RIP Tommy Ramone

Was announced last Night the last surviving member of the Ramones Drummer Tommy ramone has died at the age of 65

So very sad. Back in 1974 The Ramones were THE original punk rock band, the others all followed.

Punk rock with fabulous clever humour!

Have their first UK LP on Phillips Records!

Tommy and the Ramones are very much missed.

very sad day for rock music The Ramones re-wrote the standard for rock music and that bands that followed.

Sad news about Tommy Ramone. It's the end of an era. RIP

And to think that at first he was only going to be their manager/producer, but when lead singer Joey (who was the original drummer) found that he couldn't drum and sing at their frenetic pace Tommy went behind the drum kit despite never having played drums in his life.

He wrote their first single "Blitzkreig Bop" - which most of you will recognise as it's the "Hey-ho! Let's go!" on the AO advert.

Life with the dysfunctional Ramones in those days must have been "interesting" to put it mildly. Dee Dee was a drug addict, Johnny an alcoholic and Joey had OCD so compared to them Tommy was more or less "normal" - Dee Dee famously once said in awe in an interview that "he can cook a meal for himself!".

By 1978 Tommy had had enough and went back to producing with Marky taking over drumming duties but those early years had seen the seminal albums "Ramones", "Ramones Leave Home", "Rocket to Russia" and "Road to Ruin" and singles like "Blitzkreig Bop", "Rockaway Beach" and "Sheena is a Punk Rocker" ("Pinhead" - with the famous "Gabba-gabba-hey!" chant, was only ever a B-side to "Swallow my Pride").

Allmusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote that "The band's first four albums set the blueprint for punk, especially American punk and hardcore, for the next two decades".

There was a serious falling out amongst the band in the 1980s, and for many years they did not speak to each other. The rift hadn't been fully healed when Joey died of cancer in 2001. In 2002 the surviving members sat at separate tables at a ceremony to induct them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Two months later Dee Dee was dead from a heroin overdose and in 2004 Johnny lost his battle with prostate cancer.

Like Lou Reed, their influence far outweighed their commercial success. In their home country the United States they never got beyond number 44 in the album chart and number 66 in the singles but last year their debut album, which had never been deleted and had still been selling over the years, was certified Gold in the US for passing the 500,000 copies mark.

For some reason they were most popular in Sweden, where no fewer than 14 of their albums made the Top 50. In the UK they had four Top 40 singles and four Top 40 albums, the highest of which reached number 8 and number 14 respectively.

Here are The Ramones from 1977, with one of the first punk singles to make the UK Top 30 and one of my all time favourites, "Sheena is a Punk Rocker":