Joey was starting to think that the problem with the Ramones was the Ramones: the collective identity that obscured individual talents. He pushed, successfully, for individual writing credits. For the first time, Ramones fans could see the division of labor: seven songs from Joey, five from Dee Dee, zero from rock ‘n’ roll’s past. Those numbers were fine by Johnny; he wasn’t a songwriter so much as an arranger, the man who built scuzzy skylines from his mates’ drafts. As much as he yearned to make it, he felt (probably rightly) that their fans expected the Ramones to be fast and filthy. So he pushed for the harder stuff whenever possible, but not having the songs to match made for charged negotiations. Unfortunately, Pleasant Dreams offered a new obstacle in producer Graham Gouldman. Gouldman was at the tail end of his membership in 10cc, the slightly funny, structurally towering pop/rock act, but his real calling card was his years toiling in the Super K mines, writing the same delicious bubblegum track over and over. This would’ve been fine a couple of albums ago; now, though, Johnny was eager to get the taste of Spector out of his mouth.

The tension is best felt on the first track, “We Want The Airwaves.” Johnny lays down precise midtempo power-chord riffage, with a modest turnaround leading into a dramatic 4/4 piano-key plink. It’s got the makings of a minor-key hard-rock classic, up until Joey’s lyrics, yet another complaint about the state of the radio. A whisper chases with the title phrase with “that’s right, that’s right”; it’s Donovanesque. That the song closes the Airheads soundtrack tells you most of what you need to know. Or check out “Come On Now,” with Dee Dee’s genial origin story (“I’m just a comic book boy… I was born on a rollercoaster ride”) preceded by a protometal passage, complete with Jon Lord-style organ. Despite the guitarist’s best efforts, pop-punk wins the day, in varieties that belie the band’s formulaic reputation. Marky’s sticks clatter like skeletons on the rare Dee Dee/Joey duet “All’s Quiet On The Eastern Front” — Dee Dee’s weedy melodicism is a fine counterpoint. “This Business Is Killing Me” employs nagging sixteenths on the piano and echo on the toms, which harks back to Phil Spector’s work on End Of The Century. (There’s a bit of shared DNA between this and the Who’s “Happy Jack.”) The bridge dips seamlessly into hard rock; suddenly, the track is spangled with gorgeous backing vocal phrases. The biggest surprise is the unholy Bo Diddley/calypso bounce of “It’s Not My Place (In The 9 To 5 World),” but it’s the sole bright spot amongst a quarterspeed bridge, Joey’s indolent phrasing, and flagrant namechecking (Jack Nicholson, welcome to Ramones Land).

Obviously, the highlight is “The KKK Took My Baby Away,” a pulpy, “Last Kiss”-style pop tune loaded with full-band stops, Marky’s hissing cymbal triplets, a vintage “hey! ho!” rejoinder, and a major wind-up into the key change. It was as if Joey was daring radio to make this a hit. Alas, only the Benelux region got the single. A close second is Dee Dee’s “You Sound Like You’re Sick,” which juices the BPMs and pings the BGVs from left to right and back again. It’s a frantic kiss-off, the result of studio patience and hard-won proficiency. The power-punk “Sitting In My Room” flashes a little arpeggio and soaring backing vocals that would fit snugly in an R.E.M. track. In case that wasn’t enough — and clearly, it wasn’t — Joey angles for a little corporate cash. “7-11″ is an ode to the band’s favorite tour stop, a Shadow Morton homage where the guitars go pizzicato, the keyboard sounds like strings, and Joey does the full Mary Weiss on a spoken bridge. The drum sound is starting to reflect its age, a process that would be hastened on Subterranean Jungle. Gouldman became the latest producer to fail at bringing the Ramones pop success. But neither did he give them a pop makeover; he dropped in keyboard and vocal touches, but mostly got out of the way of a cracking set of minor-key brooding and hectic posturing. Still, this latest failure made it Johnny’s turn to rewrite the band’s history; he decided the band’s sound was built on guitar crunch, and did his best to maneuver everyone that way.