As a kid, I used to daydream about meeting the figures from the posters on my wall.
I’ve been extraordinarily fortunate in that pursuit. Through several lucky breaks, I began writing for music magazines while I was still in high school. I interviewed the Dropkick Murphys, Reel Big Fish, Comeback Kid, Lucero, the Aquabats and so many others that it starts to get hazy. There have been times when I’ve looked back and found old interviews I don’t even remember doing.
Regular Tales From the Underground readers will remember that my ultimate goal was to interview the surviving members of the Ramones. Eventually, towards the end of my college career, I stumbled my way into doing just that. While it was a literal dream come true, something about the experience felt incomplete. I came to realize that, while I had talked to everyone, I still hadn’t met any of them.
Joey, Johnny, and Dee Dee were all gone before I was old enough to drive. I was never going to meet them, and that was OK. I had been lucky enough to interview Tommy Ramone before he passed, and Richie Ramone and I had corresponded so much that we had something resembling an acquaintanceship.
CJ Ramone was at the tippy top of my to-be-met list.
CJ had gone AWOL from the Marines to audition for the Ramones. He got the call that he landed the job while he was doing his time in, as he called it, “The undesirable part of the base.” When he got out, it was only five weeks until he was touring with the band. I always loved the modern folktale aspect of his story. He was a kid who grew up listening to the Ramones, a tried-and-true fan. He wound up being in the band for seven years, playing on some of their most interesting records. It was a story all of us fans wished we could have lived. He was our avatar.
I interviewed CJ as part of my “It’s A Long Way Back: Life After the Ramones” series for New Noise Magazine. He was funny, relaxed, everything you wanted him to be. I wanted to meet him in person, shake his hand, tell him thanks for inspiring the rest of us to take a chance shot at something that seemed impossible.
In 2015, I got my chance.
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The Review
American Beauty
CJ Ramone
2017
American Beauty is the record I always wanted CJ Ramone to make.
As has been made abundantly clear by now, I’m a Ramones junkie. I’ve been chasing this dragon since junior high. It’s difficult to admit, but sometimes you can indeed love something to death. You can listen to the records so much that eventually there’s nothing left to discover. It’s like eating your favorite meal so many times in a row that even a whiff of it makes you sick to your stomach.
I’m not exaggerating. There was a time when I could hear only the “1-2-3-4!” count off from a live track and tell you not only what song was about to play, but when and where it was recorded. Getting lost in the minutia is half the fun of falling in love with a band in the first place. That is until, one painful day, you realize there’s nothing new to discover.
And then, like a miracle made just for you, there’s new music.
I was downright giddy when CJ Ramone signed to Fat Wreck Chords. I had followed his solo career with ardent interest, and found there was disappointingly little material. I knew he had a band called Los Gusanos, my brother had given me one of their cassettes, but that was it. Then, when I was in high school, he started a (from what I could tell) one-off band called Bad Chopper. I got their record, and whatever, it was fine. But in 2012 he dropped his first proper solo album, Reconquista. In 2014, he followed that up with Last Chance to Dance. At last, there was the record we’re here to discuss, American Beauty.
American Beauty is the record you would have expected from CJ Ramone as a debut solo effort in 1997.
It’s a confident release that knows exactly what it is and doesn’t waste your time pretending to be anything else. These are 12 fun, focused songs with a perspective and a personality. American Beauty doesn’t sound like the Ramones; it sounds like CJ Ramone, and that’s what’s so great about it.
If it were trying to be a great lost Ramones record, let’s face it, it would be a bummer. We don’t need the buzzsaw guitars or blistering 16th notes, we just need a fun record from a name we trust, and that’s exactly what’s delivered. I personally challenge you to give it a listen and not smile. As a matter of fact, I’ll take it one step further and claim right here and now that the song “Run Around” would have been a bonafide hit if released in the late 90s, when rock records still had a home on the charts.
“Girlfriend in a Graveyard” will fit comfortably at home on any Halloween playlist. “Tommy’s Gone” is a tender centerpiece of the record, proving there is a beating heart behind the effort. “Pony” deserves a rightful place in the conversation of best Ramones’ solo releases.
Personally, I’m glad “American Beauty” came out 20 years after it should have. This isn’t CJ trying to capitalize on the name of his former band, using their heat to stoke his own fire. Instead, we find a CJ Ramone who left the band and went back to driving a forklift. We find a CJ who turned down a chance to audition for Metallica because he wanted to focus all his attention on raising his son. We find a CJ who waited until he manifested a voice, and then used it to say something.
Take a half hour today and give American Beauty a spin. You won’t be disappointed.
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The Tale
CJ Ramone opened for the Damned at the House of Blues in Anaheim, California on September 4, 2015.
I was at that show and had come specifically to meet him. This was a mere five days after I had met Jimmy Carter in Plains, Georgia. These meetings happening in the same week on two opposite coasts of the same continent wasn’t planned. The best parts of life are unplanned. I have made a career of falling ass-backwards into adventure.
Experiencing the end of summer on two different coasts is a singular experience. Back in Georgia the wet heat was oppressive, nearly debilitating if you weren’t properly acclimated. In California, it felt like the endless summers of youth between school semesters. Somehow the ocean breeze could be felt even in a landlocked county miles from the beach. Deep South summers are a stark reminder of how the season feels on your skin. California summers feel like walking through a memory.
The Anaheim House of Blues was on Disneyland property. It was an easy walk from their front doors to the gates of the park. A seminal punk rock show taking place as Mickey Mouse took photos with jubilant children was a juxtaposition I enjoyed. That very duality was heavy on my mind as I waited for the doors to open at the House of Blues. Of course, I wasn’t there to meet Mickey. Not that night, anyway. I was on a mission to get my picture made with a real Ramone.
At the time, I had developed a modicum of notoriety from a YouTube show called Randomland that I was making with Justin “Scarred” Willits. It had gotten successful enough that people in certain pockets of the area would recognize us and sometimes ask for photos. Justin was the true face of the operation; I was more the Andy Richter to his Conan O’Brien. As much of our content at that time prominently featured the Disney parks, it naturally became the spot where we would be most frequently recognized. Waiting to get into the venue, though, I was just another face in the crowd. This time it was me hoping for a photo. I think it was at that exact moment that I realized how much I had missed my total anonymity, even though I had only barely started losing it.
Since CJ Ramone opening the show, my mission was made easier. I needed to find a spot near the front of the stage so I could have the full experience of that performance, then ease on back to the merch booth for a handshake and a picture afterwards. I’ve been to a million shows in my time, and that was always the sequence of events. The opener plays, slings their wares between sets, then disappears backstage for the rest of the night.
Step one of the plan went gangbusters.
I found a spot, dug in, and had an amazing time. CJ took the stage to a packed audience and had an immaculately tight set. He threw in just enough Ramones classics to satisfy to hunger without venturing into cover band territory, had his fun, thanked everyone for coming out, and dipped offstage. I remember thinking it was so professionally executed that, if nothing else, he could carve out a solid career as a professional opening act.
Step two is where things went wonky.
Unlike most of the others, who had fought tooth and nail to secure their tiny piece property in front of the stage for the Damned, I gave mine up and left a trail of dust behind me as I made haste for the merch booth. No one else had arrived yet, so I went to the bar and got a drink to steady my nerves. As the crowd filed into the bathrooms and eyed the t-shirts, I kept my distance. I knew better than to be the guy lurking at the front of the line not buying anything, so I ordered another drink and kept a watchful eye.
After about an hour, there was still no CJ Ramone.
There were monitors in the bar, not to mention the literal roar just behind closed doors, so I knew the Damned had taken the stage. I love the Damned, but I couldn’t risk losing my shot at finally meeting a Ramone. I stood, steadfast and true, at my post. Every 20 minutes or so, I would ask someone at the merch booth when CJ was coming, but they always politely told me they weren’t sure. It would have been adorable if I had been a 12-year-old waiting around to meet the Harlem Globetrotters, and not a fully grown 25-year-old man nervously asking after the second bass player for a band that had broken up in 1996.
Honestly, I didn’t care how pathetic it looked to everyone else. Life is too short to bend to the whims of an imaginary judgmental audience. If the admission prices for achieving a childhood dream is awkwardly standing around while people whisper and giggle, well, that’s entirely worth it.
Trouble is, the Damned were already ringing out the final notes of their encore, and there was still no CJ. The whispers and giggles had slowly turned to sincere looks of sympathy. Then, the doors opened, and the crowd dispersed. Finally, it was just me, the bartenders, and the crew loading up merch.
Suddenly, like a miracle from the rock heavens on high, a man came out and addressed me directly.
“Have you been waiting this whole time to meet CJ?” he asked me.
“Y-yeah,” I stammered, staring at the floor.
“Come with me,” he said.
With that, he slapped a sticker on my chest and brought me backstage. Before I had time to get my bearings, I was making eye contact with CJ Ramone.
“Hey man,” he said, extending a hand for shaking purposes “I was going to come out earlier, but I never quite made it. Thanks for waiting, you want a picture?”
I nodded.
He threw his arm around me, and we took a picture. I didn’t even have time to process it or say another word before the sticker was off my chest and I was back in the lobby. The whole thing happened in a couple minutes, like a dream. I laughed, pulled myself together, and wandered back out into the summer night.
…
The Aftermath
CJ, if you’re reading this, I want one of those “1-2-3-4!” tattoos you’re known to give.
I also want you to know what a hero you are to me, to all of us. You did it; you changed your stars and walked with giants. You met our favorite band; they threw you a leather jacket, and you landed in the presidential seal. That’s our number-one space camp fantasy, and you lived it.
Please consider making more records. I know you must have more songs left in the tank. Keep showing us what’s in your heart. Hit the road again; burn down the t-shirt stand; piss on the ashes.
Life is so wonderfully weird, isn’t it?
I made my mind up to meet a Ramone when I was 13 or 14. I wore my Ramones t-shirt under my cap and gown at my high school graduation. I pulled that same gray, battered, ratty t-shirt out of storage to wear under my cap and gown at my college graduation. All that time, I never thought I would meet any of them. Then, just because I happened to be at the right part of the world at the right time, I made that dream come true in my mid-20s.
It would be irresponsible for me to say that all dreams come true if you stick with them long enough. For most of us, they don’t. I have never published in the pages of Rolling Stone, never auditioned for Saturday Night Live, never headlined a world tour.
But I did meet a Ramone.
Obviously, it’s important to have goals and to work for them. Maybe it’s equally important to keep some perspective, to look around for all the other amazing adventures you might otherwise miss. Keep it realistic when you can, but never stop shooting for the moon. Even if you fail spectacularly, it will be worth it for the story.
