s classic rock and ’70s pop stuff. I really went through the whole gamut from when I was a kid, which was good. And I kinda never got the whole separation of scenes thing. To me, if it was good it was good. But it’s neat now because that doesn’t exist on any plain anymore. There’s still a conservative music scene but it’s nowhere near like it used to be. It used to be violent towards other music scenes. Even in the punk rock scene, some of the punk shows I’d go to, the classic battle was the punks versus the skins and the metal guys versus everybody.