Board shorts? Furniture? Bathroom supplies? The Ramones may have disbanded in 1996, but the retail presence of the most iconic of American punk bands is far from sedated. At Impact Merchandising, which markets Ramones-themed gear in the U.S., co-owner Andrea Howard ranks the band among its top three sellers—behind the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. “If they gave out awards for merch,” says Robert Arce, who handled Ramones goods from ’ 98 through ’05, “the Ramones would have a platinum T-shirt on thei r wall.” And the most recent addition to this cottage industry—the Hurley clothing—highlights the squabbles that belie the band’s longtime brotherly image. The fact that the Ramones never had a gold, much less platinum, record during the band’s lifetime only makes the merch situation more unusual. The old wisecrack that the Ramones used to sell more garb than music remains pointedly true. According to Nielsen SoundScan, the band’s best-selling CD of 2007, Greatest Hits, moved fewer than 40,000 copies. In contrast, Arce estimates that 1. 5 million Ramones T-shirts have been purchased since their breakup. Basic black tees are only a starting point; the band’s handlers have pushed the branding to the limit, signing off on Ramones-endorsed skateboards, action figures, flags, and artificially distressed Converse sneakers. “It’s not like anyone set out to turn this into a brand,” says Dave Frey, a manager who handles Joey’s estate. “A lot of it is people saying, ‘I think we can sell shower curtains.’ Or lunch boxes. Is that okay or not? I don’t know. We just try to do what makes sense.”

From their earliest days, the Ramones hawked homemade shirts at their shows. When they broke up, it was only natural for Joey and Johnny, the two sole original members by then (and co-owners of the band name), to launch a more formalized company to compensate for the absence of touring revenue. Sales slowly picked up, and then exploded after Joey’s death from lymphatic cancer in 2001. The day after his passing, according to Arce, one prominent teen-clothing retail chain, previously lukewarm to the group’s goods, placed an order for 10,000 Ramones tees. The subsequent demise of Dee Dee (from a drug overdose, in 2002) and Johnny (from prostate cancer, in 2004) grew the brand even more. “It’s sad but true; their deaths brought more interest to the Ramones and made the band bigger,” says Linda Ramone (née Cummings), Johnny’s widow and co-owner of Ramones Productions. Or, as Legs McNeil, co-author of the

Dee Dee, Joey, Tommy, and Johnny in the mid-’70s

“The Ramones were not exactly a band
with a big political stance about being

anticapitalist.” MICKEY LEIGH, JOE Y RAMONE’S BROTHER

New York punk oral history Please Kill Me, puts it: “As soon as they died, they became the new Doors.”

Mickey Leigh, Joey’s brother and the other co-owner of Ramones Productions, says that earnings since 2003 have multiplied “manifold”; the $2-per-T-shirt profits (among other licenses) are split between Leigh, Linda, and the other former members (Tommy, Dee Dee’s estate, and successors CJ, Marky, and Richie).

Despite so many seemingly incongruous goods attached to such a no-frills band—did we mention the air freshener?—both Leigh and Linda insist that their late loved ones would have reveled in the merchandise. “When my

brother and I were growing up and the Beatles were coming out,” says Leigh, “we would buy everything we could possibly get our hands on: Beatle wigs, pins, dolls, lunch boxes. To us, it was really no big deal. The Ramones were not exactly a band with a big political stance about being anticapitalist.” Adds Linda, “I love when I see anyone in Ramones T-shirts. Johnny did want to be the biggest band in the world.”

Not surprisingly, the Ramones’ postmortem marketing has been fraught with friction. Because Linda dated Joey before taking up with Johnny, for much of the band’s career, the bandmates rarely spoke, and the same chilly atmosphere has extended

to their next of kin. According to
Leigh, they disagreed over which
former band members should get
a cut of the group’s earnings after
Johnny’s death. The reason the Hurley
clothing only features Joey stems from
Linda’s objection that it “had nothing
to do with the Ramones.” For his
part, Leigh put the kibosh on a line of
canine apparel that Linda backed.
Currently, the two only
communicate through lawyers and
managers. Leigh admits things
are “pretty messy”; Linda would
only comment, “The legacy is the
important thing. So what if you
don’t see eye to eye with your
business partner? That’s life.”
Adding to the overall tension, last
year Richard Reinhardt—a.k.a.
Richie Ramone, the band’s
drummer between ’ 83 and ’ 87—
filed suit against Ramones Productions,
claiming $900,000 in unpaid digital
music royalties. “Stop arguing and
fighting with each other!” Vega says,
with evident exasperation. “Because
we all loved merchandise!”

Despite the jousting among the inner circle, the Ramones continue to pick up steam as a marketing and licensing juggernaut. But does every owner of lime-green Ramones flip-flops know exactly who they are? “At sporting events, they play ‘Hey, ho! Let’s go!’ and no one has any idea who the band is—ever,” says Dave Frey.

In Joey’s hometown of Forest Hills, New York, Leigh recently spotted a teen wearing an eagle T-shirt and asked if he was a fan. Leigh was met with a blank stare. Leigh then asked if the kid had a favorite Ramones song. Again, no response. “I don’t think he knew ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’ from ‘Free Bird,’ ” Leigh says with a sigh. It’s enough to make you wanna sniff some glue.

From Punk to Posh

CBGB gets a fashion makeover

Starting in March, the space where the likes of the Ramones and the Dead Boys once ruled will be home to $98 T-shirts and $165 jeans, as designer John Varvatos (left) transforms former punk breeding ground CBGB into a boutique. “I want it to be a real rock’n’roll store from the minute you walk in,” says Varvatos, who plans on selling vinyl and presenting occasional live shows.

“I want to do something that feels like it’s been on the Bowery for a while.”

That might be difficult, since the original club interiors have already been stripped. Once a true skid row, the area would have been an unlikely location for upscale shoppers during the club’s heyday. “It was terrific in its decay,” Blondie guitarist Chris Stein says of the neighborhood, where he lived in the ’70s. “[One night] there was a

300-pound bum taking a dump on our doorstep.”

That’s unlikely to happen on today’s Bowery, now home to a swank hotel and million-dollar apartments. “Maybe it’s better that someone with a sense of what it was took the space over, rather than a McDonald’s,” Stein says of the new store. “But I’m sure no one who went to CBGB’s could have afforded to buy a shoelace in a place like that.” ROB LEVINE

FROM TOP: LFI/LFI; MICHAEL COGLIANTRY COURTESY JOHN VARVATOS