“We just started recording, and those are the songs that we picked. It’s very powerful minimalism at its best. It’s pure driving Ramones the way it starts off the record with that E-to-A chord progression and they slam into it. “It’s a funny song, so typical of the Ramones with the lyrical content and hilarity of it. Stasium remembers Rockaway Beach as first song recorded at the sessions, but cites opening track Cretin Hop as his perfect encapsulation of the album regarded by most as the Ramones’ best. No double-track vocals, guitar overdubs or background vocals all Ramones all the time, balls-to-the-wall.” But what a revelation hearing those tracks now! Those mixes are the band in the studio, live an in-your-face, bare-boned tracking mix, just the band going at it in the studio, captured by those room microphones. When we originally mixed the album we didn’t incorporate that room sound too much, it was just lying beneath. Holy mother of pearl, it sounded amazing. “When Bill Inglott, my co-producer on these box sets who finds the multi-tracks in the Warner Brothers vaults, transferred the tapes to digital, the first thing I did was listen to the room sound. The room sound picked up everything, and doing the tracking probably took two days. “When I went in there I thought: ‘I’m going to use this room sound and ambience that Roy inspired me to do.’ As well as close-mic’ing the band out in the studio, I put up room mics to capture them live. “It was a huge room, almost cathedral-like,” remembers Stasium, who has masterminded Rocket To Russia’s spectacular reissue, complete with outtakes, live recordings and 40th Anniversary Tracking Mix that captures the Ramones as they sounded in the room.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |