Some of the biggest names in rock turned out over the weekend to remember late Ramones guitarist Johnny Ramone with an annual tribute gig.
On Sunday, August 26th (just over 20 years since the Ramones’ last show), a number of high-profile guests turned out to honour the life of the Ramones’ guitarist Johnny Ramone, as part of an annual tribute organised by his widow Linda.
While icons such as Morrissey and visual artist Shepard Fairey were in attendance, their presence was almost completely overshadowed by the short acoustic performance of Ramones classics delivered by a supergroup full of punk and rock legends.
Featuring Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, the Sex Pistols’ Steve Jones, Guns N’ Roses’ Duff McKagan, and Portlandia star (and occasional Devo member) Fred Armisen, the group all took to the stage at California’s Hollywood Forever Cemetery to deliver a set full of punk classics.
After performing tracks such as ‘Rockaway Beach’, ‘Judy Is A Punk’, ‘I Can’t Make It On Time’, and ‘Danny Says’, the supergroup also took on the Sex Pistols’ ‘Pretty Vacant’.
Speaking to Forbes after the gig, Billie Joe Armstrong shared his thoughts on the band, and what made them stand out amongst the other bands of the times.
“They seemed like a family, with the name and a gang or something like the Del-Lords or some kind of New York bunch of barbarians that could wield around a baseball bat,” he explained.
“They’re known, just the leather jackets, the jeans and the thing I liked about them is they didn’t really play up the fashionable English mohawk punk. They were very American and very Americana. They got what the aesthetic was, especially for Johnny, who was a very proud American. So that sort of symbolized the Ramones.”
“When I was a kid I watched on late night TV was a show they were playing in Ann Arbor and if you look it up it’s on YouTube,” Armstrong continued. “They sounded so fucking good and the energy in the crowd was so completely into it and they had the big banner behind them with the big symbol and I always remember that. The imprint is permanently imprinted into my brain.”
Check out footage of the Johnny Ramone’s tribute gig:
