In 1960, the Northeast port city of Liverpool, England, had a burgeoning music scene with rock and roll bands with fantastic names: Cass and the Cassanovas, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes and Gerry and the Pacemakers. These three bands joined a bill as support acts opening for Gene Vincent (singing his hit song “Be-Bop-A-Lula”) at the Liverpool Stadium.
L to R: Gene Vincent, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison (1962)
The concert was promoted by impresario, Larry Parnes, the first major British manager of rock musicians. Parnes was notorious for exploiting a stable of young male rock and roll artists with names like Billy Fury, Marty Wilde, Georgy Fame and Duffy Power. He also signed an act with the stage name Johnny Gentle and it was in Liverpool that Parnes found a group of young men to be Gentle’s backing band for a nine day tour of Scotland. The band, then known as the Silver Beetles included John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe and Tommy Moore.
Johnny Gentle at Abbey Road
As this was the Silver Beetles’ first foray into real showbiz, they thought they should adopt stage names. Lennon became “Long John Lennon” (the idea being that the band might be named Long John and the Silver Beetles), George Harrison became George Perkins (naming himself after his hero Carl Perkins who wrote “Blue Suede Shoes”), Sutcliffe called himself Stuart de Staël (after Nicolas de Staël, an abstract French painter) and Paul McCartney took the stage name of Paul Ramon, because he thought "it sounded sophisticated-like."
Ramon would pop up later as the name of a song on McCartney’s second solo album, Ram appearing as "Ram On” Ram On ...
... and “Ram On (reprise)”. Later still the New York punk band, The Ramones, who all adopted the pretend last name “Ramone” did so as a tribute to one of their heroes, Paul McCartney.
This was the only interesting way I could think of for introducing a series of God-awful watches released by Apple Corps (the Beatles’ company) in the mid 1990s in display wooden boxes designed to look like guitar cases. The watches were quartz (I have no clue who manufactured them) and had some truly hideous designs. The only redeeming feature of any of them is that the one with the Apple Logo on it (the second Apple Watch made by Apple before the Apple Watch, if you know what I mean) was gifted to someone named Daniel by none other than Joey Ramone, of The Ramones.
Joey Ramone circa 1980
And so we have Paul Ramon to thank (more or less) for both The Ramones and the Apple Watch.
Ram on!
Wm Shakespeare
The Beatles and Their Watches - Part I: The Pateks
The Beatles and Their Watches - Part II: The Accurists
The Beatles and Their Watches - Part III: Cartier & Breitling
The Beatles and Their Watches - Part IV: Ringo Starr
The Beatles and Their Watches - Part V: The Apple Watch
The Beatles and Their Watches – Part VI: Sir Paul’s Casio
The Beatles and Their Watches – Part VII: The Pocket Watches
The Beatles and Their Watches - Part VIII: Raymond Weil
The Beatles and Their Watches - Part IX: Joey Ramone's Apple Watch
The Beatles and Their Watches - Part X: Jimmie Nicol's Watch
The Beatles and Their Watches - Part XI: Yellow Submarine
The Beatles and Their Watches - Part XII: John Lennon's STOLEN Patek Found! (Updated)
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interesting article
Ram is a criminally underrated album. Cover to cover masterpiece.
interesting article
Thank you.
I love that watch that looks like Beatles album with the apple on the label.