Punk Rock Blitzkrieg

by Marky Ramone

  “Don’t tell me you didn’t say it!” Dee Dee shouted. “Vera told me everything!”

  “Really?” Joey said. “What if I told you Vera was full of shit?”

  With no hesitation, Dee Dee punched Joey in the mouth. It was a bit of a reach, but he landed a solid blow. Joey fell to the pavement and his sunglasses popped off. More patrons were pouring out of the Howard Johnson’s for the main event. The only positive thing I could think of was that an ambulance was already on its way.

  From the moment I noticed Joey and Dee Dee fighting, through Aaron’s horrible accident, to our bassist’s KO of our lead singer, very little time had elapsed. The whole thing was about two and a half minutes—about the length of a good Ramones song.

  Our tour swung back through New York, and on September 1, we stopped in at 30 Rockefeller Center to appear on NBC’s The Tomorrow Show. We were fans of the show and its host, Tom Snyder. Tom was a good-natured Midwestern guy who’d made his way out to Los Angeles to be a newscaster en route to becoming a major talk-show personality. We liked The Tomorrow Show because an interview with Tom was not standard fare.

  Tom sat you down like a guest in his own living room and plunged headfirst into your situation like a half-journalist/half-shrink. If three million or four million people happened to be watching, so be it. He laughed hard, he scoffed hard, and he set the bar for a good interview right around the bar for good sex—nothing short of sheer exhaustion was acceptable. Once Dan Aykroyd of Saturday Night Live had captured the manic flap of the head and arms in his brilliant impression, Tom Snyder was permanently etched into the brain of everyone who stayed up past eleven thirty.

  The official name of The Tomorrow Show was Tomorrow with Tom Snyder, but that applied to tomorrow, not today. Tom was out, so for our afternoon taping we were getting the substitute host, Kelly Lange. Lange had done the news with Snyder out in Los Angeles and was a fairly regular stand-in, but she was no Tom Snyder. We didn’t care. We were happy to get a national spot.

  I was really excited that afternoon to meet Ed Asner, who was backstage with us waiting to go on the show. Asner played Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show along with one of the best supporting casts in television history. He was currently playing Lou Grant in a top-rated show of the same name, making the jump from comedy to drama seamlessly. Anyone who knew Ed Asner strictly from those series thought of him as a gruff, short-tempered character, but in real life he was smooth and gracious, a testament to terrific acting.

  Asner’s politics were also not so obvious from the characters he played. He was president of the Screen Actors Guild and outspoken on behalf of progressive causes. Asner spoke out against US support for right-wing governments in Latin America and advocated for universal health care. My dad would have especially enjoyed shooting the breeze with him.

  My friend Richard was with us backstage, and I asked him to grab me something to drink from the dressing room. My mouth was getting dry from talking up a storm with Ed Asner and letting him know I was a big fan. So when Richard handed me a can of club soda, I thanked him. I quickly opened the top and almost the whole can shot all over Ed Asner. I knew the prank was meant for me, but unlike The Tomorrow Show, this was happening live.

  Asner was drenched—jacket, shirt, tie, and pants. Makeup was running from his cheeks. I said I was very sorry and almost called him Lou. He looked flustered, and for a split second I thought he was going to call me Ted and tear me a new one. But a couple of assistant producers were there in a flash with paper towels. It wasn’t a great omen for the show.

  The studio audience loved our two-song set of “Sedated” and “KKK.” It would have been good to walk off to that applause, but once Kelly Lange had the four of us sitting in front of her, she fired away.

  “You don’t give your real names because you don’t want your mothers to be subjected to that.”

  “To be disgraced,” John said.

  The audience laughed at John’s comeback. It was completely sarcastic, and they picked up on it. Kelly Lange was not physically unattractive, but she came off like a schoolmarm. She was the true-life version of Principal Togar from Rock ’n’ Roll High School. We could see Lange was already reloading, but she didn’t seem to understand that we prepared well for our roles. Not just in the movie—our entire lives.

  “Can you see?” Lange asked Joey while moving his hair from his eyes.

  “I was meaning to get a haircut,” Joey said. Laughter.

  “What do you guys do all day?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” John said. More laughter. Then Joey dropped the bomb.

  “We really feel cheated that Tom isn’t here.”

  Touché. The roof caved in. Ramones humor, like Ramones music, was best served stripped down.

  Kelly Lange proceeded to back off a bit and ask some legitimate questions, which led to a half-decent though not quite Tom Snyder–caliber discussion. Joey explained that the Ramones had stuck to their original idea but that there were no hard feelings toward bands that were heavily commercial. There was room for everybody. Dee Dee talked about how the kids in Detroit and Ohio identified with the Ramones because they had the same problems, which was too bad for the kids in Detroit and Ohio.

  As the group continued discussing the Midwest, my left foot, sitting atop my right knee, began to vibrate visibly as if it had a little motor in it. John’s steel-blue eyes fixated on the vibrating foot until he couldn’t stand it a moment longer. He grabbed my left Chucky-T sneaker and stopped it cold, to the delight of the studio audience. Then he let go and without missing a beat it started vibrating again. I hadn’t said anything to that point. But somehow, without really trying, I had made a deeply personal statement.

  MTV launched on August 1, 1981, and in the two full months since, no one we knew had caught a glimpse of the video for “We Want the Airwaves” that we’d shot on the roof of Joey’s building. We couldn’t personally watch all the time, but we had a lot of eyes out there, so unless they slipped it in at 3:53 a.m. one night between the Police and Styx, we were now being ignored by a completely new medium. We wanted the airwaves and the signals sent through coaxial cables, but we weren’t getting either.

  On the night of October 8, we played a show in Columbus, Ohio, and had a day off to travel to a show in Virginia Beach on the tenth. Our hotel was a place called Swingos Celebrity Inn in the Cleveland area. Swingos had serious rock-and-roll party credentials. Elvis once booked more than a hundred rooms for his extended entourage. Keith Moon stayed there, dressed up as a cop, and handcuffed guests together. Ian Hunter of Mott the Hoople was quoted as saying, “Swingos is a place you remember checking in and out of, but you can’t remember anything in between.”

  I did remember the fan who came by the table to sit with me and Dee Dee. I didn’t remember her name, and I didn’t recall exactly where and when we first ran into her, but it all seemed real enough, and the important thing was she remembered us. I was drinking shots of Bacardi 151 one after the other. Dee Dee was drinking blackberry brandy. Our fan was having some of both. So was Danny, my drum roadie. A great local tradition weighed heavily on our shoulders, so we did the best we could.

  Monte came over to the table to remind me that we were getting up early and driving all the way to Virginia Beach. I told him to go ahead without me because our fan had promised me a ride in her friend’s car and with the day off there was no big rush. Monte asked me if I was sure. I was, and that was that.

  I had a vintage Swingos hangover in the morning and finally made it out to the dining room for lunch, which would include as many coffee refills as the staff could bring me. Another thing that took my mind off the heavy feeling in my head was spotting Roger Maris. The retired baseball hero was in town for a convention. I introduced myself and sat down. He had heard of the Ramones.

  Although I wasn’t a big baseball fan growing up, my father was, and he had given me, of all things, a Spalding Roger Maris glove. I was familiar with a few of Maris’s career highlights:
the sixty-one home runs in ’61, the two consecutive MVP awards, and the seven trips to the World Series, five with the Yankees and two with the Cardinals. So we hit it off in the Swingos dining room and talked memories. If John could only see me now.

  Maris talked about how when he and Mickey Mantle were battling to see who could break Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record, the feud between the two players was all media hype. In reality, Mickey had moved in with Maris and outfielder Bob Cerv to their two-bedroom apartment in Queens. There, Mickey slept on the couch and Bob and Roger tried to look out for him. They weren’t always successful. Mickey would come to the ballpark tanked and see three baseballs pitched to him. He would always swing at the one in the middle. One time, Mick was nursing a hangover and tried to strike out so he could sit back down in the dugout. By accident, he hit a home run and cursed as he barely made it around the bases.

  Roger didn’t look well. I didn’t imagine I looked so great either. But Roger looked kind of pale, like there could have been a real health problem. I definitely wasn’t going to bring it up. I was just enjoying the conversation and the fact that I could relate to these classic stories. For a little while, I felt like one of the M&M Boys. I even had the right first initial.

  When our fan from the day before, my ride, came over to our table, I was ready to introduce her to Roger and then excuse myself, since we had a long trip ahead of us. But she told me her friend couldn’t give us a ride. For the first time since waking up, I felt genuinely sick. The ride by car from Cleveland to Virginia Beach was about six hundred miles—around nine hours if you did it nonstop. I started to see a disaster in the making. I had never missed a show in my life. I quizzed our fan about her friend and got a whiny response. Who knew if there ever was a friend or a ride? I was upset.

  I ordered a couple of drinks and calmed down. I remembered that today was a day off and the show the following day was at night so I would have tomorrow to deal with all this. As for today, I wanted to keep drinking and talking to Roger Maris.

  When I went to sleep after another night of partying, I was sure I could catch a flight out the next morning. The next morning, I was no longer so sure. Monte called my room panicked to say he was at the hotel in Virginia Beach calling everyone and there were no direct flights. Not only that, but the connections were going to involve three, maybe four, layovers and weren’t going to get me there in time for the show. I told Monte to keep trying and hung up.

  As I hobbled to the front desk of Swingos, I kept telling myself that if I could rent a private plane, the flight was only about three hours, leaving me plenty of time. Or maybe there was a bus or a train that would get me there.

  There was no bus. There was no train. There was no plane. I enlisted every employee of the hotel I could find. They were all making calls. It looked like the Jerry Lewis telethon back there. Meanwhile, Monte was calling them asking to speak to me. He was freaked out. I told him to calm down. There was a private airport on the outskirts of Cleveland, and one of the hotel managers was calling it this very minute to hook me up. Monte told me to call him the second I knew.

  I was having a couple of shots at the hotel bar when the desk manager walked in and told me Monte was on the phone with potentially good news.

  “They may have a private plane for you,” he said.

  So I followed the desk manager back to the front desk and took the receiver from the young woman who normally did check-ins.

  “Listen,” Monte said. “It’s a Beechcraft. A two-seater.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m ready. I’ll take a cab to the airport.”

  “But wait a second,” Monte said. “They’re going to call you at the hotel first.”

  “Fine, whatever.”

  I hung around the front desk, and a few minutes later the phone rang. The check-in clerk handed me the receiver and nodded her head.

  “This is Marc.”

  “Yes, I’m calling about the charter flight to Virginia Beach.” He was either the pilot or the airline manager or both. He had a slightly high-pitched southern drawl.

  “Did you speak to Monte? I’ll take it. Let’s go.”

  “Sir, we may not be able to have the craft ready in time.”

  “C’mon,” I said. “How much? Name your price.”

  “Mr. Ramone, I assure you this is not a matter of cost.”

  “I’ll fly it myself if I have to. I need . . . come on, fucking help me out here.”

  “Mr. Ramone, we will call you back at the hotel and let you know the flight status.”

  I handed the phone back to the clerk and told her to direct all calls to my room. I needed to put my head down. Just as my head hit the pillow, the phone rang. It was Monte. He sounded like he was calling from a funeral.

  “Marc, they can’t put you on that flight. The guy could hear you were drunk. From your voice.”

  “Give me a fucking break, I wasn’t serious about flying it.”

  “It’s a very small plane,” Monte said. “It’s not like you were gonna be back in coach somewhere, out of sight. I guess they felt something could happen.”

  “Now what, Monte?”

  “I’m here in Virginia working my ass off is what! I have six calls in to every private airport in Ohio! I have a call in to one in Michigan and another in Pennsylvania! I’m losing my mind here!”

  “Well, call me when you have something. I’m tired.”

  “But . . .”

  I put down the receiver and looked at the clock radio on the night table next to my head. It was 4:07. In less than an hour, I would miss the sound check. That left me with a little more than three hours to fly in, have Monte pick me up and get me to the venue, and get onstage. It was going to take not just one miracle but two. My head was as heavy as a steel drum riser. Time was slipping away on the clock radio. My main concern was not to be bothered again just to be told about another flight that wasn’t happening and was too late in any case. I reached over, took the phone off the hook, and blacked out.

  The next day, the Ramones had a show in Washington, DC. Monte had booked me on a regular commercial flight from Cleveland to Dulles Airport. On the van ride from Dulles to the venue, Monte warned me what lay ahead. I was going to have to reimburse everyone for everything. That included not just the contract fee for the canceled show but any related expenses. When I asked what related expenses that actually meant, Monte told me when the kids heard the show was canceled, they went nuts. They broke windows, chairs, and anything they could get their hands on in the club. When they were forced out the door, they vandalized cars in the club parking lot. So the punks of Virginia Beach were getting an all-expense-paid riot on me.

  Backstage I got the cold shoulder. John and Joey were no longer communicating through me—or to me. Dee Dee, my partner in crime, was aloof. John finally broke the silence.

  “You fucked up.”

  “Yeah, I know. It won’t happen again.”

  “That’s right. It won’t.”

  The show was on automatic pilot. It was always much better to have some eye contact and body language to keep it as tight as possible, but with countless thousands of road miles behind us, we could do it in a vacuum if we had to.

  I felt bad, of course. Contrite. In baseball terms, as John or maybe Roger would see it, this was worse than striking out with the bases loaded. It was like being too wasted to step up to the plate. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought the treatment I was getting was out of proportion. I had never missed a single show. What I did was stupid but not intentional. I agreed, without a hiccup, to pay everyone back. Meanwhile, our lead singer had canceled entire tours without any penalty. So the cold shoulder really seemed like overkill.

  I had tried really hard to stay dry on the flight into DC that afternoon. I had one beer and that was it. Fortunately, this was the last stop on the US tour before we took about a week off and flew to London. I would have a chance to drink and unwind after the show and was already looking forward t
o it.

  15

  UP IN FLAMES

  When we were growing up in the fifties and sixties, we were told that one day computers would take over the world. As of 1982, it hadn’t happened. Insanity had taken over the Ramones’ world, but no one we knew owned a computer.

  Steve Wozniak was out to change that. The US (pronounced “us”) Festival was his brainchild and a big, loud, elaborate, expensive way to bring together computers, electronics, and music under the California sun. It was a showcase of the future, and we were glad to be a part of it.

  The US Festival in San Bernardino was a far cry from Woodstock. Woodstock was about peace and love. US was about dollars and technology. Woodstock was disorganized but virtually without incident. US was highly organized, but on this Friday of the Labor Day weekend, we were hearing about numerous arrests. At Woodstock a half million flower children shouted in unison, “No rain!” At US there was a high-tech rain machine to provide relief in the 110-degree heat. The order of bands appearing at Woodstock was more or less stream of consciousness. Here at the US Festival each of the three days had a theme: punk/new wave, rock, and country. The Ramones were band number two on day one, following Gang of Four.

  As a musician, ideally, you want to perform the same whether it’s in front of ten people or ten thousand. But when it’s in front of 150,000, you can’t help but take notice. It was by far the largest audience we had ever played for in America, and we wanted to kick ass. Things out onstage happened so fast. We were led on as Gang of Four was led off. The sound check was a minute or two testing levels with cameras—stationary and mobile—all over the place. It was like a behemoth multimedia experiment, and we were the next guinea pigs.