Q&A; with JOEY RAMONE : ‘There’s Nobody as Good as the Ramones’

When the Ramones began playing radically minimalist rock ‘n’ roll at supersonic speed in New York clubs and studios, they attracted just a few onlookers. More than 20 years later, the foursome from Forest Hills is acknowledged as the inventor of punk rock, a movement that shook the music industry to its foundations, determined the nature of today’s alternative rock and defined much of youth culture’s fashion and attitude.

With their mission accomplished, founding members Joey and Johnny Ramone and bandmates Marky and C.J. Ramone have announced the band’s retirement. The current album, “Adios Amigos,” will be their last studio work and the current tour, which includes a stop at the Hollywood Palladium tonight, will be followed by a brief farewell swing early next year.

In a recent interview, singer Joey, 43, explained the decision and reflected on the Ramones’ place in the rock universe.

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Question: Why is the band calling it quits?

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A nswer: I think we’ve done everything we set out to do, and it’s goin’ on 22 years, and, you know, it’s still exciting and all, but as a band we’re not the best of friends, at least not me and John. And so that gets a little wearisome. And I think at this point everybody just wants to kind of move forward with their lives.

Q: What are your emotions about the decision?

A: I got mixed emotions. I don’t know if I’ll ever fully come to terms with it, but on one hand I’m real excited about the transition, I’m excited about what’s next, the next plateau, let’s say. And then on the other hand, you know, it’s kind of bittersweet.

Q: When the Ramones started, what was the musical environment like?

A: Well, all the music that we loved was gone, we weren’t hearing it anymore. We started in ‘74, and the only thing that you heard on the radio was disco, whereas you used to hear great, great music like the Kinks and the Who and the Beatles and all that stuff.

You’d also hear C.W. McCall, that CB song, and you’d hear the Captain & Tennille, and then you’d hear Boston, REO Speedwagon, Journey, Foreigner, Toto, Kansas, Styx. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. I lived through this [expletive]. I remember it. It was horrible. There was something really fresh and distinct and unique and exciting about what we were doing.

Q: Where did your lyrical ideas come from? There was sort of a cartoon spirit to things like “Beat on the Brat.”

A: We wrote from life, we wrote from, like, films we liked, like B-films and Roger Corman stuff, and TV. We were kind of writing out our frustrations. They were like colorful little epics. It was a way of getting out frustration, aggression, feelings of alienation, isolation. Having fun--you know, there was a time when fun disappeared from music. In the early days we heard that we weren’t being taken seriously because we were fun. I mean, like rock ‘n’ roll was always about spirit and fun.

We grew up on exciting music, like the Kinks’ “You Really Got Me,” great three-minute songs in the ‘60s. The Ronettes and the Beach Boys, Phil Spector, the Doors, Stooges, MC5. All these elements were elements that we had absorbed and were part of the Ramones sound.

Q: Do you think you’ve finally gotten your due credit for inventing punk rock?

A: I think for the most part people know now. Recently on TV there was that Time Warner [rock documentary “The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll”]. In the punk part of it, Joe Strummer says it was the Ramones’ first album that all the bands wanted to sound like. So it’s nice to hear things like that. Yeah, I think people in the know recognize the Ramones as the originators of the whole thing.

There’s nobody as good as the Ramones, never will be. I mean everybody’s just emulated us and now everybody just kinda takes our sound as their foundations.

Q: Do you think Green Day and the Offspring and the other bands in today’s punk-rock resurgence are tapping the same spirit you did?

A: Well, not exactly. Some of them are. I see music today as more of a business than ever before. When I was a kid growing up in the ‘60s, music was an outlet for enlightenment, frustration, rebellion. It was more about individualism. Today it’s just like a big business.

There are some really good bands out there. I guess my favorite new band is Hole. I find [Courtney Love] to be totally unpredictable and primal, kind of spiritual, and she’s just herself, she’s not buying into all the [expletive]. I like Rancid, I like Green Day. I like the bands that have more of an edge to them.

But then there’s a whole slew of bands that have just really bought into the system, the whole business of it, the formula, like Weezer and Sponge and all these bands that sound like Pearl Jam. There’s this whole formula sound goin’ on where everybody kind of sounds like the Ramones and the singer sounds like a cross between Eddie Vedder and the singer from the Stone Temple Pilots. That’s the new sound, like Silverchair and Sponge and all this crap. That’s the new alternative formula.

Q: What will you do after the Ramones?

A: I know I want to do a solo record. I want to do a concept kind of situation where I get to work with a lot of different people. And then I’ve been thinking about opening this club in New York, like a real kind of multimedia kind of conception. It would be music and film, totally eclectic, more of a theme kind of situation. And also I’ve been doing a lot of radio lately. I wouldn’t mind doing a radio program or somethin’.

Q: Will you still be known as Joey Ramone?

A: I guess so. I guess people know me as this, so I might as well be this. My real name is Jeff Hyman. . . . I kind of relate to both. Jeff Hyman to me is like business, and my mom calls me Jeff. My father calls me Joey. . . . It’s like schizophrenia.

* The Ramones play tonight at the Hollywood Palladium, 6215 Sunset Blvd., 7:30 p.m. Sold out. (213) 962-7600.