The lead single "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker" actually entered the Hot 100, peaking at Number 81. The wild antics of the Sex Pistols had forced the American media to pick up on the punk movement, and there were hopes that this would finally be the album that would break the Ramones big. In the end, that's all that really mattered.īy the time the Ramones began work on Rocket to Russia in the summer of 1977, the band had become a well-oiled machine: They'd been touring non-stop for three years, and they were churning out amazing new songs at a furious pace.
The label believed in the band, however, and they let them continue to make records. The disc generated amazing buzz and great reviews, but it had little commercial success. "I'm sure he thought he was just recording one song, over and over." "The engineers couldn't understand what we were doing," Tommy Ramone told Rolling Stone's David Browne shortly before the drummer died. The album was recorded in a matter of days at a studio at Radio City Music Hall for a mere $7,000. Into this pop music void entered four guys from Queens with leather jackets, bad attitudes and two minute songs about sniffing glue, male prostitution and random acts of violence. For a sense of just how revolutionary the first Ramones album was, let's take a look at the top songs in the country the month of its release: "Disco Lady" by Johnnie Taylor was Number One, and it was followed by "Let Your Love Flow" by the Bellamy Brothers, "Right Back Where We Started From" by Maxine Nightingale and "Boogie Fever" by the Sylvers.
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