The Ramones

22nd February, 1980. Electric Ballroom, London. The night my jacket shared the stage with Joey Ramone. There were 2 support bands for this concert, one of them - The Boys were good, but the other sent us looking for the bar. The Electric Ballroom in Camden was packed solid and sold out for the Ramones. There was a continual stream of people pushing past trying to get to the front. I had put my jacket on the floor, safe as I thought between my feet, but I soon realised that in the crush it had disappeared. We crawled around with matches trying to find it in the darkness amongst the mass of feet, but all we found was a lighter! The big build up for the Ramones started, so we abandoned the search and tried to find a good place to see the band. That wasn't very easy. We were crammed together like sardines - wall to wall and from the front to the back- and the build up went on for a ridiculous 15 minutes. The huge crowd got more and more restless. When they eventually appeared, launching into the wonderful Hey ho, let's go, the place erupted! Everyone was jumping, it was impossible not to jump with everyone around you going crazy. Before the first song had finished - and that's not long with a Ramones song - we were liquid with sweat. The heat generated by the number of fans in there was incredible. Half an hour into the gig, the bass player Johnny, threw his guitar away and they all trooped off for 10 minutes. The band weren't happy about something. They didn't like the amount of beer that was being thrown at them and because it was so hot in there, they couldn't play properly. (Duh, they kept their leather jackets on!). Apparently, the heat had put their guitars out of tune. Anway, after cooling off they came back on and the crowd went gaga again. If they weren't playing well, we didn't notice. We were too busy leaping around. They played until midnight and as the crowd dispersed, we continued the search for my jacket. We found it eventually, covered in footprints but neatly folded up, on the stage next to Joey's mike stand. Maybe Joey had done that himself. It was a nice thought.
The Ramones