It’s a summer evening in 1976, and this writer is sitting in a BBC studio watching his teenage hero John Peel stoke the coming punk revolution by playing several tracks from the Ramones’ recently released debut album. On meeting the DJ who soundtracked the previous decade’s counterculture uprising for the first time, the humble legend confesses he was initially as frightened by the Ramones’ intensity as the first time he heard Little Richard.
“The songs are all the same but they’re all different, if you know what I mean?” he says. He is already anticipating the negative abuse he will receive from old-guard listeners, he says, with a mischievous gleam.
