Two days after it was done, I walked in a shop to buy Christmas gifts back in November and I was accused of shoplifting. So even though the Ramones are being inducted into the Hall of Fame, it doesn't mean punk rockers, or looking like a punk rocker, has become respectable.

The Ramones didn't need mohawks to be punk They never had one. I don't think anyone in the band ever had one. They were visually aggressive. They were four working class construction worker-delinquents from Forest Hills, Queens. [crowd cheers] Yeah? ...who were armed with two minute songs that they rattled off like machine gun fire -- and it was enough to change the earth's revolution...at least the music of the time. It was an assault. Someone asked Johnny Ramone once why the songs were so short. He said they were actually fairly long songs, played very very quickly. [laughter]

The first time I saw the Ramones, I was pretty young and before the show even started, I was trying to get closer and closer and got up to the stage and as I'm up there, packed and ready and even a little bit nervous -- the crowd was intense -- the look of the crowd, outcasts one and all. They were hard-core punkers with spikes on their jackets, chains on their boots -- even skin heads and horror film fans...nerds and geeks and outcasts who were all ready to get all their aggression out in the next hour and fifteen minutes. I remember this as I was getting closer, I saw the microphone stand...something really strange about the microphone stand in the middle and that it was about ten feet high. [crowd laughs] ...something really strange about that. I saw the roadie put the set list down and stand up and he was half the size of the microphone stand and I thought, who the fuck is going to sing at that microphone stand? You know it was very unsettling ...and then looking at the amount of amps they had symetrically placed on either side and knowing there was a huge amount of volume that was going to come out of that was very unsettling. Then the lights go out and they start playing the good, the bad, and the ugly and then the crowd starts getting into 3rd and 4th gear and then they come out and - 1,2,3,4 - into the first song and all hell broke loose. It was complete chaos. The guy with the boots with the chains...all of a sudden were right in front of your face swinging by. It was terribly frightening and totally blissful at the same time.

So I think about the amount of intensity in that show in that one night and I think of how many times that happened. The Ramones played 2,269 shows. [crowd applauds] J-Lo's got a lot of catching up to do. [crowd laughs/applauds] And speaking of J-Lo, disco was huge in the 70's. Disco took over the clubs and the airwaves along with the indulgent guitar solos and seven-minute songs that was the musical landscape of 1976. The Ramones made a record in 1977. It has a black and white photo of four guys in leather jackets all with the last names...converse shoes and jeans standing against a brick wall...and this became a beacon for anyone who ever wanted to be in a band. For those disenfranchised by the dynasties of giant rock bands, they obliterated the mystique of what it was to play in a band. You didn't have to know scales. With the knowledge of two bar chords, you could play along with their records. And that's what people did. They sat in front of their parents hi-fi's and played along with Road To Ruin or It's Alive record and within weeks, they were starting bands with other kids in town who were doing the same thing. All of a sudden you could be on stage getting out and saying what you feel - sing about sniffing glue and not be a virtuoso, not be genetically gifted with Elvis's cheekbones either. You could look like an outcast and still be cool.

Talking Heads were the same way - the same thing in a different way. [crowd applauds] Yeah. It's a great night. But the Ramones were a blueprint, a blueprint so necessary at the time, I mean, that fact alone is so important for everything that came after. Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth was saying he can't think of a band or musician these days where the Ramones weren't a very important part of their lives. John Macbain, a great musician from Seattle that I know said something, and I think he spoke for the entire Seattle community when he said, "The Ramones were our Beatles." Going back to that time and CBGB's and the New York scene, Patti Smith said it was a reclamation of rock n roll, that we created it and we were going to take it back. Let's take it over. [Crowd applauds. Ed takes a drink of wine from his bottle.] I'm up here for a bit, I need it.

You know, and it may have to happen again because Thurston and I were talking and now -- it's Disney kids singing songs written by old men and being marketed to six and seven year olds...so some kind of change might have to happen again soon. [crowd laughs/wild applause] But that's a whole other thing.

So after the initial surge of the late 70's, commercially the Ramones were never embraced. Bands around them were, but never them. Virtually ignored by radio, 80's MTV and even other artists, they never stopped and regardless, have a following world wide that's as devoted as ever. I went with them once to South America and there were 50,000 people, riots for tickets, screaming fans outside, it was the reaction I always thought they deserved -- and when punk finally broke in '91, the Ramones still weren't brought along for the ride even though the bands Nirvana, Rancid, Green Day wouldn't have existed without them. You know punk bands now sell ten times with one record, their first or second record, sell ten times the amount of records the Ramones did throughout their career with 20 something records and that's why I go over to Johnny Ramones' house and do yard work three times a week just to resolve/absolve some of the guilt and a bunch of people do it. Like Bono and Edge do the windows, Kirk Hammet the guitar player from Metallica, he dusts, house cleans, makes French toast. [crowd laughing] That's a true story. Even Kurt Cobain wanted to be as good as the Ramones. The list is endless. Turn page.

So they never had a top 10 hit. You know it's crazy when Phil Spector produces your record and you still don't have a top 10 record [applause] but its really circumstantial, it doesn't matter. It doesn't alter the fact that they were one of the most important bands in rock n roll. And they accomplished a lot for a punk band when most of the others, like the Sex Pistols were all crash and burn. Most of the punk bands were pretty much crash and burn. In the Sex Pistols case, thank you Malcom MacLaren for being an ego driven fool -- fuck, for the non-edited version of this VH1 televised event.

They existed for 22 years with the same level of intensity the whole time -- and they may not have gotten along the whole time, but that was touring for 22 years in a van for fuck's sake, so you have to understand. It's a highly respectable thing to travel in a van, not go up to a tour bus, not get your separate planes because you don't get along with the other guys in your band. It's tortuously insane to stay in a van for eight years, but they did it and even after Dee Dee left the band, he was such a huge part of the band, he still wrote songs for them, which I think speaks for the brotherhood they had, an intense brotherhood of sorts. [applause]

And I have to mention, you know after Dee Dee left, it was some intense shoes converse shoes to fill and the guy who did it, his name is CJ and for whatever reason the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame chose not to include him with those being inducted. It's a Hall of Fame thing I wouldn't understand but he played 800 something shows. He participated in three or four records, wrote a lot of songs and really importantly, he was accepted by the hard-core Ramones' fans. He also played at a time when the Ramones kept playing and were able to play for another generation because of CJ. And CJ's been working 12 hour days, cleaning pollution out of the air ducts down around the World Trade Center. He is here tonight, and he might not get up here, but I was going to ask him to stand up and be recognized. CJ Ramone. [long applause]

I'll mention that Johnny Ramone has been an extremely, extremely, great friend. His wife and he have been a such a great friend to me, and taught me a lot about music that I was too young to see. Going back to the Brenda Lee comment and Gene Pitney, I was introduced to them by John. He has been a tutor of sorts. I mean the guy saw Hendrix, and was sitting down, the whole crowd was sitting. He saw the Who open for the Doors. He himself has more information than probably the institution to which he is being inducted into tonight. Okay, at this point I have spoken long enough where you could have played three or four Ramones' songs, and after this I am sure the evening will move quickly -- but it's the Ramones, and it's punk rock and I am just about finished, and I hope you're okay with that. [someone boos]

Apparently, you're not. Fuck you.

[to himself] Take it easy, Eddie.

Alright, the last thing I was going to say was about the Ramones' manager Gary Kurfirst talked to me and he said there was a night back in December of the year 2000 and he got a phone call from Joey Ramone and Joey had had an accident in front of his apartment. He slipped and fell on some ice and was...I guess he was just laying there for a bit and tangled up. He ended up breaking his hip and he couldn't...he wasn't getting any help, people were just walking by either side of him and he was pretty upset by it, and you know at the end, I guess he called Gary saying, you know the worst part about it, was no one would help me. I was down and nobody would help me.

Maybe they did not know it was Joey Ramone but he was tangled in black hair and, you know they think he was a bum or whatever. In a way, it is only mentioned as it's kind of analogous like the Ramones' career in a way. And you know it's hard...that why tonight's... and then obviously Joey died and on Easter of 2001, less than a year ago and I am sure he would have loved to be here tonight. You know, the only reason I mentioned that is that is why tonight is really important and special. It's because I'm sure there are a number of bands and people who will never get to be up here and never get to be brought up in front of all you people and applauded and I thought that would probably happen with the Ramones...and the fact that there something very unusual happening tonight and that is that this industry is paying some respect to the Ramones. [applause]

So with the power invested in me, I would like to induct Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee, Tommy, Marky, CJ which we talked about...