Everything about Tommy Ramone totally explained
Tommy Ramone (born
Tamás Erdélyi,
January 29,
1952 in
Budapest,
Hungary) is an
American record producer and
drummer. He is the last surviving original member of the pioneering
punk rock band The
Ramones.
Erdélyi grew up in
Queens, one of the boroughs of
New York City. Tommy and guitarist
Johnny Cummings (later to be dubbed "Johnny Ramone") performed together in a mid-60's four-piece
garage band called the Tangerine Puppets while in high school. In 1970, the then 18-year-old Erdelyi was a studio intern for the production of the
Jimi Hendrix album
Band of Gypsys.
When the Ramones first came together, with
Johnny Ramone on guitar,
Dee Dee Ramone on bass and
Joey Ramone on drums, Erdelyi was supposed to be the manager, but was drafted as the band's drummer when Joey became the lead singer and found that he couldn't keep up with the Ramones' increasingly fast tempos. "Tommy Ramone, who was managing us, finally had to sit down behind the drums, because nobody else wanted to," Dee Dee later recalled.
He remained as drummer, from
1974 to
1978, playing on and co-producing their first three albums:
Ramones,
Leave Home, and
Rocket to Russia. He was replaced in 1978, but handled band management and co-production for their fourth album,
Road to Ruin; and returned for the eighth album, 1984's
Too Tough to Die. His drumming replacement was
Marky Ramone.
Even though Tommy was an original member and co-producer for the Ramones, both
Dee Dee and
Johnny denied that he influenced the Ramone's sound. During interviews for the, Dee Dee stated that Tommy was simply "at the right place at the right time".
Tommy avoided arguing with the rest of the band in the later controversy surrounding song writing credits. Dee Dee, in his books, expressed resentment towards Tommy for having it "together" more than anyone else in the band, being able to cook himself dinner and organize his life in a much more functional manner, without the psychosis or addiction problems that the rest of them suffered from. This is also a large part of the schism that pushed him out in '78. In comparison to everyone else in the band, Tommy was quite "normal", though there are accounts of him partying with the band and driving them around in his car in the early days.
Tommy Ramone wrote "
I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" and the majority of "
Blitzkrieg Bop" after bassist Dee Dee suggested the title. He and
Ed Stasium played all the guitar solos on the albums he produced, as Johnny Ramone largely preferred playing rhythm guitar.
In the 1980s he produced
The Replacements' classic album
Tim. Tommy is known as a fan of
bluegrass music. He is currently touring
New York and
New Haven, Connecticut with
Claudia Tienan, formerly of local underground band
The Simplistics, in a new alterna-bluegrass duo the two have dubbed
Uncle Monk. They have also recently released their first album.
In October 2007 in an interview to promote
It's Alive 1974-1996 a double DVD of the band's greatest televised live performances he paid tribute to his deceased bandmates:
They gave everything they could in every show. They weren't the type to phone it in, if you see what I mean.
Discography with Ramones
Further Information
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