Punk Rock Blitzkrieg

by Marky Ramone

  Ten weeks later, Dee Dee was dead of an overdose in the apartment he shared with his second wife. She found him hunched over the couch with a needle in his arm, not quite at rest. He was never quite at rest, at least not while he was alive. He created songs, poetry, books, and paintings to try to find that elusive peace, and anyone who cared about him hoped that in utter tragedy he had somehow found it.

  We were supposed to be grieved, not shocked at Dee Dee’s death, but I was both. Dee Dee had been clean for a long time other than smoking pot. Potheads lived to a ripe old age, and that’s what I was hoping for with Dee Dee. He had moved into an area of Hollywood where dope was readily available, but that was for artistic inspiration, not to cop. I heard through the grapevine that when he finally did cop, it was very pure stuff. The combination of that and the fact that he had been clean so long caused the overdose. The jolt to his system was too much. It was bitterly ironic that sobriety—though with a large asterisk—killed Dee Dee. The old Dee Dee had so many substances coursing through his veins the heroin might have gone into shock.

  As the next few days passed, I thought about how strange it was that I would never be able to pick up the phone and call Dee Dee. Coupled with that thought was the phone call he never made to me. Even after our first little fiasco in Whitestone, I had taken him to more meetings—AA, NA, whatever was available. Over time, he went back to meetings on his own, and the program became part of his life. Dee Dee never did anything conventionally, but he was as dedicated to it as anyone ever would have had a right to expect of him.

  I knew there would come a day when the opportunity to cop again would be staring him in the face and he would be staring right back, ready to surrender. I always told him when that day came—or even when he thought that day was a week or a month away—to call me. Let me know how you feel. Let me know what your urges are. We’ll talk it through and figure it out together.

  But I never got the call. I never had the opportunity. Dee Dee did things on a whim. He would say things on a whim, buy things on a whim, move to another country on a whim. He would cop on a whim, then write a song about it. Only he never got to write that last song, and we never got to hear it.

  The streets in Lower Manhattan had names like Washington, LaGuardia, and Astor. They were named for founding fathers, beloved mayors, and members of the aristocracy. When we were overgrown kids running around downtown checking out band flyers taped to lampposts, our craziest fantasy was to have a sneaker named after us. But on Sunday, November 30, 2003, the powers that be were about to unveil Joey Ramone Place. A sixteen-year-old fan from Staten Island had gotten the ball rolling with a petition, the ultimate do-it-yourself campaign for the ultimate do-it-yourself rocker. Sadly, Arturo Vega told me, the fan’s parents wouldn’t let her come to the unveiling.

  It was the corner of Bowery and East Second Street, right up the block from CBGB. The club was still there, still owned and operated by Hilly Kristal, and bands still showed up seven nights a week to try something old, something new, and maybe pick up a following. But the area was becoming gentrified, and the rents were getting high. Not that everything in the world needed to stay exactly as it was. Not even punk made a demand like that.

  Still, this was an appropriate place for Joey’s sign. The music he helped create made this once grimy, sleazy, drug-infested block the center of the creative universe. People gazing at the sign as they walked by needed to remember that the movers and shakers in this world didn’t all have to have money, wear suits, or bathe regularly.

  A young guy from the crowd who seemed connected to the media spotted me and asked me if my view was okay. I told him it was fine. He pointed to a lift used for telephone repairs and let me know he could put me up there to get a better view of the proceedings. I told him no thanks. If I wanted a better view, I could just walk a few feet and stand on the roof of my Caddy parked on Bowery.

  There were a lot of Lower East Side has-beens and wannabes milling about. Not that there was anything wrong with has-beens. But a lot of these has-beens and wannabes were trying to get into the act in the vein of the old Jimmy Durante line. Anyone who had ever had a little too much to drink and puked in front of CB’s thirty years earlier wanted to give a eulogy and develop a screenplay. I just wanted to take in the moment by myself.

  I clapped like everyone else when the veil came off. The name “Joey Ramone” loomed large over the word “Place,” and the green and white sign sat just above the one for East 2nd Street. It was way up there, towering well above where Joey’s big head of hair would have been had he been watching from below, and hopefully high enough to prevent theft by memorabilia- and thrill-seekers.

  I paid my respects to Dee Dee by visiting his grave site whenever I was in Los Angeles. The Hollywood Forever Cemetery near Paramount Studios was crowded with such legends as Cecil B. DeMille and Rudolph Valentino. Dee Dee helped invent a genre of popular music and fit right in. Not far away the voice of Bugs Bunny, Mel Blanc, was interred. Appropriately, his headstone read “That’s all folks.”

  Dee Dee’s headstone was rock-and-roll, but tasteful. At the top was the Ramones presidential seal but with the lyrics “I feel so safe flying on a ray on the highest trails above.” The stone was modest in size. Not to be outwitted, at the bottom it read “O.K. . . . I gotta go now.”

  Which reminded me I had to go visit John. I was an agnostic standing in a cemetery talking to my friend and, at best, skeptical that my friend could hear a word I was saying. But being there gave me some peace.

  Beliefs, in my mind, were all fine, as long as the person was sincere. But I never went in for superstitions. Superstitions were a way of avoiding confronting an issue. They were a substitute for thinking. They limited what you could do in the world, what you could strive for, and what you could hope to change. But lately one of the stupidest, most annoying superstitions was ringing in my ears. Bad luck comes in threes.

  John had been quietly battling prostate cancer for years. He had been in and out of Cedars-Sinai Hospital many times for chemotherapy and treatment of complications. John kept it quiet, and we respected his wishes. Of all the orders he had fired off for so long, this one had the most authority behind it. Lately, he was clearly getting weaker to the point where he sometimes had trouble finishing a phone conversation. I tried to call him once a week on average. But now, as much as I was hoping for a turnaround, phone calls alone weren’t enough. The doctors believed the cancer had spread.

  When I visited John from time to time, he would usually take me for a drive. We would just check out the California sights and shoot the breeze. On this visit, he hesitated when we got out to the front lawn, and I could see he was wary of his own car. I knew he was too weak to drive so I asked him if he would do me a favor and let me drive. He handed me the keys to his Cadillac.

  As we headed up Mulholland on a sunny day, the conversation was the usual—music, movies, cars, collectibles. But suddenly he straightened up in the captain’s chair like we were back in the van, looked straight ahead, and issued a warning.

  “You’re gonna have to watch out when it comes to business.”

  “I understand.”

  “I don’t know if you do,” John said. “I mean, if I’m not around . . . to run things.”

  “My eyes are always open.”

  “All I’m saying, Marc, is just make sure you never kiss anyone’s ass.”

  I was a little stunned. And the last-will-and-testament part was the least of it.

  “John, you know me. Do you think I would really ever kiss anyone’s ass?”

  “No, but just a word to the wise.”

  John’s stamina even as a passenger was fading. He was self-conscious when we got back to the house and I opened the car door for him. He had always projected a physical presence. Whether it was hopping in and out of the van or striking a Punk Rock God pose onstage, he had a proud self-image and didn’t want to be seen when he couldn’t measure up to it. Inside the house, he walked into the bedroo
m to take a nap, and I left.

  My next visit was to Phil Spector’s castle in Alhambra. Phil had been charged with murder and out on $1 million bail. In February, he had met B-movie actress Lana Clarkson while she was working at the House of Blues on Sunset Boulevard. About an hour after they got to the castle, Phil’s gun went off in Clarkson’s mouth, killing her instantly. A media circus ensued that hearkened back to the O. J. Simpson trial. But Phil Spector didn’t try to escape in a Ford Bronco and had a substantial amount of evidence on his side.

  Whenever Phil and I got together, it was to get away from the circus. So we talked about music even as we walked past the exact area where Lana Clarkson had been found slumped over in a chair. Phil asked me how touring was going, and I told him about the amazing fan base we had built in South America.

  Phil was incensed over how the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame had botched the Joey situation at the induction ceremony the year before. I told him living well was the best revenge, and maybe dying well could be the second best. Our music was all over the planet, and that meant a billion times more than a statue or a speech. Those words gave Phil Spector little comfort. He was still pissed over what the government had done to Lenny Bruce.

  I let Phil arrive at the subject of Lana Clarkson, and he eventually did. He looked me in the eye and said without blinking that she put the gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger. She was simulating a sex act, and it went off. Phil explained that she was down on her luck and had asked him for a $100,000 loan. He turned her down, pointing out that he had met her just a few hours earlier. “Marc, why would she even ask?” Phil looked like he was still trying to make sense of the whole thing.

  We continued talking as we walked into the billiard room. The solid and striped balls lay scattered across the pool table and looked inviting, but I knew not to touch. Phil was intent upon keeping the table exactly as they had left it the very last time he and his good friend and billiards coach Willie Mosconi played. Mosconi had died in 1993, ten years earlier.

  There was nothing I could do for Phil Spector but visit or call once in a while and wait till trial. And there was not much I could do for John until I noticed the rumors running wild on the Internet. MySpace was huge at that particular moment. A friend got me on, and I could see instantly why it was so addictive. Suddenly anyone had a quick and convenient home in cyberspace and could interact easily with anyone else on the site.

  As with any form of communication, especially one where no physical presence was required, some people fired missiles. MySpace and other forums were filled with speculation and misinformation about Johnny Ramone. The most popular fiction seemed to be that he was dying of Alzheimer’s disease like Ronald Reagan. HIV was also near the top of the list. As I read and read, I saw clearly that it went beyond a bunch of fans hungry for the truth. The lies were being spread viciously by people who claimed to know firsthand. It wasn’t hard to read the small minds firing off these shots. They didn’t like John’s politics, so they condemned him to the same fate as his hero. Or they implied he was using needles, messing around, whatever. As if they had any right.

  My friend John couldn’t fire back. So I fired back for him.

  “Stop your shit. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “I’m Marky Ramone, and you’re full of shit.”

  “Yeah right, asshole.”

  “My friend and guitarist has a problem called cancer. He’s fighting it bravely. Who are you to belittle him and spread lies?”

  “So now you like Reagan, too.”

  “Tell you what, if you’re the left, I don’t want any part of it. Learn some basic respect.”

  A few days later, Rolling Stone called to ask me what Johnny Ramone was dying from. The paparazzi were already hanging around Cedars-Sinai and John’s friend Lisa Marie Presley was seen coming and going. Now they wanted a statement from Marky Ramone. The way I saw it, I had two options. One was to lie about John’s condition and be really no better than the anonymous bloggers out there. The other was to tell the truth. From where I was sitting, neither option looked very good, but there wasn’t much choice in the end.

  “Prostate cancer, unfortunately. Johnny’s been a champ confronting this, but at this point I think the chances are slim. I’ve been getting so much email from people and from papers and magazines wanting to know what was up, I had to take it upon myself to say something . . .”

  The shit hit the fan at the speed of a microprocessor. John’s wife threw a fit. I heard the static through everyone still around in the Ramones camp. The sharpest arrow slung was that I did it all for the publicity. That was as false as the rumors being spread about Johnny Ramone. I was in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I was touring all over the world to large crowds. I needed publicity, especially this kind, the way Tiger Woods needed another endorsement deal. I just wanted to stop the nasty rumor mill. That shouldn’t have been hard to understand. But in the craziness that had developed over the decades and now threatened to outlive most of the Ramones, it had unfortunately become business as usual.

  Johnny was too weak to attend the tribute concert held for him at the Avalon in Hollywood on September 12. It was a star-studded charitable benefit with Eddie Vedder, Rob Zombie, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Dickies, X, Rancid, and essentially a Who’s Who of John’s world and rock music in general. The house band for the Ramones songs was Daniel Rey on guitar, C.J. on bass, and me on drums. The one low point came when Rob Zombie whipped out a cell phone, called John at his home, and put his voice over the PA system. It was done with the best of intentions but just underscored how ill John really was.

  John passed three days later when I was on my way to Prague. I had lost a close friend and bandmate, again. For me, the tribute concert was the memorial. I had a permanent image in my mind of John playing guitar, and that was good enough. Months later, they unveiled the large black statue at the cemetery.

  Everyone could have taken a lesson from Dee Dee’s humble monument, which, as it turned out, was only a stone’s throw away in Hollywood Forever Cemetery. The proximity would make visiting my old friends in the Ramones—a very difficult task—a little easier. The walk from Dee Dee’s to Johnny’s would be a little more than two minutes—about the length of the Ramones song “I Remember You.”

  When I appeared on Sirius Satellite Radio’s The Wiseguy Show one day in late 2004, it seemed like a natural thing to do. Hosted by Vincent Pastore, who played Salvatore “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero on the HBO hit series The Sopranos, the show was ideal for a Brooklyn guy with something to promote. I had just released the DVD Ramones: Raw, which featured behind-the-scenes footage I had shot all around the world. Sirius occupied an entire floor of the McGraw-Hill Building. It was an island in the sky of studios, glass booths, and cubicles churning out programming that otherwise couldn’t be found on the airwaves. It was a new kind of fraternity. I felt strangely at home there, as I did with the wiseguys.

  It was about to become even more of a home. A few days later, I got a call from one of the top executives at Sirius. He asked me to perform another natural act—appear on skateboarding champion Tony Hawk’s show. I knew this would be a bit like my first time playing with the Ramones—an informal audition. And like the earlier informal audition, this one would be a perfect fit. Tony was a punk rock fan. Talking about music, skateboarding, the do-it-yourself approach, and everything else connected to the punk world came as naturally to me as banging on a cheap snare drum for the first time. I wasn’t polished but all I needed was a shot.

  Sirius offered me one. They liked my New York persona, my tone of voice, and the knowledge I brought to the table. They asked me to pitch them a show. When someone asks you to pitch them a show, you’re basically in. I threw a fastball down the middle. My idea for Marky Ramone’s Blitzkrieg was simple and straightforward: to create a place, a universe, where listeners can hear their favorite punk rock songs and learn a bit about where they c
ame from.

  I gathered together my entire collection of punk rock albums, EPs, and singles and hauled them into the studio. When it came to punk, my stash was the Library of Congress. The first few shows were carried by the music. As I learned my craft, the emails started pouring in. Where else could someone go to hear “Born to Lose” by Johnny Thunders or “Live Fast, Die Young” by the Circle Jerks? Nowhere but here.

  I got up at seven in the morning to go to Phil Spector’s retrial. The first one had ended in a hung jury. It was March 2009, and I headed to the United States District Court in downtown LA on the 101 in my rented Chrysler 300C. A true New Yorker is always a little disoriented driving in Los Angeles. I got off at the exit and spotted the courthouse parking lot just a moment too late. When I veered off toward the lot entrance, I saw two lanes of traffic coming right at me and realized I was going the wrong way. There were dangerous times in life when you just had to follow through because turning back was far worse. I had to be there. I was Phil Spector’s friend.

  I met Phil, his wife Rachelle, and Phil’s two massive bodyguards in the courthouse lobby. They were hard to miss. Phil asked me what took me so long. With the traffic in Los Angeles, it was basically a rhetorical question. I told him I needed to go to the cafeteria and that I would meet him upstairs in the courtroom.

  After eating a granola bar and sucking down a cup of coffee, I made my way through the metal detectors and security personnel, who went through my bag and frisked me. I had on a pair of black jeans and a leather jacket. I didn’t look like your average courtroom curiosity seeker, but that was really all relative. In any case, I was eyeballed thoroughly up and down. In a post-9/11 world, the only venue more security conscious than an airport was a celebrity murder trial in LA.