“The Ramones have absolutely nothing to add that is of relevance or importance and should be rightly filed and forgotten”
– Morrissey, letter to Melody Maker, 1976
Steve Morrissey (born 22 May 1959) was age 17 when he wrote a letter to Melody Maker magazine damning The Ramones as “degenerate no-talents”.
Music mattered deeply to the boy who would go on to have a successful career as a solo artist and with his band, The Smiths. As he later wrote: “Pop music was all I ever had, and it was completely entwined with the image of the pop star. I remember feeling the person singing was actually with me and understood me and my predicament.”
So he was unhappy at that time? “Well, I had the most depressing teenage existence in the history of the entire human race and that, I think, is tragic enough,” the singer said in an interview with Red Door Records in 1983. “I seemed to be locked indoors for years and years and years and I don’t really feel that I had a youth of any description.”
Morrissey’s letter appeared in the July 24, 1976 issue of Melody Maker:
The Ramones are the latest bumptious band of degenerate no-talents whose most notable achievement to date is their ability to advance beyond the boundaries of New York City, and purely on the strength of a spate of convincing literature projecting the Ramones as God’s gift to rock music.
They have been greeted with instant adulation by an army of duped fans. Musically, they do not deal in subtlety or variation of any kind, their rule is to be as incompetent as possible.
For a band believed to project the youth of America, New York – suburban life, anti-conformism, sex and struggle, or whatever, they fail miserably. And in the sober light of day their imperfections have a field day.
The Ramones make the Stooges sound like concertmasters, and I feel that the only place for their discordant music is the sweaty downtown Manhattan dives to which they are no doubt accustomed.
The New York Dolls and Patti Smith have proved that there is some life pumping away in the swamps and gutters of New York and they are the only acts which originated from the N.Y. club scene worthy of any praise. The Ramones have absolutely nothing to add that is of relevance or importance and should be rightly filed and forgotten
— Steve Morrissey, Kings Road, Stretford, Manchester.
Morrissey The Ramones Fan
In 2014, Morrissey compiled the limited edition album Morrissey Curates The Ramones. Tastes change. He’d later add:
“When I bought the Ramones first album on import, I was enraged with jealousy because I felt they had booted the New York Dolls off the map. I was 100% wrong. Three days after writing that Ramones piece, I realised that my love for the Ramones would out-live time itself. And it shall. Well, it virtually has already. If the Ramones were alive today, they’d be the biggest band in the world.”
And here he is in 2016 giving full throat to The Ramones Judy Is A Punk:
More in this vein:
Morrissey’s Snippy, Snide And Spot-On Record Reviews For Smash Hits 1984
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