Spector is often said to have brandished a gun either at this point or at another point in the session, but Marky Ramone tells us that this is overblown – Spector carried a gun but never threatened them with it. When Johnny walked out, Spector ordered him back in, and Johnny retorted, “What you going to do, shoot me?” (this exchange is captured on tape). This guitar note became the stuff of legend when tales were told of Specter making Johnny play it over and over for eight hours. While the original begins with eight seconds of drums, this rendition opens with the sounds of students mulling about at school, a class bell, and a sustained guitar note played by Johnny Ramone. When Spector produced the Ramones End of the Century album, he had them record a new version, employing his “wall of sound” technique. Much of the Ramones brand of punk rock was influenced by early rock and roll. When he met with the band’s manager, Danny Fields, Arkush pitched him the story of the band playing while the school blows up. Rock ‘N’ Roll High School director Allan Arkush was a big Ramones fan, and pushed to make them the band in the movie. It was released independently, so it was never big at the box office, but Rock ‘N’ Roll High School earned an excellent review from the influential movie critics Siskel & Ebert, and quickly gained a cult following. The film is campy in the tradition of Animal House, and it captured the punk attitude of rebellion with a heaping of humor. While they play, Riff hits the plunger and blows up the building as the horrified teachers look on. In the final scene, she leads the students out of the school in apparent surrender, but then introduces the Ramones, who have joined them to perform the song. Soles), writes the song in her songwriting class (somehow this school she found so stifling offered a songwriting class and a means for her to work up a professional demo) and plays it to her classmates during gym class.ĭetermined to get the song to her favorite band, the Ramones, she is thwarted by the principal and stages a protest in retaliation, taking over the school with her fellow students. In the film, the student, Riff Randell (played by P. The Ramones wrote this song for the movie Rock ‘N’ Roll High School, which is about a student who leads a rock rebellion against the school administration. This is one band I regret never getting to see live. The song clocked in at a little over 2 minutes…true Ramones fashion. It was not the hit they were hoping to have. This song has a fifties sound to it and it does sound commercial for the Ramones but it never made it into the Billboard 100 but it did manage to get to #67 in the UK in 1979. This is the version that was released as a single and included on the film’s soundtrack. The band started working with Phil Spector soon after, and Spector remixed this song for the film. The Ramones first recorded this song with producer Ed Stasium, who produced their previous album Road to Ruin. I got a VHS copy of this movie in the early 80s and loved it. This song was the title song for the movie The Ramones made in 1980.
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