Now it's 2026, and True's book is back in print, but it's still as it was in 2005. That means the 2014 death of Tommy Ramone still isn't part of the story. But by that point, The Ramones were all over but the influence, the continued acknowledgement of their crucial importance to rock and roll despite the tragi-comic disparity between their historical success and their chart success, or lack thereof. So Hey! Ho! Let's Go! continues to work as a pretty definitive biography of the most important American punk group, right down to the way True wrote it. There's a ramshackle quality to this book. Now, The Ramones' music was almost never ramshackle. Their songs were tightly constructed, emphatically melodic, Stanley-knife sharp. But that career. Dee Dee, himself, was a one-man chaos squall. Joey's innate charm and lovableness was knotted up in a gnarl of neuroses. Johnny was a merciless taskmaster and a right-wing creep. The latter two guys couldn't stomach each other, especially after Johnny lured Joey's girlfriend away from him. Their concerts might be piledrivers of awe or they might immediately fall apart because the guys couldn't figure out how to start a song together. Their best albums all kind of sounded the same. Despite/because of this mess, The Ramones' music is great and they are loved by anyone who gives a sliver of a shit about rock and roll, no matter who that person is or where they stand.
Hey! Ho! Let's Go! shambles on similarly. True tells the story chronologically, but there's a sense that chunks have been left out here or there. He doesn't pay that much mind to the guys' early lives. He jumps ahead while discussing their classic late-seventies period to warn us the magic would dead-end by 1984's Too Tough to Die. He interrupts the narrative so that some people you've heard of (The Ramones, themselves; Captain Sensible of The Damned; Gary Valentine of Blondie; Kim Thayil of Soundagrden) and bunch you haven't can spout off about their favorite Ramones songs.He drops big italicized blocks of quotations, article excerpts, and interviews he personally conducted throughout the book, but the reader has to leap forward to the end of each one to find out who the hell is talking. He insults a bunch of people. He doesn't understand that Rock n'Roll High School is great. He has an annoying habit of referring to the band as "da bruddas."
This is not entirely a criticism, because I don't really want to read a super-straight biography of The Ramones, no one's definition of a super-straight band. I want a little anarchy, and True's narrative is just anarchic enough to satisfy that need without becoming a mess. This is the way the story of a definitive punk band should be told.
