Ramones ( The ) - Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?

First performance: 18/01/2014


Coverinfo

Bruce performed the song only once:
 
 
2014-01-18 Paramount Theatre, Asbury Park, NJ 
 
During the annual Light Of Day benefit together with with Jesse Malin. The organisation funds research into possible cures, improved treatments and support for persons suffering from Parkinson’s disease and related illnesses. After an extensive soundcheck, Bruce's evening kicks off with Jesse Malin, performing The Ramones' "Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?", before "One Guitar" during Willie Nile's set. The main set is Bruce performing with Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers.
 
Malin chose the song, because he felt the message captured the spirit of the benefit : "Joey Ramone was a fighter, and he fought to stay alive," Malin told The Hollywood Reporter after the show. "He believed in the power of music." Malin added that he pitched the idea to Springsteen that day, and the two only rehearsed the song two hours prior to hitting the stage.  
 
 
 

Songinfo

"Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?" is the second single and first track from the American punk rock band Ramones' fifth studio album End of the Century. It was released on May 16, 1980. This song and the album itself marked a complete change in the Ramones' sound. This was partially due in an attempt to reach commercial success and to the work of their new producer Phil Spector. While most Ramones songs were based on three chords and a memorable melody, "Rock 'n' Roll Radio" is a complex song, based on many of the 1950s pop songs the band grew up listening to. A piano, trumpet, horn, saxophone, and synthesizer are used along with the standard guitar, drums, and bass. Although there is no title track for the End of the Century album, the album's title comes from a famous couplet in this song: "It's the end, the end of the seventies/It's the end, the end of the century.". The verse was also used for the title of the 2003 documentary about the group, End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones.
 
 
 

Other cover versions

Bruce on the artist

2021-05-26 SiriusXM Studio, New York City
Bruce played the song during the 22nd  Episode  'From My Home to Yours', themed "Radio Radio". 
 
On a visit to The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Bruce revealed he originally wrote one of his most iconic songs, 'Hungry Heart' for The Ramones : 
"I saw the Ramones in Asbury Park,” he told Fallon, “and we were talking for a while and I was like, ‘Man I’ve got to write the Ramones a song.’ So I went home and I sat at my table and I wrote it in about the time it took me to sing it. I brought it in and we went to make a demo for it or I played it for [Johnny Ramone], and he said, ‘Nah, you better keep that one.’ He was right about that. It did pretty well." 

Lyrics

Rock'n, rock'n'roll radio Let's go
Rock'n, rock'n'roll radio Let's go
Rock'n, rock'n'roll radio Let's go
Rock'n, rock'n'roll radio Let's go
Do you remember Hullabaloo,
Upbeat, Shinding and Ed Sullivan too?
Do you remember rock'n'roll radio?
Do you remember rock'n'roll radio?
Do you remember Murray the K,
Alan Freed, and high energy?
It's the end, the end of the 70's
It's the end, the end of the century
Do you remember lying in bed
With your covers pulled up over your head?
Radio playin' so no one can see
We need change, we need it fast
Before rock's just part of the past
'Cause lately it all sounds the same to me
Oh oh oh oh, oh oh
Will you remember Jerry Lee,
John Lennon, T. Rex and OI Moulty?
It's the end, the end of the 70's
It's the end, the end of the century