Tommy Ramone

Thomas Erdelyi (born Tamás Erdélyi, [ˈærdeji ˈtɒmaːʃ]; January 29, 1949 – July 11, 2014), known professionally as Tommy Ramone, was an American musician. He was the drummer for the influential punk rock band the Ramones from its debut in 1974 to 1978, later serving as its producer, and was the longest-surviving original member of the Ramones.

Tamás Erdélyi was born on January 29, 1949, in Budapest. His Jewish parents were professional photographers who survived the Holocaust by being hidden by neighbors. Many of his relatives were killed by the Nazis.

The family left Hungary during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. In 1957 he emigrated with his family to the United States. Initially settling in the South Bronx, the family moved to the middle-class neighborhood of Forest Hills in Queens, New York. Verona Estates in Forest Hills was the place where Tamás grew up and later described as "home sweet home". He changed his name to Thomas Erdelyi.

In high school, Tommy played guitar in a mid-1960s four-piece garage band, the Tangerine Puppets, with a schoolmate and guitarist, John Cummings, the future Johnny Ramone. After leaving school at 18, he started working as an assistant engineer at the Record Plant studio, where he worked on the production of the 1970 Jimi Hendrix album Band of Gypsys.

When the Ramones first came together, with Johnny Ramone on guitar, Dee Dee Ramone on bass and Joey Ramone on drums, Erdelyi was supposed to be the manager, but, even though he never played drums before, was drafted as the band's drummer when Joey became the lead singer, after realizing that he couldn't keep up with the Ramones' increasingly fast tempos. "Tommy Ramone, who was managing us, finally had to sit down behind the drums, because nobody else wanted to," Dee Dee later recalled.

He remained as drummer from 1974 to 1978, playing on and co-producing their first three albums, Ramones, Leave Home, and Rocket to Russia, as well as the live album It's Alive. His final show as a Ramones drummer was at Johnny Blitz's benefit event at CBGB in New York on May 4, 1978.

In a 2007 interview with the BBC, Tommy Ramone said the band had been heavily influenced by 1970s glam-rock band the New York Dolls, by singer-songwriter Lou Reed and by pop-art figure Andy Warhol. He said, "The scene that developed at CBGB wasn't [for] a teenage or garage band; there was an intellectual element and that's the way it was for The Ramones."

Throughout his time with the Ramones, Erdelyi primarily used Rogers Drums, Slingerland snare drums, and Paiste 2002 series cymbals, live and in the studio. During the band's earliest documented shows around New York between 1974 and 1975, he used an older Rogers set in a dark wood finish that was soon replaced once Danny Fields became their manager. This new set, finished in "New England White", was used heavily between 1975 and 1977, and featured a 22-inch bass drum with 9x13 and 16x16 tom-toms. Several photos taken of Ramone during these years occasionally show him using Ludwig Drums onstage as well.