Play looks inside punk legend The Ramones’ notorious partnership with Phil Spector

“I think punk rock needs an Amadeus,” says actor-turned playwright John Ross Bowie, referring to Peter Shaffer’s 1979 drama chronicling the tension between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri.

He believes he’s found it in Four Chords and a Gun, a new play that opened this monthat the Bootleg Theatre in Los Angeles and that goes deep into the fractious relationships among the members of the Ramones, New York’s architects of the late ’70s punk rock movement.

Punk rock gets a tragic reading in Bowie’s play, which zeroes in on the balance between the group’s staunch anti-establishment tendencies and its desperate desire for more fame. Tracking the behind-the-scenes construction of 1980s End of the Century, an album the Ramones recorded with the eccentric Phil Spector, Bowie aims to articulate how the varying expectations of the members of a rock ’n’ roll group clash to form something rather combustible.

Did End of the Century give the Ramones the breakout hit they desired? Students of rock ’n’ roll history know the answer is no, but Bowie’s work attempts to show the effects of ego and compromise on the band dynamic.

“There’s a lot of push-pull,” Bowie says of the Ramones captured in the production, directed by Jessica Hanna, Bootleg’s producing and managing director. “Yes, the band all wants to be rock stars, but they all have very different visions in how that will be accomplished and what that will look like once they’re there.”