In the spring of 1976, American radio was dominated by disco, by elaborate orchestral pop, and by rock bands that thought nothing of spending two years and a small fortune making a single album. Songs routinely stretched past eight minutes. Concert productions involved laser shows and hydraulic stages. Rock and roll, the music that had once felt like a fist through a window, had become something you needed a program to follow. It was into this world that four young men from Forest Hills, Queens, walked into a New York recording studio in February of 1976 with a week to spare and $6,400 to spend. What they recorded in those few days would eventually be recognized as one of the most influential albums in the history of popular music. At the time, almost nobody bought it.
The Ramones were not polished musicians, and they were not trying to be. Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee, and Tommy had all taken the same last name as a kind of band identity, a gang mentality made literal. They had grown up on early rock and roll and British Invasion pop, and they were frustrated by what music had become.
