‘Too Tough To Die’: Behind Ramones’ Defiant Eighth Album

“They wanted to go back to the basic, classic Ramones sound, so they gave me a call, Tommy revealed in Everett True’s book Hey Ho Let’s Go: The Story Of The Ramones. “It was a different atmosphere than before. Of course I would have preferred they all loved each other, but they felt what they were doing was important. And in order to survive, you have to make records. I tried to stay out of the personal politics.”

To their credit, though, Ramones had grown enough to understand that their music was greater than the sum of its parts, and their camaraderie improved during the making of Too Tough To Die – with the music benefitting as a result.

“There had been times since 1979 when we’d barely communicated with each other,” guitarist Johnny Ramone confessed in the sleevenotes for the album’s 2002 reissue. “But, as we got ready to make Too Tough To Die, we were focussed in the same direction – and it made a difference.”

Vocalist Joey Ramone’s recurring health problems were also a worry, but his struggles inadvertently helped the creative process. With their frontman sometimes unable to attend recording sessions, Dee Dee and Johnny found themselves spending time together at New York’s Media Sound Studios – and enjoying the opportunity to create music in tandem once again.

The songs: “Reclaiming old glories as well as stretching out in new directions”

With Dee Dee recalling that “things kind of clicked between us for the first time in a long time”, Johnny revealed that the pair rediscovered the fun of co-writing songs again during the Too Tough To Die era. “I’d come up with a chord progression and usually a title,” he remembered. “Once we’d figured out the space for words, Dee Dee was great at coming up with lyrics that fit.”

Dee Dee ended up writing the lion’s share of the songs for Too Tough To Die: a muscular yet melodic rock album which, as biographer Everett True accurately stated, found the group “reclaiming old glories as well as stretching out in new directions”. The latter was reflected by the band’s forays into the faster, harder realms of hardcore punk on Wart Hog and Endless Vacation, while Dee Dee’s burgeoning, socio-political awareness came to light on the brooding I’m Not Afraid Of Life and Planet Earth 1988, with the latter song commenting on the ongoing threat of global nuclear war.

“I was forming some opinions about needing some peace in the world,” the bassist explained in 2002. “I could feel a lot of violence and hostility in the air and I needed to try and say something about it.”

Despite these advances, Too Tough To Die also saw the band doing what they did best on a series of belting punk-pop tracks. The album’s Dee Dee-penned title track was a vintage Ramones anthem, while Joey – despite his bouts of illness – served up a trio of classics courtesy of Chasing The Night, the rockabilly-flavoured No Go and the dashing Daytime Dilemma (Dangers Of Love).

In retrospect, the confident Daytime Dilemma now sounds like the hit that got away, but during the album sessions, Sire Records believed Dee Dee’s infectious Howling At The Moon (Sha-La-La) could be a contender to grab some belated chart action. In a move the band recalled as something of a compromise, the label brought in Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart to oversee the production of this track.

“We didn’t really want another producer involved,” Johnny Ramone said in 2002. “So we agreed that Stewart could do that one track, so long as we were left alone to do the rest of the album as we saw fit.”

In Hey Ho Let’s Go: The Story Of The Ramones, engineer Ed Stasium added, “We finished that entire song first. David [Stewart] wanted the drums to sound like a huge pile-driver – like one of those massive crane-type machines driving holes into the ground for the foundations of a skyscraper. He wanted to go out into the street and sample one, but we never got round to it.”

The legacy: “Timeless, loveable and essential stuff”

Although it made for an ear-catching lead single, Howling At The Moon (Sha-La-La) missed the charts, but Too Tough To Die succeeded in making several important advances for Ramones. Released on 1 October 1984, the album’s sales were modest at home, but abroad it was a very different story, with Too Tough To Die making waves in Europe and becoming the first of three Ramones albums licensed by Sire to the then up-and-coming UK independent label Beggars Banquet.

This new deal granted Ramones far better promotion and chart placings in the UK (where they hadn’t charted since End Of The Century), and the positive reviews garnered by Too Tough To Die helped introduce the group to a whole new generation of fans. Indeed, the British press made it clear that Ramones were sounding better than they had in years. Sounds set the ball rolling by declaring the album to be “timeless, loveable and essential stuff” while an equally effusive NME agreed that Ramones had caught their second wind, with their reviewer stating that “the songs on Side Two might have graced Rocket To Russia with some distinction”.

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“We knew we needed to get back to the kind of harder material we’d become known for,” Johnny Ramone said, reflecting on Too Tough To Die’s rear-guard success almost 20 years on from the album’s release. “The pop stuff hadn’t really worked and we knew we were much better off doing what we did best.”

“I’m glad we’d tried to do different things,” Dee Dee added. “I really liked working with Graham [Gouldman, producer] on Pleasant Dreams, for example, because he was also a bass player and he taught me a lot. But we all knew we needed to make a really mental Ramones album: something that spoke from inside our brain and sounded natural.”

Find out which ‘Too Tough To Die’ tracks live on among the best Ramones songs of all time.