“Hey, Ramona; the Ramones wrote a song about you!” chief engineer Tony Bongiovi announced as he blasted Ramona from the control room. Even though I was the assistant engineer on the Bongiovi/Erdelyi (Tommy Ramone) produced Leave Home, I’d never begged them ‘to come over’ as it implied in the Ramona lyric that appeared on the following LP Rocket to Russia. I was so embarrassed, even appalled. “I thought it was a nice thing that they did,” Bongiovi recently pointed out to me. At the time, I didn’t think lying about me stalking them was ‘a nice thing’ but I got over it—artistic license, I suppose.

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To me, the Ramones were a motley bunch of pretentious-toughs from Queens with heavy accents and a somewhat unintelligent manner of speaking, but endearing nonetheless. Each one was very different from the other—Joey was a study in shy; Johnny, an outspoken republican, and Dee Dee was a party-boy to the max. Tommy (Erderlyi) Ramone was  polite and approachable—a comrade in engineering—and the one who made the most sense to me.

 

Early on, Erdelyi was an assistant engineer at Record Plant Recording Studios under the supervision of Bongiovi. “I used a lot of highs when I put my records together,” noted Bongiovi of his recording style.  “It was my trademark and Erdelyi liked that so Erdelyi said I have a band I want you to produce with me. And I said give me a cassette of it. And he said, no you gotta come and hear them perform.” As a courtesy Bongiovi went to see the Ramones live and pretty soon they were recording basic tracks to Leave Home at Sun Dragon Studio and overdubbing and mixing with me as an assistant engineer at Mediasound. No other staff members wanted to work with the band because they thought the Ramones were a bunch of non-musicians. “Erdelyi started the Ramones,” recounted Bongiovi. “He was the drummer. He created the Ramones. It was his idea. He oversaw all of the songwriting and I worked closely with him. I purposely put a lot of high end on the records with the intention of rolling it off in the mastering process to give the Ramones their cutting edge wall of sound.”

 

In over-the-top ‘troubadour’ fashion, Ramones cut their basic tracks in a night or two by playing song after song as if performing live. “Johnny Ramone doubled his own parts and then Lance Quinn filled it out a bit so you couldn’t really tell that someone else was playing the guitar other than Johnny,” said Bongiovi.  (Note: Head Engineer, Ed Stasium, who later became the Ramones producer, recollects the sessions differently than Bongiovi. According to Stasium, Quinn played guitar 'harmonics' on only one song and did not double Johnny's parts).

 

Bassist, Bob Babbitt also had a hand in cleaning-up Dee Dee’s lines reported Bongiovi, "It was a common technique back then". The next day, however, Dee Dee lashed out, “What’s going on? I didn’t play that part! That’s not me!” He was really emotional and angry. Musicians whose parts were altered were usually calmed by telling them that their part was equalized and/or compressed and that’s why they didn’t recognize it. Most novice players bought that line, but not Dee Dee. This was a new breed of musicians. Non-schooled, raw, desperadoes who stood up to established record producers. To this day, I’m not entirely sure how Bongiovi and Erdelyi convinced Dee Dee that it was none other than him playing the bass. 

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The technique of doubling parts and perhaps even replacing them continued with the Ed Stasium/Tommy Ramone engineered and produced Road to Ruin. Watching Stasium play guitar with such professionalism was to me an anomaly. I had known engineers who played instruments like Bob Clearmoutain (bass), Harney Jay Goldberg (guitar) and Godfrey Diamond (drums) in their band The Bats, but as good as they were, none of them played with the precision of Stasium—who I always considered to be the fifth Ramone.

 

Because of its haunting melody and prophetic title, we chose to re-imagine Here Today, Gone Tomorrow.