The "bad guy" in the band: who are the other Mike Loves in music?

relative to the rest of the band

re: johnny

people could rightly argue that Johnny's style is super-simple and they would be right but I've never heard anyone argue that he is literally a shitty guitarist (which is certainly a charge levelled at other punk guitarists, ie Greg Ginn)

like it's really easy to imagine loving the beach boys but really having no use for love's vocals or lyrics while loving the ramones but having no use for johnny's guitar is insane.

now imagining Ramones as a dub act w just drums/bass/Joey

johnny IS the ramones, musically

also like he was in a band with a total fuck up deceitful junkie and a fragile child, i'd imagine from his perspective he was just getting shit done whether people liked it or not

again, I think actual musical ability isn't the question here. It's the perception of the Mike Love figure as being a weak link in the band musically - which no-one would accuse Johnny Ramone of being in The Ramones. If anyone was perceived as the weak link as a musician it was Dee Dee and then only on the first album mostly.

did Dee Dee play on the records or did Johnny ever pull a Steve Jones/Keith Richards and just play it himself?

Johnny Ramone is a great guitarist

― Οὖτις, Friday, May 23, 2014 1:35 PM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^jesus christ, on what planet. I think when you gotta bring in session guys to play your parts, you lose some cred.

I love the guitar on the Ramones records, esp the first one, but it's not "great" by any stretch.

xp not that I know of, it all sounds dee dee-ish to me though it wouldn't be the toughest thing to sound like dee dee

upper missisppi OTM about how he saw his role in the band - and that's where the most direct Mike Love comparisons work for Johnny, the vision of themselves as the straight hard-working money guy who just wants to tour for the fans and the bucks, but saddled with a beloved OCD weirdo genius who wouldn't make it on their own

it does what it needs to do, very well. sorry there aren't enough fiery solos for you. a great musician is someone who has command of his instrument, can make it achieve the desired effect, which Johnny definitely did.

but yeah brio and balls etc. all otm musically Johnny is not incidental to the Ramones, he IS the musical center of the Ramones.

xp

again - it's not so much about how great Johnny Ramone plays or Mike Love sings, those are subjective arguments outside the totally objective Mike Love taxonomy game. The Ramones narrative is not that he was a shitty player riding on the backs of his more talented bandmates. He's no Yngwie, that's not the point.

Disagree. And im not into firey solos chief. I just dont see anything really great about the guy.

xpost

Plus he was a fucking douche

not trying to be a jerk, i do like the ramones, at least i like the first 2 or 3 albums. Gets sketchy for me after that.

hahaha 'chief'

yeah but the thing is Ramones fans don't generally hate on Johnny because they think he can't play as well as the other Ramones whereas Beach Boys fans hate on Mike Love for being a lesser musician than the other Beach Boys. It's about being a weak link in relation to others' talents.

If you were going to go after Johnny on his musical contribution, I think a better argument would be that Dee Dee and Joey wrote all the songs.

I think just to remove any possibility that anyone else can meet the narrow criteria we should just also stipulate that the band member's name has to be "Mike Love"

or Lars! yeah maybe I have made restrictions too tight to be a Mike Love. It's an exclusive club.

xp
And I guess the other Johnny/Mike comparison is the idea that they were the anti-experimentation force in the band - the ones who wanted to keep the band on a fan-pleasing familiar track and play 200 shows a year. Mike lost that battle at least for a time, while Johnny won. Whether that was best for their bands is open to debate I guess.

hahaha 'chief'

― balls, Friday, May 23, 2014 2:21 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I gotta whole bunch of those: "sport", "coach", "junior"- im good like that.

without even trying, I imagine

Was it you who called somebody "Wapner" on another thread, Bill? That cracked me up.

yeah "nice try Wapner" lol

I heard Walter Lure plays some of the guitar parts on the Ramones' records for Johnny, is this true?

yo- Stevie Nicks is absolutely a Mike Love!!

i don't think it's any big secret Walter Lure and Ed Stasium and others (Daniel Rey maybe?) played bits and pieces on some of the shitty mid-late 80's stuff

yo- Stevie Nicks is absolutely a Mike Love!!

― i also enjoy in line skateing (spazzmatazz), Friday, May 23, 2014 1:49 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wuuut no way dogg

Stevie absolutely fits all the criteria listed above. Relative weak-link in the band, became the breakout star, and didn't humor Lindsey's whims after Tusk flopped. Similar to Axl too: in the mid-late 80s when she did only like two weeks on Tango in the Night…

Plays it safe for the money, discourages the OCD weirdo savant, and becomes the perceived leader/face of a band she joined nearly a decade already into its existence. She didn't do much but sing on the records even though she wrote her songs/the germs of her songs. Totally a Mike Love.

FWIW I love Stevie

there should probably be some kind of rule that Mike Loves would be incapable of a highly successful solo career like Stevie was

ugh phrased that poorly, incapable of the kind of solo career Stevie was capable of i mean

what about the cure dude? LOL! no, really, that's his name. LOL! no, really...

maybe he was a nice guy. i dunno. i just remember they kicked him out and he sued them and yet still plays with them sometimes? and he helped start the band. and didn't really know how to play keyboards...

(though i guess he was an okay drummer.)

Is Otis Williams a Mike Love?

hard to say. it doesn't seem like he wrestled control of the group from anybody, just outlived them.

I always got the impression he was the de facto leader and he was mostly behind Ruffin and Kendricks' exits although he was arguably the least talented. I don't think he necessarily perfectly fits the Love profile but he definitely has characteristics.

Feel like maybe, in the interests of creating a greater pool for discussion, that the most crucial criteria for being a Mike Love are:

1) Being the practical, get-shit-done force in a band that has an oppositional hard-to-manage or self-destructive "genius"
2) Having a demonstrable track record of being an asshole about it.

Don't want to water the definition down too much or anything; I feel like the sticking points from earlier were mainly the "talent"/"essential to the group" components, and if we table those criteria there are potentially far more candidates.

It's the super-rare Mike Love that is also not really that musically talented, a key songwriter, or a shaper of the group's sound.

Williams definitely fits criteria #1, not really sure if he had a rep for being an asshole tho.

How about Greg Norton? It seems like Mould and Hart get along now, but still dislike him.

It doesn't seem like he wrestled control of the group from anybody
Isn't the preferred expression "wrested control"?
/nitpick

More i read the definitions of a "mike love" the more I am adamant that Johnny ramone was the penultimate mike love.

sorry James Redd and the Blecchs

most people would just say yoko.

Whats Greg Norton actually done to be considered for this? He was notable in not getting involved in whatever was going on in the band

After all this time, Hart's recent jab at Norton comes off as total bullshit, to the extent where I begin to doubt the last 25 years of passive aggressive slanging matches with Mould

the next-to-the-last Mike Love

Link for grant dig at Greg?