Punk Rock Blitzkrieg

by Marky Ramone

  “Well, you don’t need me here.”

  It was just a whisper from Monte to John Markovich. It wasn’t meant for anyone else’s ears, especially not Phil’s. But Phil had the best ears in the Western Hemisphere, so if we heard it, so did he. It might as well have been said in the echo chamber. Still, Monte lifted himself up off the couch and tried to slink out of the control room.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Phil Spector was pissed off.

  “I’m leaving,” Monte said. “You don’t need me here.”

  “You’re damn right we don’t need you here,” Phil said. “We only need the keys.”

  “The keys?”

  “Are you deaf? The keys. To the van. Hand them over.”

  “C’mon, Phil,” Monte said. “What are you doing this for?”

  “What do you think, you’re going to go back to the Tropicana and take a nap? Fine. Take a cab!”

  “I’m responsible for the van,” Monte said. “The insurance is in my name. I can’t just leave it with you or with anyone, for that matter. If something happens to the van, it’s my ass.”

  “I got news for you,” Phil said. “It’s already your ass. Van or no van.”

  At that point I felt bad for Monte. He seemed to be fighting back the tears. No matter how many gold records Phil Spector had on his wall, there was no way the Ramones were going to fire Monte. Not over this. On some level, Monte had to know that. On another level, Phil had us all so agitated that anything seemed possible. Someone from the band should have jumped in at that moment on Monte’s behalf. But no one did. We were paralyzed. Monte was between a rock and an echo chamber.

  I felt even worse when I considered the way we endlessly pranked Monte. Earlier in the year, on our way from Chicago to Detroit, we all had to take a leak and the next rest stop was at least a half hour away. So we pulled the van off to the service road of Route 90 and took our turns. Each of us would pee facing the van, so that the vehicle would shield us from the passing traffic. I went, then John, then Dee Dee. Joey was holding it in.

  When it was Monte’s turn, John took the wheel, and we waited till Monte’s fly was open. At that point John put the van in gear and pulled up about fifty yards, leaving Monte exposed to the world. His reaction was the normal one. He panicked and ran to catch up with the van with his schlong still hanging out. I let John know Monte was coming, and when he got close, John stepped on the gas and pulled the van forward another fifty yards.

  And here we were at Gold Star, leaving Monte exposed all over again. This time it was no joke. Monte walked out of the control room and into the lounge, all the while hoping Phil wouldn’t follow him, but he did. John, John Markovich, and I followed behind. Phil wasn’t going to let it go. Where were the LA prostitutes when you really needed them?

  “I’m coming back later to pick everybody up,” Monte said. “Okay?”

  “No. Not okay. Don’t come back.”

  “I am coming back,” Monte said. “It’s my job.”

  Monte made his way out the exit. No personnel were fired. No shots were fired. Phil shook his head and walked back into the control room muttering.

  “Stupid schmuck.”

  I looked at John, who was also shaking his head, and offered the only two words that popped into my head.

  “Welcome back.”

  John had another concern. Phil had told him earlier in the day that we were going to move to a different studio the following day, but Phil wouldn’t tell him where. I told John that’s because it’s nowhere. There was no way we were relocating. This was the place where all the magic had happened going back to when we were still kids listening to Darlene Love. Maybe Phil was just kidding around with John. Or fucking around with John. Either way, I felt the urge to get away from it all. I thought about renting my own car and heading up into the hills.

  I was glad about one thing—that no matter how close he had come to blowing a gasket, Monte ultimately did not give in to the great Phil Spector. In a sense, Monte had earned his own gold star.

  But this was no way to make an album. We all knew it. So the four of us put in a call to Seymour Stein. Seymour was one of the all-time class acts and had sunk a fortune into the Ramones more out of belief than out of financial sense. So we weren’t going to tell Seymour Stein what to say or do or think. We just had to clear the air. We were at a boiling point. We never knew what to expect when we walked into the studio. There was happy Phil, and there was down Phil. There was understanding Phil, and there was maniac Phil. We needed producer Phil.

  That night, when Phil Spector knocked on my door at the Tropicana, he seemed fine, and I certainly wasn’t going to recap the day’s events or tell him we had complained about him to the guy who was paying all the bills. Phil enjoyed my company and had obviously calmed down. He probably had a few drinks between then and now, and if the bottle of grape Manischewitz in a brown paper bag was any indication, he was about to have a few more.

  Fortunately, there was always other stuff to talk about, especially with Phil. The nuclear plant at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania had nearly melted down earlier in the spring, sending the eastern part of the United States into a state of fear and alert. The crisis was averted, but Phil was convinced it actually got much closer to a catastrophe than the government ever admitted, and more radiation got out than we were being told. I agreed. A meltdown was a terrible thing on either coast.

  The next morning on the van ride over to the studio, John told us he had heard from Linda Stein the night before. Seymour had called Phil and asked him to cool it. It was fine to do whatever he needed from a production standpoint, but the confrontations had to stop. That included confrontations with the Ramones crew who, like Phil Spector, were just doing their job. There was no argument. Seymour was paying him, and that was the way it had to be.

  Phil was calm when we got to the studio. He had never been abusive directly to the band members, but now he was far less edgy and more businesslike. Dee Dee looked ready to bounce off the walls as Larry set up his microphones and Phil watched. We were working on the bass sound for “I’m Affected.” The bass guitar introduced the song and had to be big.

  Phil had Dee Dee run through the song a few times before recording. Larry had three or four microphones on the bass cabinet at different distances and angles. Phil told Larry repeatedly to leave the faders up, but Larry kept bringing them down a bit.

  “How fucking badly do you want to ruin this song?” Phil said. “That was the sound I was looking for, and you went and fucked with it.”

  “Phil, there was too much distortion on the bass. I couldn’t record it.”

  “You mean you have the balls to sit there and tell me something you’ve done . . . something we’ve done a thousand times you suddenly can’t do.”

  “We never recorded with that amount of distortion,” Larry said.

  “What’s distorted is what you’re telling me! What’s distorted is your fucking brain!”

  It struck me that no matter how good the album might turn out or how many copies it might sell, the experience of making it wasn’t going to get much better than this. Phil wasn’t giving less shit. The shit was just running downhill.

  The next day, Monte told us we had the day off. He had gotten a call from Gold Star Recording Studios saying that Phil wouldn’t be in today. It was kind of a relief, but John and I didn’t want to waste the day. So we had Monte drive us to SIR, a rehearsal studio on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.

  “Us” consisted of John, Dee Dee, and me. Although my tracks were already down, we wanted to make demos of a couple of songs that still needed guitar and bass, starting with “I Can’t Make It on Time,” and “All the Way.” We took one of the medium-sized rehearsal rooms in the back as opposed to the large production stage at the front. About a half hour in, I had to go to the bathroom, so I excused myself and walked to the men’s room down the hall. After finishing and washing, I figured I would get a fresh pair of sticks from my should
er bag. As I unzipped it, I saw that my wallet was open and my money was gone.

  It was $150. I knew I had packed it. I remembered putting it in that morning just before walking out the door. I challenged my memory. Maybe I thought about putting it in the bag but didn’t. No, I definitely had. I remembered putting it in the billfold and even remembered the denominations—six twenties, two tens, and two fives. I turned my head and saw Dee Dee sitting on a stool and fiddling with his bass. As I looked up from the floor, he looked down at me. If it was an awkward moment, it was awkward for me only. When John walked back into the room a moment later, it was game on.

  “What are we going to do, John?” I said. “My money’s gone.”

  “You sure?” John said.

  “Of course I’m sure,” I said.

  “Okay, come on, Dougie,” John said. “Start with the pockets. Come on.”

  “Seriously?” Dee Dee said.

  “Come on, Dee Dee,” I said. “I gotta check you out.”

  Dee Dee didn’t put up a fight. He just shrugged and emptied his jean pockets. Out came room keys, a few dollars, roach clips, and a rainbow assortment of pills. That wasn’t going to be good enough. I had him hand me his leather jacket, and I went through that. Then John told him to take off his pants entirely. John knew I didn’t want to pat Dee Dee down. I didn’t want to relive being strip-searched at Erasmus even if I was the one doing the searching. It was bad enough I had to see Dee Dee almost naked. If management or another band walked in, they would have thought the Ramones were rehearsing for a porno instead of an album.

  It was amazing how many drugs one man could slip and shove into his clothing if he put his mind to it. Dean Gallo would have lit up like a Christmas tree. But my money was still missing. I knew one thing: if Dee Dee had it up his ass, he could keep it.

  I looked at one last suspicious area and then looked at John. John nodded.

  “C’mon, Dee Dee,” I said. “You gotta finish with the socks.”

  Dee Dee was now sitting on the floor. He put one foot up on his knee, pulled off a white Champion athletic sock, and turned it inside out. I nodded, which in universal strip-search language meant C’mon, the other one, too. Dee Dee took off the other sock, and the money came right out. I picked it up and counted it: six twenties, two tens, and two fives.

  “Don’t look at me,” Dee Dee said. “I don’t know how it got there.”

  “It’s a complete fucking mystery,” John said.

  “You are one sick little klepto,” I said.

  There was no yelling. There was no further interrogation. There was no apology. Dee Dee’s expression didn’t even change. That was more upsetting to me than either losing the cash or even the idea that my band-mate would steal it. For all Dee Dee apparently cared, this could have been the baggage carousel at LAX. I counted the money a second time, put it back in my wallet, and we continued rehearsing.

  We rehearsed at SIR for a second day and a third. I took my bag to the bathroom every time I had to go. When we resumed the sessions at Gold Star, I took a good look at Larry Levine. He looked okay. There was a rumor going around that Larry had suffered a minor heart attack. To me, “minor heart attack” was an oxymoron. If it was true—and we definitely weren’t going to ask Larry or Phil—it had to have something to do with stress. Specifically, the stress of being used as a whipping boy over the past few weeks or the past couple of decades. The more you held it in, the more it came back to bite you. But I didn’t want to play doctor or psychologist. I was just glad Larry was alive and well. In the studio, it was business as usual.

  Business as usual for the Ramones included wearing leather jackets on the album cover, but there was now talk of doing away with them. The photographer, Mick Rock, had us shoot it both ways: one set with the jackets, the other without. The shots without the jackets were above the waist only and featured each of the four of us in a different solid-colored T-shirt: black, yellow, red, and blue. Now that we heard through Danny Fields that Sire was considering putting the T-shirt shot on the cover, it was time for a band vote.

  I thought we should keep the coats on for the cover. First of all, it was punk. Second of all, we looked better in the jackets. Third, and not necessarily last, with Phil Spector at the helm, End of the Century was in all likelihood going to have more of a pop sound than our audience was used to, so I felt that keeping the jackets on would reassure our fans. The place for the T-shirt shots, I thought, was the inside cover. No jackets inside the jacket, get it? It was good bonus material, but not an album cover.

  John agreed. He had been wearing the same exact jacket the whole time I had known him, and to him it was a family member. But Joey and Dee Dee liked the T-shirt shots, so the vote was two to two. The record company would have to serve as the tiebreaker. It didn’t matter much right now. The album wasn’t due out for a while. The project was winding down, and there wasn’t much left for John, Dee Dee, or me to do. I wanted to get back home and relax for a little while before we started touring again in June, and it seemed John and Dee Dee couldn’t get out of LA fast enough.

  Though it was also premature, we talked about what song or songs might become singles. “Rock ’n’ Roll High School” seemed like an obvious choice, but the lyrics were over-the-top anti-school. “Do You Remember Rock ’n’ Roll Radio?” seemed like another obvious choice, but that one broke an even more sacred rule: Don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Or plays you. The song took a clear shot at commercial radio of the day, blasting stations for generic playlists and predicting the imminent death of rock and roll.

  We wouldn’t know for sure for a while still, but it looked like “Baby, I Love You” would be the first single off the album, given its history. I didn’t mind that Phil had Jim Keltner play drums on “Baby, I Love You.” Jim was one of the best session drummers around. His massive résumé included extensive work with John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr on their various solo projects. George and Ringo even put notes on their album covers asking people to join the Jim Keltner Fan Club. For me, having royalty fill in once in a while was an honor.

  The guitar work on “Baby, I Love You” was being done by David Kessel. He and his brother Dan were sons of Barney Kessel, session guitarist extraordinaire and charter member of the Wrecking Crew. If you took people like Barney Kessel and Hal Blaine out of the picture, the Billboard charts of the fifties, sixties, and seventies would look like a wall full of holes.

  The background vocals on the original version of “Baby, I Love You” had a strange history of their own. Even though the Ronettes were scheduled to tour at the time, Phil Spector held back his future wife Ronnie Bennett to work on the lead vocals. While Ronnie’s cousin Elaine filled in on tour with the other Ronettes, the background vocals in the studio were performed by Darlene Love and a seventeen-year-old Cher. They were the best fill-ins available on the planet.

  Whoever Phil Spector had in mind to sing background vocals this time around, it wasn’t going to be Dee Dee or, for that matter, Johnny Ramone. They were flying over the Rocky Mountains by now. I wasn’t far behind.

  Before he took off, John reflected for a moment on Three Mile Island. He had no use for all the fairy rock stars and the No Nukes concert they were already talking about putting on. In fact, John said, we needed more nuclear plants—a lot more, and fast—to put an end to those long lines at the gas pumps and to destroy those Arab towel-head fucks and their oil fields. I didn’t bother arguing. If nothing else, it was good to see John feeling like his old self again.

  12

  TRICKLE-DOWN ECONOMICS

  The building at 29 John Street where Marion and I lived had been around for about seventy years but was no match for my 500-watt stereo system. It was a tall converted loft building in the financial district, a few blocks north of Wall Street. The building was originally commercial but was now “mixed use,” in this case about half commercial and half residential. I managed to disturb both halves.

  When we had a few days
off from touring, I led the life of a king—or at least a punk prince. I would get up in the late morning and order in. In my case, ordering in consisted of calling the liquor store across the street from our building. The owner would usually make the trip up in the elevator to the ninth floor himself. He loved me. And why wouldn’t he? I spent hundreds of dollars on wine, champagne, vodka, and anything else that seemed appealing with a late brunch, or instead of it.

  Once I had a few drinks to wake up, the afternoon concert began. I blasted a wide variety of great music: the Kinks, the Who, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, the Beatles, Blondie, Little Richard, the Ronettes, and this other great band called the Ramones. There were complaints from the left and complaints from the right. From upstairs and from downstairs. There were complaints from jewelry wholesalers, law offices, and residential loft dwellers who were having trouble dwelling. Apparently, the pipes carried the sound up and down through the building to a degree where my neighbors could tell whether I was playing the studio version or live version of Tommy.

  I didn’t give a shit about the complaints. It was business hours, and this was my business. But they did have a point. It was getting a little too loud. One afternoon, side two of Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland cracked the glass in one of our cabinets.

  For the first time in my life, I was making really good money consistently, and there was nothing wrong with that. When I first joined the Ramones, the arrangement was done on a handshake, and it was great to get that regular paycheck from Ira Herzog. But I asked for a more formal agreement, and John resisted.

  I called my father one day while we were on tour and told him how disappointed I was. He told me not to let them screw me. My dad got me a lawyer, and we asked for a piece of the record royalties and merchandising. Our offer seemed reasonable to me: about half of what John, Dee Dee, and Joey got starting with my first Ramones album, Road to Ruin, and thereafter a slightly increasing percentage with each album that followed. The Ramones camp held out for a long time, but my father told me to stay cool because eventually they would cave. And that’s exactly what happened.