Filmmaking the Band
The rockband is a particularly strange institution, a forged family-unit in which unlikely allies come together to achieve what're often individual goals. For some, it’s pure art, for others, it’s pure commerce. Then there are those looking to get laid. “Rockin’ out,” as raison d'être, can many any of these things; can sound like a mission statement when there’s actually no mission at all.
On these missions-to-rock, there are the obligatory dramas with drugs, creative tensions, and times when one member sleeps with another's girlfriend. There are clashes of the business-minded and the absent-minded. And, as a constant source of tension, there's the unending grind of life-on-the-road. Yet, in spite of it all, this pseudo-family forges on, no matter what the psychological cost, knowing nothing else but this.
Michael Gramaglia and Jim Fields’ documentary End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones gives us all of this: every rock cliché, every nostalgic flashback, every bit of drugged-out delusion, every talking-head waxing meaningful about meaningless music. And, most of all, every element of tension, drama, and awkward emotion that comes from being in the rockband.
Second Verse, Same As the First
Though it's about the greatest institution in punk history, End of the Century presents a picture of the eternal underdog; a chronicle of family struggles in the face of failure to achieve large-scale commercial success.
The film begins with the obligatory tales of childhood; the original Ramones foursome all growing up in Queens, a bunch of Bowery toughs looking for ways to fill their idle teenaged days. Actually, no, wait, the film begins with their inception into something called The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (located, for some reason that's probably not respect for Pere Ubu, in Cleveland). There four remaining Ramones, sans Joey, accept some kind of empty corporate validation for their 24 years of rock'n'roll struggle
The Struggle is, indeed, filled with struggles. There's the personal (the ongoing bickering between band leader Johnny Ramone and band frontman Joey Ramone that spanned 15 years of ostensible silent-treatment). The commercial (the band failing to have a mega-selling breakthrough no matter how hard they tried). And the artistic (like the album End of the Century itself, where the band holed up with musical mad-genius Phil Spector; the loony producer whose magic with The Ronettes and George Harrison didn’t exactly extend to the Ramones; especially Johnny, who dismissed him as “a little Jewish man with lifts in his shoes and a wig on his head.”)
The Tears of a Clown
In and amongst this, there’s the development of the Ramones’ three-chord blitzkrieg-bop, essentially the dawning of punk-rock. There's choice footage from early shows, salvaged and dressed-up with dropped-in sound. Fondly recalled tales of how they quickly became NYC’s most happening act. And much discussion of a tour to London in 1976 that inspired Joe Strummer and John Lydon to kickstart The Clash and The Sex Pistols, respectively.
The spirit of Lydon also lingers in what could be End Of The Century’s signature moment. In Julien Temple’s Sex Pistols documentary, The Filth and the Fury, viewers saw a most unlikely sight: Lydon breaking down and crying, finally letting it out 20 years after the death of bassist Sid Vicious.
Here, hard-man Johnny Ramone —captured only years before his own death— talks about the death of Joey, and ends up fumbling through a weird half-teary moment of self-realization. Yes, he decides, the death of his childhood friend, artistic collaborateur, and quarter-of-a-century-long band/life partner actually, for some crazy reason, affected him, though he’s not sure why.
Johnny Ramone may not turn on the waterworks like Johnny Rotten, but the effect is still the same. The hard men of punk, who for so long posed like nothing broke through their masculine façade, were always just fronting. Being in a band may be like family, may bring fortune and/or failure, but it still doesn't make you tough.
