Ramones, The – the End of the Century

Mon 2 July 10.30pm
Warts 'n' all rockumentary about the seminal but tragic New York punk band who never hit the big time despite 20 years of trying.

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In 1974, the New York City music scene was shocked into consciousness by the violently new and raw sound of a band of misfits from Queens, called The Ramones.

The Ramones were the band that inspired the Sex Pistols, the Clash and the Damned, and were idolised by the grunge movement, yet even with the help of legendary record producer Phil Spector, they never achieved success for themselves. Why?

First-time film-makers Michael Gramaglia and Jim Fields start by going back to the Ramones' roots in Forest Hills, NY, where they would "hang out, sniff glue or smoke pot and listen to the Stooges," according to bass player Dee Dee, who died of a heroin overdose the year after this documentary was made.

The story, told via interviews with the band (three of whom are now dead), their contemporaries, childhood friends and families, goes right up to 1996 when the Ramones finally split, exhausted after 21 years of touring, feuding, drug abuse, mental instability and commercial failure.