Punk Rock Blitzkrieg

by Marky Ramone

  “Dee Dee! Dee Dee! Acapulco Gold! Right here!”

  “Dee Dee! Valium. Five mg, baby! Come to mama!”

  Our bassist stuffed some of this in a jean pocket and some of that in a coat pocket. And then some of the other things in his mouth. I wasn’t sure which pills he swallowed or how many. Eins-zwei-drei-vier—it was past counting in any language. And beyond understanding. Vera watched it. I watched it. It became like the fight I saw in Union Square Park—you eventually just learned to let it happen.

  “You girls happen to have any more of the red?” Dee Dee smiled as he stood up and walked along the fence toward a girl of about sixteen who had sort of a Farrah Fawcett thing going on. “Come on, more red. I was invited to a party tonight, and I hate showing up empty-handed.”

  I would drink after the shoot to wind down. My two main drinking buddies were Dee Dee and Phil Spector. But I could drink with only one at a time. Phil didn’t like Dee Dee. He was all over the place and made Phil nervous. Phil was already nervous enough as it was. Phil liked to talk to me and Joey about music and anything related to it.

  I had just met Phil myself, but we hit it off. We had a sort of Bronx-Brooklyn crosstown mutual respect. We both hated bullshit—giving and receiving. And I loved the girl groups, the Beatles stuff, and just about everything Phil Spector had anything to do with. Phil was remixing two songs for the movie soundtrack of Rock ’n’ Roll High School. The Ramones were getting scale for the movie, but there were big perks—free rooms, all we could eat and drink, and royalties on the soundtrack. For me, the biggest perk of all was working and hanging out with a legend.

  On the way to my room, I passed by the pool at the Trop. Dee Dee was poolside hanging out with the Dead Boys’ lead singer Stiv Bators and various local punk luminaries. There was a brief winter in Southern California, and this was it. It was overcast and in the mid-sixties, or what New Yorkers called spring and fall. But there was no way any of our crew was jumping into the Trop pool in any season.

  The water was always dirty. It could barely have passed as bong water. If you were brave or crazy enough to jump in, you might swim into a syringe. The pool was kidney-shaped and a leading cause of renal failure. The Astroturf on the surrounding deck was not green like your typical fake grass. It was black. No one knew what sort of mold, blood, or fecal matter the turf might have been camouflaging at any given point, and no one wanted to know.

  Dee Dee and his punk entourage were heading over to Stiv’s room, and I told them I would be along later. Or not. Phil Spector was due at my room in about a half hour. I really didn’t know how Dee Dee was holding up after swallowing half the pills in Los Angeles County, but he had probably built up the same tolerance to drugs that we had built up to him.

  The knock on my door came at nine sharp. It was Phil Spector, dressed flamboyantly as always. He had on a frilly shirt, a cape, and Beatle boots. I saw his brand-new ’79 Cadillac Seville in the parking lot, and I knew his bodyguard, George Brand, was waiting in the driver’s seat. George was licensed to carry firearms. So was Phil Spector. He was carrying now. I could see the bulge under his jacket.

  Phil was also carrying a bottle of Manischewitz kosher grape wine. That did not require a license, but it should have. I associated Manischewitz with all my Jewish friends celebrating Passover. It was way too sweet for me—an acquired taste I would never bother to acquire. It seemed worse than wandering forty years in the desert. But Phil loved it, and who was I or anyone to question Phil Spector’s taste?

  I poured Phil a glass of his best and myself a shot of vodka. We talked for a minute or two about the soundtrack, and then Phil launched into a tirade.

  “What they did to him was a crime! A capital offense! And this was our government. My government. Your government. Our government.”

  He was angry about his good friend Lenny Bruce. Bruce had died of a morphine overdose in 1966. We were now just days away from 1979, but Phil Spector sounded like he had just that morning bought the police photo of comedian Lenny Bruce, collapsed and deceased with a syringe on the bathroom floor, to keep it out of the newspapers. Phil was capable of being the best friend you ever had, even after you were dead.

  “You’re right,” I said. “Once you questioned Vietnam or anything else the establishment was pushing, you were public enemy number one.”

  “Not only that,” Phil said, “but he didn’t back down. He believed in what he was doing. The police came to every show he did waiting to bust him for saying one wrong thing. And he found a way to say it, more often than not, without actually saying it! Do you know what I mean?!”

  I nodded.

  “He was a genius at that. A genius! But in the end it killed him. They killed him.”

  Phil Spector was probably the best producer who ever lived. With hit record after hit record, he created a wall of sound that jumped out of the speakers. On that basis alone, I believed everything he was saying, at least for the moment. On some level, I even believed that all Phil Spector had to do was talk about the police and you would hear the police. But as the sirens got closer and closer, I realized they were real.

  We opened the door to my room and looked to the left along the first-story concrete deck. Two black-and-white LAPD patrol cars were parked in no particular spot below. One officer was waiting by the car and one was on the deck right outside Stiv’s room. A few of the punk partiers had spilled out onto the deck, and there was a lot of yelling and banging. A moment later, two cops came out with Dee Dee. His hands were cuffed behind him, and the cops led him by either arm past the railing. Vera followed them and shouted, “Okay? You got what you wanted!”

  Phil saw this, turned to me, and said, “Can I ask you something? What the fuck is wrong with that guy?”

  Later that night when I got back from hanging out at a club with Phil Spector, Marion told me that, after they took Dee Dee away, he started turning blue in the patrol car and slumped over. The car never made it to the station and instead went to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where they pumped Dee Dee’s stomach. The police called Monte, and Monte called Vera, who went to the hospital. A full recovery was expected. Everyone said Dee Dee was like a cat with nine lives. But actually, he was on his third or fourth cat.

  The next day, Allan and the crew shot around the Ramones, who were missing their bassist. Dee Dee was being kept for observation—which, if it was going to be done right, would have taken a year or two. But the following morning, Dee Dee was at the van bright and early and was apparently okay until the next batch of pill-pushing groupies showed up at the schoolyard. The only trace of his latest near-death experience was the plastic hospital bracelet still on his wrist.

  The problem this morning wasn’t Dee Dee. It was Joey’s girlfriend, Cindy. We were getting ready to board the van and she was pushing Joey’s buttons.

  “We’re not staying in that classroom all day. No way. I’m not doing it. I’m not gonna be cooped up all day like a prisoner. You have to say something.”

  “Come on, gimme a break,” Joey said. “I don’t run the set.”

  “You don’t run anything!” Cindy said, getting hysterical. “Why don’t you try running your own life? You might enjoy it!”

  With that, John slapped Cindy in the face. It was a right-handed, open-palm blow across her left cheek that landed cleanly. The sound of the smack was almost good enough for a Hollywood movie. The sound editor might not have needed to dub in an effect.

  “What the fuck . . .”

  “You’re not getting in the van!” John said. “You’re off! Do you hear me?” Cindy backed off and backed down immediately. The hot air was out of her sails. She had met Joey’s alter ego. Where behind the sunglasses there was softness and compassion in Joey’s eyes, there was blue ice in John’s. Cindy had done everything in her power to provoke Joey, but the reaction came from someplace and someone else. Cindy turned and walked away stunned. The rest of us boarded the van. Monte closed the doors and we pulled out.

  The ride to Mount
Carmel High School was quiet. Joey’s silence said a lot. If his relationship with Cindy wasn’t over when he got up at dawn, it was definitely over now. Joey might not have known how to handle the situation on his own, but the problem was he would never have the opportunity to find out. John took that from him. Joey brooded and glared at John from the backseat while John looked ahead and told Monte what exit to get off at on the 110.

  Nothing could stop John from navigating the van or steering the band. It was his ship, and he had no trouble throwing off excess baggage. The problem was he had excess baggage of his own. For Roxy, California was one big open bar. They sold booze in 7-Elevens and bodegas. She was drunk at the Trop and drunk on the set, and it was getting on John’s nerves. When we were shooting a scene, it was her chance to get away, so she would ask Marion and Vera to walk her off school grounds and around the corner to a convenience store. Sometimes she could barely make it back.

  Marion had told me in Europe about Roxy’s exploits in hotel rooms. When we got to Paris, it was Marion’s first time there, and she wanted to see everything from the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe. She wanted Roxy to come along, but Roxy’s only goal was to stay in the room and clean out the minibar. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she didn’t want to pay for it. She had her minibar rip-off MO down to an art form.

  Roxy would take a small bottle of scotch or wine or rum and carefully remove the aluminum wrapping at the top like a surgeon. Next, she would unscrew the cap like a watchmaker. The easy part was drinking what was in the bottle. That she did like a fish. Then she would fill the bottle with tap water and restore the cap and foil like a liquor mortician. All this from a trust-fund baby who could have bought the entire hotel a round without blinking. Roxy’s habits at the Tropicana were not much different. And even though it was all on the house, the thrill of getting shitfaced was rivaled only by the idea of getting something for free.

  We didn’t have time for boozing, lovers’ quarrels, or random pill popping today. For us, this was probably the busiest day of the movie shoot. In the story, Riff Randell and the Ramones have just taken over the school and mayhem ensues. But mayhem looks a lot different when you’re shooting it one short scene at a time.

  In the most ambitious scene, the students and the Ramones joyously parade down the hall while singing “Do You Wanna Dance?” The lip-synching had to be on the money, and the look had to be loose like a party. My part presented maybe the biggest challenge. I was playing the drums on a wheeled drum riser pushed by members of the football team. Allan Arkush was calling the signals, and we were getting ready for the first down.

  This was the moment Roxy picked to lose her balance and stagger a bit. It was right in front of the cast. As the day wore on, she would get progressively sloppier, and while we weren’t even at halftime yet, Roxy was clearly in the fourth quarter.

  John shot Roxy one of his vintage laser stares. This was no longer a teen comedy. John looked like he came straight out of Village of the Damned. His looks could kill, but he had to save them for the movies. So he grabbed Roxy and dragged her into the nearest empty classroom. Roxy had on a pair of hard, high-heeled, backless shoes called mules, and they clipped and clopped all the way to the classroom door, which John slammed behind them.

  Action on the set came to a standstill. For the time being, real life trumped the silver screen, and John was giving Roxy a full dose of it behind closed doors. The clip-clopping of Roxy’s shoes continued but sounded like the footsteps of someone struggling to stay on her feet. There were grunts and smacks and the sound of desks and chairs sliding around a linoleum tile floor, sometimes toppling over.

  There wasn’t much screaming or yelling from either John or Roxy, which made the near silence of the people out in the hall that much more deafening. John, Roxy, and the Ramones knew the drill, but to the rest of the cast and crew, it was a pre-talkie horror movie. There were unwritten rules in the world, and this display was breaking at least a few of them. But by the time anyone in the hall had figured out what they were, John appeared in the doorway looking ready to do a take.

  After a day like that, I needed more than just a couple of drinks, and nothing soothed the savage breast better than eating at Duke’s. Duke’s was a coffee shop built into the Trop at the motel’s right side, tucked under the first floor at street level. They had the world’s best bacon, sausages, pancakes, and fresh-squeezed California orange juice. The portions were huge but never enough. Heaven was a perfect breakfast eaten at night. Everyone’s mood was suddenly sunshine. Seating was family style. There were feuds going on in this family, but they seemed to melt like fat pads of butter on rye toast.

  Later in the evening, I walked to the liquor store down the block with Phil to get some more Manischewitz. I picked up a bottle of Bolla red wine. We drank our respective bottles back at my room and then we went out. Phil could have sat up front with George, but he preferred to sit in the back and feel chauffeured. He asked me to sit up front with George. The plan was to hit a few clubs—the Whisky, the Rainbow, the Troubadour, etc. We pulled up to the Troubadour first.

  I had walked into a lot of clubs with a lot of well-known people, but this was a new experience. Maybe five-foot-six in heels, Phil Spector and his aura seemed eight feet tall. I wasn’t sure exactly why we were going to these clubs until I witnessed this coronation. They didn’t serve Manischewitz at the Troubadour, but the Red Sea still parted as we made our way back. In the crowd that lined the hallway two kinds of faces immediately lit up—those in the record business and those that wanted to be in the record business. In Los Angeles, that was everyone. They noticed me, too. I was a Ramone. I was a moon orbiting Jupiter.

  We sat in the back. There was not much else in the world I would rather be doing than talking with Phil Spector about echo chambers, how to build up recorded sound without cluttering it, and what it was like working with the Beatles. In truth, there actually was one thing—recording with Phil Spector. In a life filled with more success than I could ever have imagined banging away at my first cheapo snare drum, it was looking more and more like I was going to get my wish. Phil had been talking to his old friend Seymour Stein about producing the Ramones’ next album, End of the Century.

  As George pulled up to the front entrance of the club with the Seville, Phil for whatever reason talked about the civil rights movement.

  “All the true sacrifices were made in the late fifties and the sixties,” he said, wagging a finger. “This is lazy time out here. Someone else paved our way. I was there.”

  While he talked, he kept turning around very quickly as if someone were tapping his shoulder. But no one was there. He was so convincing, he had me wheeling around to look a couple of times.

  “Phil,” I said. “Whatsa matter? What are you doing?”

  “Oh, you know,” he said. “The first time you don’t look, that’s when they really start following you.” It was going to be interesting having him and Joey in the same room.

  We had exterior shots to do the next day, which included most of the lines the members of the Ramones would get to speak in the movie. That wasn’t many. We were there to put on a show, take over the school, and provide comic relief, but we definitely weren’t students of Stella Adler. For a guy who wouldn’t shut up, Dee Dee never met a line he didn’t flub. Joey was shy off camera. On camera, he played a shyer version of himself. John could say a line correctly, but he came across as stiff. He was much more at home playing guitar or talking baseball.

  Outside the front entrance to the school, they were setting up a bonfire of Ramones albums. They were all there—Ramones, Leave Home, Rocket to Russia, and Road to Ruin. There were enough of each to stock all the Tower Records stores in LA. For the authorities to burn your book or album, you generally had to be pretty good. Also sprinkled into the pile for good measure were a few legendary albums. I spotted Bob Dylan’s thoughtful face on Highway 61 Revisited and the tight blue jeans on the cover of the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers. At least in one
sense we were all burning up the charts.

  The four Ramones rolled into school in the open-top pink Cadillac with our battle cry license plate—Gabba Gabba Hey. The plate proudly read New York. We would be going back the long way. We had a couple more days on the set, then three shows to film in one day at the Roxy for the movie. At that point, anyone outside the band might guess we were scheduled to fly back to New York, but that wasn’t the case. We would be touring California for a week or two, spending New Year’s Eve in San Jose, then making our way east in correct van seating formation, hitting every viable venue between the two oceans. It was a formula for burnout, but the money was starting to get really good.

  Joey was not going to receive an invitation anytime soon to the Actors Studio, but as we walked on camera toward the bonfire, he delivered, flawlessly, one of those rare lines that goes down both in comedic and rock-and-roll history—“Things sure have changed since we got kicked out of high school.” John’s place in the history of cinema was secured moments later when Principal Togar mistook us for students. “We’re not students. We’re the Ramones.” The line was delivered flatly, and I thought it would have been even better without “the” in it, but with the Ramones you took what you got.

  What I got was the chance to stick a piece of looseleaf paper on Togar’s back that said “Kick Me.” But as we walked into the school, Mary Woronov got the best of all of us when Principal Togar shouted, “Do your parents know you’re Ramones?”

  Part of a director’s job is to make sure the actors understand their motivations in any given scene. That’s even more critical when the scenes are shot out of sequence, which is just about always. Especially when you’re doing a low-budget independent movie, the producers have to group together scenes by location to keep costs down. So here we were in a school office, but supposedly backstage after the big show at the local theater that we hadn’t actually played yet. Dee Dee’s big moment had arrived.