Punk Rock Blitzkrieg

by Marky Ramone

  We looked up and down Avenue O and upward at the dark windows of the apartment above the store. Then we grabbed a few loaves of bread and a bottle of milk each. It was hard not to start filling our stomachs till we got back to the apartment. We were about two blocks from the store when Bruce took the first bite. From that day on, we were up at the crack of dawn looking for milk and bread delivered to local grocery stores, whether there’d been a party the night before or not.

  We had to improvise phone calls, too. Bruce and I had a friend who worked for the phone company. He lent us a special handset that was used to test the phone lines but which anyone could use to tap a line. The handset was basically a telephone receiver and a small dialing pad with a couple of alligator clips. There was an old gray interface box in the basement hallway connected to every phone in the building. This friend showed us exactly what to do. Pick a phone line and connect the red alligator clip to the red wire and then the green to the green. Once you hear the tone, you’re ready to dial. To get a clear connection, it was important to clean off the screws on the line.

  For incoming phone calls, we had our friend Joel on the fourth floor. Joel was a few years older than Bruce and me and was a Vietnam vet. He had seen heavy fighting as a marine and was someone you would never want to mess with. You could see the suffering in his eyes. But he was a friendly guy and great to have around. He wore his hair long and had crossed over to the peace side.

  One night Bruce and I were going out and asked Joel to come along. We liked to start our night with a lime rickey, a homemade carbonated drink, at the corner candy store. The husband and wife who owned the store were Holocaust survivors in their fifties. We saw the serial numbers branded on their forearms the first time we ever walked into the store, and we knew enough never to mention it. The couple took a liking to Joel, Bruce, and me. They never judged us by our looks.

  On that night, Joel told Bruce and me to go on ahead, and he’d join us at the candy store a little later. Bruce was drinking his lime rickey, and I was sipping on cherry phosphate, another special from the soda fountain, when we heard a car without a muffler pull up to the curb. The sound vibrated the store window. Two guys in their early thirties with long overcoats walked in. They reminded me of greasers from Erasmus but a little weathered and down on their luck.

  They looked around, and one of them deliberately closed the front door behind them. I knew they were going to rob the place. I just hoped they weren’t carrying guns under those coats. The guy farther from the door said to the wife, “Don’t go near that fucking phone. And don’t fucking move.” Both the husband and wife were behind the counter. I can’t say they looked afraid. They had probably experienced things so horrible it would make this scene look like a party.

  One of the guys moved toward the register. Bruce had been learning karate, and I could see he gave a thought to taking matters into his own hands. I could also see he thought better of it. No matter how quickly you learned, a few months of training wasn’t going to stop a bullet. Meanwhile, I couldn’t understand why these guys would not only drive up to a robbery in a car without a muffler but also why their driver would keep the motor running. The only answer I could think of was that they were complete amateurs.

  Or worse: they were complete morons. Right when I thought the guy near the register was going to pop it open, he looked at me and Bruce and said, “So I guess you guys are a couple of real fucking hippies.”

  “I guess,” Bruce said.

  “Why do you wear your hair like a fucking girl?” the other one asked.

  “Does it matter?” I said.

  “Yeah,” the one at the register said. “Why don’t you tell us, faggot?”

  This went on for about a minute. Suddenly Joel walked into the store. He might have known that something was wrong from the roar of the car downstairs. The guy near the register glanced at Joel and then looked back over at me and Bruce and said, “Look, another hippie freak. He must be with youz.”

  “I must be,” Joel said.

  “You got a name?” the other one said. “What’s your fucking name, Flower Power?”

  “My name’s Joel.” He walked toward the center of the room and looked at the owners, and then at Bruce and me. “What’s going on?”

  “It looks like these guys want to rob the store,” I said.

  Joel turned slightly toward the counter and spoke to the owners. “Are these people causing you any trouble?” Neither the husband nor the wife said a thing. When Joel lifted his right hand, it might have been to make a point, but we would never find out. The guy farther from the counter lunged at him. Joel grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back. As the guy folded like an accordion, the guy near the counter tried to choke Joel from behind and was smashed in the mouth with an elbow. As he went down, the guy on the floor tried to get back up, and Joel clocked him in the head with his boot.

  The whole thing took about ten seconds. As a commando, Joel was trained to kill. In the candy store, there was no desire whatsoever to kill. Joel was more like a puppeteer, and the show was over. It could have been a horror show. As the two guys squirmed on the floor with their coats open, we all saw that they were both packing .45s. Joel had them both disarmed in another few seconds. At that moment, we heard the car without the muffler pull away. Now the guys were without their pieces and their ride.

  We waited for the police to come, and once they did, the three of us left. From that day on, every lime rickey and cherry soda was free. Even for me and Bruce, though all we really did was pick our friends wisely.

  One day down in the basement apartment, we got a knock on the door from a lady who lived on the third floor. It was a good thing Bruce answered the door because his friend at the phone company had prepared him for a moment like this. I could hear she was upset, and she began interrogating Bruce. Worse, she really wanted to talk to me. It was my voice she recognized that evening when she picked up her phone and probably heard me talking to my manager from Waldbaum’s. It made sense. I had probably spoken to her a couple times in front of the building, and as she grilled Bruce, I recognized her voice, too.

  Bruce claimed the phone company told us it was an open line we had tapped, and we really tried to use it only for emergencies—that we had no idea it was hers or anyone else’s, for that matter. She calmed down quickly and let us slide. After that, we made sure to tap the other lines and leave hers alone.

  Sometime later Joel came knocking on our door to say the band Estus was trying to get in touch with me. I had never heard of Estus. Nobody had, at least not in New York. I was told they were a country-rock band from Missouri that was recently signed to Columbia Records and needed a drummer. There would be an up-front fee of $5,000 to record their studio album, plus $300 a week. I said yes immediately, and the following morning skipped getting up at dawn to scavenge for bread and milk.

  Estus consisted of brothers Tom and John Nicholas—John on bass, Tom on guitar and lead vocals—and Harry Rumpf on lead guitar and keyboards. The musicianship was very good. All three sang, and their harmonies were top-notch. But as I listened to the demo in producer Andrew Oldham’s office, I knew it wasn’t really my type of music. I liked music with a harder edge. Record companies were scouring the US for the next big singer-songwriter or soft-rock band. Millions of dollars in album sales were pouring in from Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, James Taylor, the Eagles, and America. The songwriting in Estus wasn’t anything near what those seminal acts were producing, but many of the lesser groups were making money, too.

  What really sold me on Estus, aside from the money, was Andrew Oldham himself. Oldham discovered the Rolling Stones and produced and managed them from 1963 to 1967. He was really more of a manager than a producer. As a savvy nineteen-year-old kid working for a Mod designer on Carnaby Street in London and with no real musical experience, Oldham got the Rolling Stones a record deal with Decca, the same company that had regretfully, along with others, passed on the Beatles.

 
Once signed, Oldham cultivated an anti-Beatles image for his new group, generating provocative PR slogans like “Would you let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone?” He encouraged Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to write their own songs and retained ownership for the Stones of their master tapes. Later, after a falling-out with the Rolling Stones, Andrew Oldham started one of the first independent record labels in England, Immediate Records, and worked with top artists including Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, the Small Faces, John Mayall, and Rod Stewart.

  Andrew Oldham was an eccentric, but he was an innovator and a legend. Throw in the fact that the engineer for Estus was Don Puluse, who had worked with Chicago, Janis Joplin, and Al Kooper, and there was no way I wasn’t jumping on board.

  I had my father’s friend, who was an attorney, look over the contract. My father looked it over as well. His goal was to study law and eventually leave the docks, and he already knew a lot more than most people about contracts. But there was nothing that wasn’t standard in this one. I also gave my parents about half of the $5,000 signing payment to hold for me. After Dust, I didn’t believe in gravy trains, and I needed dental work from time to time. My teeth always gave me trouble.

  Rehearsals went well. John was kind of morose and introverted, but we locked in instantly on bass and drums. Tom was a bit less subdued than his older brother but still pretty serious and mature. At only twenty-one, he already had a wife and a baby. Harry was the extrovert of the three. He’d walk around all day, guitar in hand, trying to turn on anyone who would listen to a new lick.

  Recording began in December ’72 at Columbia Records Studio B at 49 East Fifty-Second Street in Manhattan. The advance for the album was a substantial $100,000, much of which, it appeared, would go to Andrew’s fee and to any extra production costs. Oldham was known for lavish production and at one time had formed the Andrew Oldham Orchestra. The orchestra featured top London session players and recorded numerous instrumental versions of already well-known pop tunes. Oldham idolized legendary American producer Phil Spector, so I could imagine where Estus was headed.

  The studio was the largest recording space I had ever been in. When I walked into the room, the first thing I saw, next to the mixing console, was a gallon jug of Almaden Rhine wine. As I worked on getting down the drum parts for a hippie-country number called “In the Morning,” I noticed Andrew, wearing dark sunglasses, constantly sipping the wine from a glass. After a couple of hours, I noticed the jug was half empty, though I couldn’t recall seeing anyone else in the room taking even a swig. But Oldham didn’t seem the slightest bit drunk.

  As a rule, I didn’t drink before or while playing. But by the end of the third session, I was sharing some wine with Andrew.

  Andrew was a very laid-back producer. He was interested mostly in whether the live tracking had a nice, tight feel. If he asked us to do it again, he was never bossy or arrogant about it, and we rarely had to go beyond a third take. Based on his personal accomplishments, which included helping to spearhead the British Invasion, Oldham could have been full of himself, but that was far from the case.

  By the end of the first week of recording, Andrew and I were in a pattern of going downtown to the Village and having a few drinks at some of the clubs. I did more listening than talking. Andrew was a character who could talk endlessly. He’d lived by his wits in London before the Stones and then went on to produce song after great song: “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” “Get Off of My Cloud,” “Mother’s Little Helper,” “Time Is on My Side,” and “As Tears Go By.” Whether he shaped the songs directly or, more likely, was simply in the room sipping booze and adding ambience, it was all mind-blowing to me that I was his new drinking buddy.

  Pretty soon I was past the wine and on to Bacardi 151, which I drank straight up. As the name says, the proof is 151, which translates to an alcohol content of just over 75 percent. When I borrowed Andrew’s “torch,” he might have thought I was going to light up a cigarette, but I didn’t smoke. I poured some 151 into an ashtray and lit it. The flames shot up to eye level, and I quickly killed the fire with a small glass of Coca-Cola.

  “There goes my chaser,” I said. We both laughed and drank some more.

  During the third week of recording, Andrew took me to a party at someone’s apartment in the East Fifties. It was all men and exactly one girl, who was pretty hot. Andrew made a point of introducing me to her. She and I shot the shit for a little while over a few drinks and then made our way to the bedroom. We threw a half-dozen winter coats off the bed and started fooling around. I had her shirt off and my pants off, and she was on her back. I stopped for a moment and had the strange sensation that someone had walked into the room. As I thought about how to ask whoever it was to kindly leave us the fuck alone, I looked up and saw Andrew standing by the side of the bed.

  Before I could think of anything to say, Andrew approached the bed. That was all for me. I sprang up and was back on the floor like the bed was on fire. As I tried to jump into my jeans, I said, “Well, you know, I’m not really into that, but definitely go ahead without me.” I never found out if they did, because I bolted from the room and then the apartment in a matter of seconds.

  I was barely out of my teens and was freaked out by what had happened. I had headlined at a major arena and been backstage where things got wild, but I never saw that coming. As I walked up Broadway, I tried to make sense of it. All men. One girl. Andrew’s friends. It seemed as if Andrew Oldham, who had orchestrated so many songs, had tried to orchestrate a threesome. But I refused to follow the chart. I really didn’t care about his preferences—or anyone else’s, for that matter. Sex for me was straight-up, like my drinks, with the one exception being a vodka martini.

  The next day, I felt incredibly uncomfortable when I walked into Studio B and saw Andrew sitting there with his gallon jug of wine. I said nothing, avoided eye contact, and sat down at the drums to work on a sappy song called “B.M.D.”

  Neither of us mentioned it. No one else apparently knew a thing about it. By the end of the day, the situation seemed back to normal. We didn’t go out drinking that night, but we did the next night, and it was like nothing ever happened. Well, almost. I knew that in a few weeks the sessions would be winding down, and I would really miss Andrew. By the following week, I was no longer showing up most days because I didn’t need to. With all the basic tracks down, Andrew was adding the orchestration he was known for. Violinists, cellists, and clarinetists were flocking to the studio every day, but that was the producer’s job, and I had other places to be.

  One of those places was Shaggy Dog Studio in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. I had gotten a call from the owner of Biograph Records, asking me to play on a new album with Delta blues artist Johnny Shines. Shines was American blues royalty. When he was growing up in the 1920s in Memphis, his mother taught him how to play guitar. By the mid-1930s, he was touring with blues legend Robert Johnson. They split in 1937, and a year later Johnson was dead.

  While the legend of Robert Johnson grew and grew, the career of Johnny Shines was stagnant for decades. He made a living in construction while continuing to play in bars. He recorded several tracks for Columbia in 1946, but they were never released. Six years later, an independent label released an album, but sales were modest. It wasn’t until 1966, when Vanguard Records asked Shines to play on the third volume of its series Chicago/The Blues/Today! that his career took off. From then on, he recorded albums regularly and toured with the likes of Willie Dixon and Big Walter Horton. These two master artists were a huge inspiration to many, including John Mayall, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Led Zeppelin.

  Biograph was owned by Arnold Caplin, who put together a great band for the album, titled Johnny Shines & Co. The “company” included notables Jay Ungar on the fiddle, Peter Ecklund on trumpet and cornet, and David Bromberg on guitar. Bromberg, who was also producing the album, was a Columbia University graduate and an in-demand player of blues, bluegrass, jazz, and almost any type of music you co
uld think of. Over the past few years, he had played on albums by Bob Dylan, Richie Havens, Carly Simon, and Willie Nelson, to name just a few. I was thrilled to be in company like that.

  The studio drum set was a standard-size Fibes Vistalite, unmistakable since they were made from clear acrylic. Shines, Bromberg, and the whole band were easygoing. Bottles of Jack Daniel’s and Old Grand-Dad were making their way around the studio, but I waited till the end of the session to party along with these old pros. I had all thirteen drum parts done within two days. Caplin, Bromberg, and Shines himself listened back and were all happy with the basic tracks. At that point, the drinks really started to flow.

  One day when I visited the Columbia Records Studio to check in with Estus, I got to see a sample of the album cover. Back in December, the art director had the four of us show up at a Park Avenue address at five in the morning. It was predawn on one of those early-winter days in New York when the freezing rain hits the ground and melts into slush puddles, but not before chilling you right to the bone. The idea was to do the shoot when no one else was around and the streets were empty. They were empty for a reason: no one wanted to be there.

  Now as I looked at the album cover, I felt almost as cold as I did on that nasty December morning. There the four of us stood in the middle of Park Avenue, looking soaking-wet, groggy, and dejected. There were frowns and hands in pockets. I was on the right, looking down at the pavement. We were four drenched guys who looked like a major label had just dropped us. If this was the best shot out of a half-dozen rolls of film, I would like to have seen just how bad the rest of them were. Hopefully, rock fans didn’t judge an album by its cover.

  A dry version of Estus began touring in advance of the album release. There was no orchestration in the live shows other than the sounds the four of us put out. We played small and midsized venues and opened for Aerosmith, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and B. B. King. I was getting paid, so I was happy. But then I was told the band wanted to focus on its new music and was relocating from New York City to Rosendale.