Soon after the band was formed, Dee Dee realized that he couldn't sing and play bass at the same time, so Joey became the band's lead vocalist (Dee would continue, however, to count off each song's tempo with his trademark rapid-fire shout of "1-2-3-4!"). Joey would also realize that he could not sing and play drums at the same time, and left the position of drummer. While auditioning new drummers, manager Thomas Erdelyi would often take the drums and demonstrate to auditioners how to play the songs. It became apparent that he was able to play the group's songs better than anyone else, and he joined the band as drummer Tommy Ramone.

The band held their first show on March 30, 1974 at Performance Studios in New York. The songs they played were very fast and very short; most clocked in at under two minutes.

In the early 1970s, a new music scene emerged in New York when many bands started to play in clubs on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, such as Max's Kansas City, and most famously CBGB's.

The Ramones concerts at CBGB's became legendary, due in part to their brevity: most concerts were twenty to thirty minutes long, much shorter than their contemporaries', and are often described by their witnesses as extremely fast, crude, energetic, and desperate. The Ramones' live set was so short they sometimes needed to repeat it twice a show. A few super--8 movies of these shows have survived, and are present in a couple of the band's later videos.

After garnering considerable attention for their performances at CBGB's, the group was signed to a recording contract by Seymour Stein of Sire Records in Autumn 1975. They soon recorded their debut album, Ramones, on an extremely low budget: about $6,400.

The band was plagued by hostile audience reactions outside of New York City. It wasn't until they made a small tour of England that they began to see the fruits of their labor: a performance at The Roundhouse in London on July 4, 1976 (second-billed to the Flamin' Groovies) was a huge success. Their appearance galvanized the burgeoning UK punk rock scene, inspiring future punk stars, including members of The Clash and The Damned. The Flamin' Groovie/Ramones double-bill was successfully reprised at The Roxy in Los Angeles the following month, which also inspired local Los Angeles musicians. ولا إله ولا سيد