Richie Ramone: Too tough to die

You can understand Richie Ramone not wanting to walk under ladders, much less wanting to open that door, and absolutely not wanting to go down to the basement. “I thought there was a curse,” he admits. “I was really careful walking down the street, you know, because everybody went that young.”

Born Richie Reinhardt, the Ramones’ third drummer is one of three surviving members of the quintessential New York punk band. All four original “brothers” (Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee and Tommy) are now long gone, as well as artistic director Arturo Vega, who designed the group’s iconic logo.

But, while he may not be an original, Reinhardt – who is touring Australia as part of the 10th anniversary of the Cherry Rock Festival in May – is still more a Ramone than you or I will ever be. He stayed with the band for five years and 500 shows during the mid-’80s, playing drums on three albums.

The first of them, perhaps prophetically, was Too Tough To Die, easily the best record from the Ramones’ troubled middle period. Joey himself once said Richie’s arrival saved the famously volatile band.

“When you get somebody new, everybody is on their best behaviour and it’s a shot of new blood, and that’s what they needed at the time,” Reinhardt says. “The record or two before that, they were getting kind of soft, and they stripped it right down.

“They got Tommy Erdelyi, the original Ramones drummer, back to produce with Ed Stasium, and it was just getting down to basics again, that record. It all just worked.”

He also wrote some fine material for the band, his best-known tune being Somebody Put Something In My Drink. Fans can expect to hear a mixture of Ramones songs and Reinhardt originals, with the drummer alternately behind the kit and out in front of the audience.

There haven’t been that many singing punk-rock drummers – Hüsker Dü’s Grant Hart and Keish de Silva, from the Hard-Ons, are among the few. “Because punk is fast music, so it’s extremely hard to do … You have to focus on your breathing, you know – when you’re singing and playing drums, you don’t want to sound out of breath.”

He says he still has an emotional attachment to those songs, but then hits on something vital about the band when he admits: “It’s not the Ramones, you know, nothing’s going to sound like the Ramones.” It exposes one of the great contradictions of punk: while anyone can do it, few do it well.

“Those songs aren’t as simple as you think. Everybody goes, ‘Oh, it’s just three chords’, but there’s still a lot more put into those songs that meets the eye. The songwriting was fantastic, the lyrical content – Dee Dee was a genius; he was a poet.

“From the outside you’d look and go ‘Oh, this is so simple’, but when you hear bands trying to play those songs, they don’t know the little nuances that go with it. I kind of know some of the tricks, so when we play some of these songs they’re really cool.”

There’s more to Reinhardt than meets the eye (or ear), too. He’s remained active in music, releasing his first solo album, Entitled, in 2012, with another nearly complete. He’s even dabbled in the classical arena, arranging 10 songs from West Side Story for a symphony in 2007.

“That was a big deal,” he says. “There’s nothing like playing drums with a 90-piece orchestra behind you. It was really invigorating. But right now, I’ve got the rock thing going again, and it takes up all my time.”

First published in Shortlist (The Age), 7 April 2016

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