Punk Rock Blitzkrieg

by Marky Ramone

  “Hey, pizza!”

  Those were his words as he walked into the room with a half-dozen soggy pizza cartons. At least he got it right. They were already carving his name into a best supporting actor award at the Academy. Next, resolving a major subplot, Riff Randell walked in and handed Joey her sheet music for “Rock ’n’ Roll High School,” a song actually written by Joey and Dee Dee. In the real world, she could have given them acting lessons in return for songwriting lessons, but this was Hollywood.

  The pizza should have been paid scale, because it saved the scene. There was a close shot of Dee Dee staring down an oily, gooey slice and wondering whether or not to put it in his mouth. This after swallowing dozens of pills off the playground floor. John threw a slice across the room. Joey started to eat his slice, but our sleazy manager, played by Herbie Braha, had other ideas.

  “How many times do I have to tell you, no pizza for you, Joey! More wheat germ and riboflavin! Organic alfalfa!”

  Herbie began stuffing Joey’s mouth with alfalfa sprouts. Joey the actor made Joey the character cooperate and chew. For Joey the real person, it was shock treatment and would have to work itself out in the coming weeks with thousands of sidewalk taps and doorknob touches. At least the sprouts were fresh, rather than the kind left out on the kitchen table for weeks.

  The only Ramone on the set who ate the pizza without a fuss was me. So, for at least a moment, art imitated life. All that was left was for Joey to tell Riff and her music teacher he’d take a look at the song. Easier said than done. The teacher, Mr. McGree, was played by Paul Bartel, a Brooklyn guy who got the acting bug many years before and headed west. Now, looking like a horse with the oats almost cleared from his mouth, Joey spoke.

  “If we like ’em, we’ll come and pay you and Mr. McGloop a visit.”

  Allan yelled cut.

  “Who the fuck is Mr. McGloop?”

  “I don’t know,” Joey said. “I think I was thinking of Mr. Magoo.”

  “That’s great, Joey. Now try thinking of Mr. McGree.”

  We tried it two more times and got two more Mr. McGloops. So Allan decided to leave it in. What the hell. One day, we figured, “McGloop” would be the answer to a punk rock trivia question. Meantime, we wouldn’t be holding our breath for our SAG cards to come in the mail. It was good we didn’t have many lines, or the movie would have been finished around the end of the century.

  Back at the Trop, Dee Dee was hanging out with two LA girls by the pool. There were many people around the hotel and around the world who would have identified these two as “groupies.” I tried never to do that. To me they were fans. They were people who bought our albums, came to our shows, and enabled us to spend our lives doing what we loved instead of wiling away our time at a desk or on a dock. I introduced myself as Marky and shook their hands.

  These fans, however, were handing Dee Dee little orange pills, which I identified as speed. I had known Dee Dee for years and really didn’t know he was into that. Then again, he wasn’t the most discriminating drug user. I walked over to my room. I didn’t know where Marion was—maybe out with Vera getting something at Los Tacos, down the road. Phil Spector wouldn’t be coming by tonight, so I thought it would be a good idea a little later to check in on Dee Dee.

  When I did, I got another surprise. One of the girls was in the living room smoking a joint. She told me Dee Dee was in the bathroom. Given his activities lately, I thought it wasn’t a bad idea once in a while to see if our bassist was alive. The bathroom door was open and I poked my head in.

  “You okay, Dougie?”

  “Yeah, great. Come on in.”

  Dee Dee and the other girl were in the bathtub. She was naked. Dee Dee was, too, except for underwear. It wasn’t his. He was wearing what I figured were the girl’s underpants—a frilly satin pink Frederick’s of Hollywood number with a red heart on it.

  “Do you know if Marion’s with Vera?” I said.

  “I dunno,” Dee Dee said.

  “Dee Dee, what the fuck exactly are you doing?”

  “This young lady needed a bath,” Dee Dee said. “Just a bath. Look, I’m still dressed!”

  Craziness, like everything, had different levels. Some people thought pushing the limit with your dedicated, loving wife was crazy. Others thought popping amphetamines or wearing some girl’s kinky underwear in a motel bathtub was crazy. But doing all of it at once when your wife could walk in the door any minute was Dee Dee.

  The scene at the fictitious Rockatorium was one of the last exterior shots. Riff was camped out waiting to buy tickets in front of what was actually an abandoned movie theater in downtown LA. In the real world, people were walking to work on a typical weekday morning. Commuters at traffic lights were honking and little coffee shops and diners were cooking breakfast. You could literally smell the ham and eggs. In our make-believe world, cordoned off with wires and security ropes, the Ramones were being chauffeured to the venue on the day of the big show. Our chauffeur was Rodney Bingenheimer.

  Rodney Bingenheimer was a well-known DJ both inside and beyond Los Angeles. He didn’t take the normal route: tinkering with ham radios, getting a communications degree, and doing the graveyard shift at a 100-watt jazz station. In the sixties, he was a moptop chameleon. He looked so much like Sonny Bono that he almost fooled Cher, who became a close friend. Bingenheimer also got the job as the stand-in for Davy Jones on the TV series The Monkees. Eventually, Bingenheimer looked and sounded enough like a disc jockey to become one. On KROQ, he was one of the first in the country to play the Ramones, Blondie, and the Sex Pistols. He loved us and gave us the airwaves. The spot in the driver’s seat was like a small token of our appreciation. Really, we should have been chauffeuring him.

  After being let off at the curb, the four Ramones walked on camera lip-synching “I Just Want to Have Something to Do.” I didn’t have the luxury of strutting along the sidewalk with a guitar or bass like John or Dee Dee. The drums stayed in the open-top Cadillac. The only props I had were a pair of drumsticks miraculously creating this monster rock sound. I felt ridiculous.

  “Cut!”

  Allan wanted me to be a little more animated. I needed to play along, dance, act out the music. Click the sticks to the beat. I asked how two sticks without a kit could sound like drums. Something about “suspended disbelief.” When we did the next take, I clicked and bobbed and weaved and shook. I pointed the sticks at screaming fans. It was goofy. Goofier than even Mr. McGloop. And it was a wrap. The only problem was, one day I would have to watch it back on a large screen.

  On December 14, we played the first of three consecutive shows at the Roxy on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. The movie would feature five live songs with a screaming audience. To keep the screaming fresh, we would play to three separate audiences and use the best footage. Cast members would stay in the front all three shows for continuity. They included Clint Howard and Vince Van Patten. Clint was the younger brother of Ron Howard, Richie from TV’s Happy Days. Vince was the son of Dick Van Patten from TV’s Eight Is Enough. In Hollywood, good lineage never hurt.

  The lineage of the Roxy was everything you could have hoped for. Originally a strip club, it became a rock club in the early seventies. Not simply a venue for top acts, the acoustics at the Roxy were ideal for live recordings. Artists including Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, George Benson, Frank Zappa and the Mothers, and Bob Marley and the Wailers had each recorded all or parts of live albums here. Even the name had lineage. During John Lennon’s long “lost weekend” in 1974–75, Lennon, Harry Nilsson, Keith Moon, and Alice Cooper all partied regularly at the bar above the club. The Ramones brought along their own Roxy, Johnny’s girlfriend, to continue the tradition, and she could drink Lennon and friends under the table.

  The Ramones were a young band but had already spawned countless disciples of their own. Some of them were at the Roxy on this night. Black Flag had a raw guitar sound evidently influenced by the Ramones but with a far more guttural vocal
approach. The band had just released a four-song EP with a total running time of five minutes and twenty-three seconds. Forget leads: there was barely time for a chorus.

  The Germs featured the very talented chord-shredding Pat Smear on guitar and the manic, self-destructive lead singer Darby Crash, who usually delivered on the last name. The band X was probably the most talented of the bunch. Songs like “White Girl” were offbeat in theme and featured inventive melodies along with terrific vocal harmonies. When Doors’ keyboardist Ray Manzarek agreed to produce X, you had a notion of what he heard—a distant legacy of the strange LA tales his own band used to weave.

  But the truth was, these LA punk bands could barely find a place to play in a California baked in soft rock, lite rock, commercial rock, and corporate rock. As eager as the Ramones were to break through in a still bigger way than we had, we were, simply by being on this famous stage with lenses trained on us—enjoying success that the LA disciples could only dream of. The dues were a bitch. I could only hope that our being in the limelight for the moment would encourage these bands to keep pursuing their artistic vision no matter how many times they were spit on—or worse still, not spit on.

  We ripped through “Blitzkrieg,” “Teenage Lobotomy,” “California Sun,” and “Pinhead” before closing with “She’s the One.” It felt good not to be lip-synching. To be bashing away for real and having the crowd’s energy flood the stage. I still felt the heat of the pyrotechnics from the final school scene we had shot the day before, when Riff and friends pushed the plunger and detonated the building. It blew out windows and forced up massive plumes of smoke.

  But once Riff yelled, “Hit it, Marky!” I had to sit there in my leather jacket, play along to the title track, and not look back like Lot and his wife in the Old Testament. It wasn’t about turning into a pillar of salt. The stakes were larger—we could blow up the school only once. So I tried to ignore the heat on the back of my neck, grimaced a bit, played through a little anxiety, and took one for the team.

  Before long, we would be back to record an album with Phil Spector. In rock and roll, there could hardly be a better legacy. I hoped the pyrotechnics were behind us.

  11

  WALL OF SOUND

  We were back at Los Angeles International Airport waiting for our baggage to slide down the ramp and swing around the carousel. I knew what everyone’s stuff looked like more or less, and the Ramones’ luggage wasn’t on the first cart unloaded. A situation like this one required patience, and Dee Dee didn’t have any. He edged up to the carousel and eyed a particular red American Tourister suitcase that had already circled around once, unclaimed.

  The suitcase looked like it had taken a beating over the plains states. The handle was busted and the zipper was broken. Clothing was sticking out. As the bag swung around for lap two, Dee Dee positioned himself to intercept it. He yanked it off the belt using the broken handle and began rifling through. A white silk blouse caught his eye. So did a gray cashmere sweater. Dee Dee had excellent taste in stolen women’s clothing at the airport. He slipped the items under his jacket and continued the treasure hunt.

  I smiled and looked at Marion in disbelief. She smiled back and rolled her eyes. There were a hundred and fifty witnesses and basic rules of civilization, and none of them seemed to mean anything to our bassist. But the middle-aged white lady now yelling in Dee Dee’s face caught his attention.

  “Excuse me! What are you doing with my clothes?”

  “Oh, this yours? Sorry.”

  He didn’t seem sorry at all other than that he was caught. He pulled the blouse and sweater out from under his jacket and sheepishly handed them over to the lady.

  “What is wrong with you?”

  We were all still trying to figure that out and really didn’t expect a breakthrough here in baggage claim at LAX. The lady folded her garments and tried to put Humpty Dumpty back together again as Dee Dee gazed back down the carousel for the next victim. I hoped our luggage was coming soon.

  There were turrets on either side of Phil Spector’s Beverly Hills mansion. As we stood outside the wrought iron gates waiting to be led inside, I wondered whether Phil Spector himself was up right now in one of those turrets looking out on me, Dee Dee, Joey, John, and Monte. It was kind of the same creepy feeling Dee Dee and I got walking along the Berlin Wall and getting lit up by searchlights, except the East Germans weren’t looking to deliver the Ramones a platinum album.

  It was less a house than a compound. There were a lot of warning signs. Do not enter. Do not touch gate. Beware of attack dogs. The signs looked pretty amateurish, and that made them more rather than less imposing.

  George Brand let us in the front gate, past the fountain, and in through the large wooden entrance doors. The furniture was mostly red velvet from the mid-seventies, which was recent history but receding fast. George led us to the living room, where behind a grand piano sat Phil Spector.

  “Ramones! You ready to make the best album of your lives?”

  “Yeah, yeah, ready.”

  Sitting on the love seat was Grandpa Al Lewis. Lewis would forever be connected to the role he made famous on the sixties TV show The Munsters. But I loved him even before that as Officer Schnauser on Car 54, Where Are You? It was surreal seeing him in Phil Spector’s living room—or anyone’s living room, for that matter. And the next surprise arrived when Grandpa stood up. He was well over six feet tall. In the cowboy boots and ten-gallon western hat, he looked closer to seven feet.

  Phil walked us toward his billiard room. On the way there I looked through to the gigantic kitchen and saw a massive Saint Bernard chained up in the corner. He looked big enough to drag the mahogany cabinets and marble counters with him if he really wanted to. If a visitor for some reason tried something unwise and somehow got past George, Phil’s guns, and Phil’s karate, the dog would maul whoever it was and make them wish Phil or George had finished the job.

  Phil Spector had a lot to be proud of, but he was proudest of his billiard table. Right here the legendary pool player Willie Mosconi had given Phil lessons on how to sink balls like a champion. Mosconi had once sunk 526 in a row. He could make one billiard ball jump over another and then strike and sink a third ball. Mosconi had coached Paul Newman during the filming of the 1961 movie The Hustler. Phil Spector was no Paul Newman, but when it came to producing a record, he was Marlon Brando.

  He had big plans for End of the Century. The Ramones’ fifth studio album was going to be big in both the sonic and sales senses. Seymour Stein was paying Phil Spector on the order of a quarter million dollars to produce it and put the band over the top.

  Phil led us back to the living room and explained how his Wall of Sound would meet the Ramones’ wall of sound and create wall-to-wall sound. For that to happen, we had to all listen to him and put our confidence in him. He told us how much he liked the new songs, including “Do You Remember Rock ’n’ Roll Radio?” which he said had a classic fifties feel and which should become a huge anthem. He had high hopes for “Danny Says,” which was an airy ballad and a major departure for the group.

  The cover song he wanted to do was “Baby, I Love You,” which he had cowritten back in 1963 for the Ronettes. Phil emphasized how important it was for Joey to get the right feel on the vocals for “Baby,” and that if he did, there was no stopping us. The song had been a hit before and could do it again.

  Although I loved the song, I wasn’t sure it was right for the Ramones. But it wasn’t like I was going to question the judgment of probably the greatest producer who had ever lived. In any case, Phil Spector was comfortable with old friends, whether they were songs or people. It was easy to see why Grandpa Al Lewis fit into that category. Lewis’s politics were, like Phil’s, radical and to the left. There in the living room, with his cigar and classic New York accent, Lewis argued for the abolishment of New York’s harsh Rockefeller drug laws and the establishment of universal health care. John wasn’t into it.

  “You give these lazy im
migrants something free like that and you’ll never get rid of them.”

  “Who wants to get rid of them except you?” Lewis said. “They built the country.”

  “People like my father built the country,” John said.

  “Do you know how many Chinese immigrants died pounding out the Union Pacific Railroad, my friend? Hundreds!”

  I had to laugh hearing John warn us about immigrants taking free stuff. All his T-shirts came from the band’s merchandise. We would get plain T-shirts in bulk so that Arturo Vega could silk-screen the Ramones logo onto them for sale after the shows. Before the logo went on, John would skim a dozen black shirts, a dozen blue ones, and a half dozen of whatever color. Those were the shirts John wore to every occasion including interviews, bar mitzvahs, and wakes. He never under any circumstances bought underwear or socks. His mother always bought him a ton of them for Christmas and that was all he ever needed. John’s yearly wardrobe budget was zero dollars and zero cents.

  Grandpa Al was more than a left-winger. He was an eccentric and one with a delusion here and there. He told us he served on the legal defense team of the 1920s anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. There was no doubt Grandpa would have if he could have, but he was about eleven years old at the time—or an infant, depending upon which birth date you believed. He also informed us that in the sixties he met Charles Manson, who babysat his sons. “He was a gentleman!” Grandpa said. Hearing this, Dee Dee started talking about his own sons, who didn’t even exist, and about his fictional days fighting the Vietcong. Someone should have grabbed a tape recorder, because this was an album.

  When we walked into Gold Star Recording Studios on May 1, Phil, my new buddy, stopped me.

  “Take it off. Take it off! I’m not spending the fucking day staring at a picture of my ex-wife!”

  I was a Ronettes fan. It was as simple as that. That’s why I was wearing a T-shirt with Ronnie Spector and the other two Ronettes on it. It was not to annoy Phil. If anything, it was a tribute. For a second, I didn’t know what to do. On one hand, I didn’t take shit from people, including the guys in my own band. On the other hand, I wanted things to go smoothly, especially now. We didn’t need to start the album of our lives with a confrontation. But on the first hand again, I didn’t have another T-shirt with me.