Punk Icon Joey Ramone Dies

April 16 -- He wanted shock treatment. He wanted to be sedated. He wanted the airwaves. He even wanted to be your boyfriend.

Punk fans are mourning the loss of Joey Ramone, lead singer of the seminal 1970s punk rock band The Ramones, who died Sunday of lymphatic cancer, longtime Ramones artistic director Arturo Vega said.

He was 49.

His band inspired a generation of anti-establishment rock groups, from the Sex Pistols to the grunge bands of the 1990s.

Ramone, born Jeffrey Hyman on May 19, 1951, entered the hospital last month to treat the disease, a cancer that attacks the body's ability to fight infection.

He died as U2's "In a Little While" played in his hospital room, according to the New York Daily News.

"Just as the song finished, Joey finished," His mother, Charlotte Lesher, told the newspaper. "He's free now. He heard it, and now he's gone."

New York City Originals

In 1974, the singer hooked up with three friends from Queens, N.Y. — Johnny, Dee Dee and Tommy — and each took on the surname Ramone — Joey would later say it was because Paul McCartney once used the name Paul Ramon in the early, leather-jacket days of The Beatles.

The Ramones themselves have been hailed as "The Beatles of punk rock," and the comparison was not hyperbole: the band defined punk before there was a punk. In fact, without the Ramones, there may not have been a punk rock.

"All the better-known punk groups that followed — The Sex Pistols, The Clash, whoever — they would be the first ones to say that without The Ramones the whole punk movement never would have happened," said Spin magazine editor-in-chief Alan Light.

It was the band's tour of the United Kingdom that kicked off on July 4, 1976, that reportedly influenced later punk legends such as The Sex Pistols and The Clash.

A Rock ’n’ Roll Landmark

The Ramones' 1976 debut was recorded in just two days and cost $6,000. Light said the 29-minute recording was a landmark.