Book Review: The Ramones- “An American Band”

Gino who is the Dee Dee in Sedated- The World’s Greatest Ramones Tribute has a bunch of Ramones books and is letting me borrow them
I thought I’d tell you about the books I have read so far but I want to start with  the first Ramones Book I owned which is
“AN AMERICAN BAND”

This book was published May 15th 1993 by St. Martin’s Griffin and was written by Jim Bessman “in association with The Ramones”
That last part is very important because that means there is no real dirt in this book
People nowadays are spoiled by all of the in-depth stories they get from old rock stars who don’t have anything to lose anymore and don’t give a shit
This book was released 3 years before the Ramones would break up

Looking back on reading this book in 93 and knowing what I know now, I would say this book reads like a 200 page music magazine article
In a literal sense because the verbiage sounds like they’re trying to win you over
It covers all of the important landmarks of their career and provides all the important Moment/Facts & Figures/Concert Dates etc…
But it is no in depth expose like the books we would get much later on

We take it for granted now that books are pretty much oral histories but the writing of this book is very obvious in its’ intention
Not to say that they don’t address the flaws of the band, like Dee Dee’s drug issues and Marky’s alcohol issues and they talk a lot about how hard it was to keep going after  countless disappointments etc…
But they don’t even come close to hinting about the Joey/Linda/Johnny situation, nor do they talk about Joey’s maddening OCD or hygiene issues
They do hint at Johnny being a hardass and his distaste for anything non-American but they barely scratch the surface of what we now know was his history of bullying and physical abuse
Richie is not trashed but he wasn’t exactly painted as their friend

This book basically sets all of the parameters for the standard folklore of the band
So don’t go looking for anything juicy here

If there is any dirt it is mostly on Dee Dee
There’s the story of 53rd and 3rd, of him accidentally breaking into a laundromat instead of a grocery store, the rocky relationship with Connie, the Dee Dee King phase etc…
But other than that, it is pretty sanitized

I have to go back again to the time period of 1993 and address the fact that an average Ramones fan wouldn’t have had access to much information outside of this book
I have tried to see if there were any other books about The Ramones that dated before “An American Band” but I did not find any (so if you know of any, please tell me)
It sounds like such an old man thing to say “back before the internet” but you only got decent information on bands in 1993 in magazines like SPIN and the underground stuff
Grunge had just caught on and we had not gotten to the “Every Grunge Band agrees that The Ramones Are Important” phase, which means that MTV wasn’t real enthused about The Ramones either
By this time, they had put out “Mondo Bizarro” they may as well have called this one “Adios Amigos” because I pretty much quit buying their albums after that
My last live Ramones show was the Bomb Factory on Sunday March 20th 1994
I still listened to The Ramones on a regular basis but I was on to other things by then

This book is not going to tell you anything that you don’t already know but it is an interesting read nonetheless
I would say it is a novelty read at best