(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Mon 24 November 2025 19:18, UK
The impact that The Beatles made in such a short timeframe was never lost on any rock and roll fan.
These were four kids that proved that rock and roll could be more than simple party music, and whether they were listening to them during their Ed Sullivan performance or when they were making experimental acid trips, it was always easy to see the fun that they had while making their classics. But the kind of impact that they had on the hippie generation wasn’t only the first major cultural shift for rock and roll. It was a sign that other people could do the same thing if they had the right idea.
Because, really, rock and roll was never meant to sound stagnant for the rest of its days. The giants of the genre didn’t get there by simply going with the flow when they first started out. The message was always about disrupting the system that was in place already, which is normally why people like back more fondly on those that deliberately tear things down, like when Nirvana put a stake through the heart of the hair metal genre.
Everyone wearing spandex had really overstayed their welcome by the time that the 1990s rolled around, and while Kurt Cobain helped put an end to their careers all at once, he wasn’t alone. Eddie Vedder was more than happy to fly the flag for grunge, and even if he caught a bunch of clapback from Cobain for playing up the rockstar angle a little too much, he was as immersed in underground music as anyone.
Half of Pearl Jam’s later years were about them scaling things back, and when talking about their heroes, they wouldn’t always be the typical rock and roll gods. They had their love of everyone from Zeppelin to Floyd to the Fab Four, but there was also a healthy dose of everything from Fugazi to REM to Roxy Music in there as well. But if there was one band that opened everyone’s minds to what grunge could be, it was listening to the Ramones play for the first time.
While some seasoned veterans of rock have branded grunge as the first real American punk rock, the Ramones had Sex Pistols beat by a few years. There were many people in England who helped blow everything up to mammoth proportions, but if John Lydon helped usher in what the rebellious figure was supposed to look like, Joey Ramone was the more accurate depiction of what that looked like. Nothing but mild-mannered off the stage, but someone who became an absolute animal once the music started.
And while Vedder was much more in tune with everyone from Jim Morrison to Paul Rodgers in his vocal delivery, he knew Seattle hadn’t seen anything like that since the 1960s, saying, “The Ramones were a blueprint so necessary at the time and was so important for what would come after. John McBain, a great musician from Seattle said something that I think spoke for the entire Seattle community when he said ‘The Ramones were our Beatles.’”
Not every grunge song was necessarily meant to have the same cutthroat energy as Ramones’ greatest hits, but there’s something about their rawness that kept everything pure about grunge in a strange way. While there was no shortage of wannabe grunge acts coming out at the time, what separated the posers from the true believers half the time came from their respect for what the Ramones did and would continue to do for millions of kids who wanted to form a band after hearing ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ for the first time.
So while there’s a lot more versatility in many of the greatest grunge bands than you would think, the common thread came less from what Ramones played and more from what they stood for. Any band can try to play the best music that they can, but there has to be a moment when everyone remembers that same adrenaline rush that they had looking at Ramones for the first time.
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