The only beachgoer in the band wrote the surf song
Dee Dee Ramone liked the Beach Boys, and he liked Rockaway Beach in Queens. On the Ramones’ December 1977 British tour, sitting in a dressing room, Johnny Ramone called him the only real beachgoer in the group. Asked if the band hung ten, Dee Dee laughed the idea off. The song is still a surf song. Johnny said so in the same conversation. It was a surfing-type song, so they wanted a surfing sound on it.
They cut it at Mediasound in New York. Engineer Ed Stasium remembers Rockaway Beach as the second song they recorded after walking in on 21 August 1977, during the sessions for Rocket to Russia. Tony Bongiovi and Tommy Ramone, credited as T. Erdelyi, produced. Stasium engineered. The backing vocals were done later in the isolation room at Power Station Studio A, where the album was mixed. Joey sang. Johnny played the downstroke guitar. Dee Dee played bass and wrote the song. Tommy played drums. It runs 2:06.
Sire released Rocket to Russia on 4 November 1977. Rockaway Beach came out as a single the same month, with Locket Love on the B-side. It reached number 66 on the Billboard Hot 100. That is as high as a Ramones single ever got. The album’s other beach songs sit beside it: a take on the Trashmen’s Surfin’ Bird, and Bobby Freeman’s Do You Wanna Dance, which the Beach Boys had covered in 1965. Sheena Is a Punk Rocker, the single before this one, was Joey’s surf song. This one is Dee Dee’s. The album itself had been recorded at Mediasound and, for a few earlier tracks, at Sundragon, and it runs just over half an hour. The lyric stays small on purpose: hitch a ride to the beach, chew out a rhythm on bubble gum. Dee Dee was not writing a scene the downtown papers would recognise. He was writing the records he liked, at the length the band would actually play.Tommy left the drum stool after Rocket to Russia and moved into the studio. Marky Ramone took the live dates. Rockaway Beach stayed in the set. It is not a song about a scene the band invented. It is a Queens beach Dee Dee actually used, written like the records he played at home, then played at Ramones speed. Two minutes, no solo, Joey out front, Johnny not letting the chord ring.
It’s a surfing-type song, so we wanted to get a surfing sound on it.
(Johnny Ramone, on the December 1977 UK tour)
The Ramones were not a surf band. The chart says what the experiment was worth in 1977: number 66, their best single, and then back to the clubs. The record is the Mediasound take from August, mixed at Power Station, out on Sire in November. Later remasters did not move the beach.
