"We decided we should go to England. So Danny managed to get us shows there, and we played at the Roundhouse, then Dingwalls, both shows with the Flamin' Groovies. We did well there. We played in front of two thousand people. It was great to go there, it was a place where so much music history had been created."

-Johnny Ramone , from his book Commando.

All photos by Danny Fields

All photos by Danny Fields.

“Still not sure how it happened, but within weeks of the release of the first Ramones album, in April 1976, and after getting to play as far from New York as Nashua, New Hampshire – 250 miles away – Seymour Stein, who’d signed the band to Sire records, told me they had been booked to play the Roundhouse in London; capacity 3,300 people; distance from CBGB’s about 3,400 miles.”
-Danny Fields ( All photos by Danny Fields)

From the documentary "The End of The Century"

By the time of their U.K. tour in 1976, word of their sound and style had spread before them. Johnny disliked England, especially the audiences who spat on bands as a sign of punk affection. But he found time to give some famous advice to the Clash, who were nervous they were under-rehearsed: "We're lousy, we can't play," Johnny reportedly told Joe Strummer. "If you wait until you can play, you'll be too old to get up there." The Ramones set the standard for a new, democratic aesthetic. "We wanted to save rock and roll," Johnny wrote in Commando. "We weren't against anybody....I thought the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, and the Clash were all going to become the major groups, like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and it would be a better world."

Rolling Stone Magazine