Birthday bop

Joey Ramone's 50th

by Michael Azerrad

It's funny how memorials often take on the character of the person they honor. The sold-out "Life's a Gas -- Joey Ramone's 50th Birthday Bash" May 19 at Manhattan's 3500-capacity Hammerstein Ballroom rocked hard, but it was also poignant, funny, generous, and unpretentious. Just like Joey, who died last month of lymphoma. Tickets for the four-hour event were a very populist 15 bucks, just enough to cover expenses. Very few of the crowd, which was about half youngsters and half oldsters, looked like punks (whatever that means). These were regular folks.

Joey Ramone was regular folks too. New Yorkers saw him on the street all the time happily chatting with fans. And the former Jeffrey Hyman was no fashion plate: gawky and stoop-shouldered, with an overgrown pageboy that spilled down over his rose-colored granny glasses, Joey Ramone looked how we felt.

He also supported local bands, which is why one of Joey's favorite new groups, the Independents, opened. They were unremarkable; so were East Village scuzz-rockers Bellvue, and even Joey's brother Mickey Leigh's band Stop, but the gesture was fitting. Blondie's mini-set vastly upped the ante, concentrating on early hits and a superb cover of the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend." Cheap Trick played a handful of Joey's favorites from their catalogue, with "Surrender" providing one of the evening's few spiritual moments: when Robin Zander roared, "We're all all right! We're all all right!", it seemed an apt time to count one's blessings.

Although the Damned were one of the first and greatest English punk bands, they met with a tepid reception. But that all changed when they kicked into the classic "Neat, Neat, Neat" and the tuxedo'd keyboardist, a chubby, graying fellow known as Monty the Moron, began pogoing. It was glorious.

The between-act video montages generated big cheers and even some slamdancing. There were taped testimonials from Joan Jett, Paul Westerberg, and various Talking Heads plus a punked-up "Happy Birthday" from Green Day. When Napster-bashing Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich came on screen, the crowd booed lustily amid cries of "Asshole!" That was glorious too.

Interspersed among the bands and the videos, some of Joey's peers spoke. Punk renaissance man Lenny Kaye sang the doo-wop classic "Happy, Happy Birthday, Baby" before reading a heartfelt letter from Phil Spector; legendary A&R man Danny Fields scolded the audience for talking while he read e-mail postings from grieving fans. Punk progenitor Richard Hell appeared; so did CBGB owner Hilly Krystal, Punk magazine's John Holmstrom and Legs McNeil, and beloved UHF cable-show host Uncle Floyd Vivino. They all had dignity and cool, and it was inspiring to see them age so well, something we'll sadly never get to enjoy with Joey.

The only ex-Ramone to show up, original drummer Tommy Erdelyi, recalled that Joey's zest for minimalism ran deep -- at their first meeting, a jam in Joey's bedroom with Erdelyi on guitar, he walked into the room "to find a 14-year-old boy with porcelain-white skin, skin-tight sharkskin pants, and a snare drum between his knees. That was his entire drum set."

Life-affirming music aside, the Ramones embodied punk's inclusiveness, one of its most attractive -- and radical -- aspects. Anybody could play great rock music, even a bunch of bored glue sniffers from Queens. So it was perfect when a huge Ramones banner was unfurled, an instrumental version of "I Wanna Be Sedated" came booming over the sound system, and just about everybody sang along. Yes, anybody could do it.

MC Little Steven van Zandt read a proclamation sponsored by Representative Gary Ackerman of Queens declaring "Joey Ramone Day." When I heard, "Whereas Joey Ramone created such punk anthems as `I Wanna Be Sedated,' `Rockaway Beach,' and `Blitzkrieg Bop' . . . ," I found it hard not to chuckle, knowing this is now part of the permanent record of the United States Congress. Hard to ignore an emerging lump in the throat, too.

Joey's mom, Charlotte Lesher, brightly promised "cake for everybody!" -- which turned out to be thousands of packages of Yankee Doodles and Ring-Dings. A bunch of ne'er-do-wells began flinging them around the room and a food fight erupted as "Blitzkrieg Bop" played through the PA. No, this night was not by, for, or about the beautiful people. Neither was the Ramones' music. "We accept you/One of us," sang Joey on "Pinhead." And it was mutual. We accepted Joey, too. He was one of us.