Later, we had the Hey Ho Let’s Go! Anthology boxed set come out on Rhino in 1999, and we had a signing at the Virgin Megastore on Fourteenth Street and Broadway in New York on the release date, July 20. Dee Dee flipped out on the Rhino people while we were doing the in-store, and he was screaming at Monte. I guess they didn’t get a car to drive him to the store; he had to get a taxi and couldn’t find one. Then he got there and was complaining that my picture was first in the booklet and began arguing with everybody. He was doing this during the whole signing. I was so mad I decided I was gonna hit him when the thing was over. We got done, and I couldn’t find him. I would have punched him if I had.
I liked him, though, but he was always a screwup. Sometimes, during shows, he’d get lost on a song, and I’d have to get a roadie to go over there and make him stop playing so I could cover up until the song ended. He wouldn’t even know he was lost.
When he quit, people were telling me, “Oh, you can’t continue without Dee Dee.” I thought, “I’m not having this defeat me. There’s no way I’m having this defeat me. I’ll find a young Dee Dee who’s going to be cooperative.” And I did.
I saw CJ and just said, “He’s the one.” I knew right away. He looked like Dee Dee, he played like Dee Dee, and those were big shoes to fill. CJ was just out of the Marine Corps, so he was used to following orders. I knew he was going to be perfect. “CJ, just look at the mirror in front of you as we’re playing, and you do what I do. You stand the way I’m standing. You move forward when I move forward. You move back when I move back. Just follow what I’m doing.” I gave him a bunch of tapes of Dee Dee and told him, “Study these concerts and watch what he does.”
By this point, Mark would get a vote, and he was voting against having CJ in the band. I’m the only person there saying, “No, this is our bass player.” Mark and Monte were there, and they both kept saying he wasn’t the right person. CJ had a mohawk and he played with his fingers, but that didn’t matter. They were so shortsighted. We just kept trying out people until I said, “Bring the first guy back.” No one liked him again. Monte’s sitting there, “No, no, no.” Mark’s sitting there, “No.” I finally said, “The decision’s made. It’s done. No one’s voting.” Joey wasn’t there. He never even came down to the auditions. We tried out seventy people. It was only Mark and Monte there. Monte didn’t count and Mark is … This was just a decision I had to make. I said to Joey, “I’ve found the bass player. Do you want to come down and see him?” The only smart decision Joey’s ever made since I’ve known him was when he said, “Whatever you say is probably right.” I guess he knew I had an eye for this. I mean, I could see CJ turning into a young Dee Dee.
CJ added seven years onto the band’s life. He was easy to deal with, and he was a nice person. I tried to make him feel like part of the band as much as possible. I hope he felt that way. There are fans who only ever saw Dee Dee as the Ramones bass player. So it was hard for CJ sometimes. I know that for me, no one ever replaced Brian Jones in the Rolling Stones, so I could see that some people didn’t care for CJ stepping in. But he was in, and he was it.
I took him down to Fidelity Investments and helped him open an account. Since he didn’t make that much money, I felt it was good for him, and it was important to me that when we stopped playing, we all came out of it with something. I couldn’t pay that much. The rest of the band would do what I did to save money. They copied me a lot of the time, so I tried to help them all when I could.
By 1988 I was really into being home with Linda. We had perfected touring. We knew that we could play one hundred shows a year without really hurting ourselves physically or mentally. I had two hundred thousand dollars in the bank and was looking at that one-million-dollar goal. We had fans, and we didn’t need to change things up. Sometimes, I’d tack an extra show or two on without the agency so we didn’t have to give them a cut. Extra money, you know.
Our overseas tour money was usually great. When we’d head into customs, I’d rarely get bothered. Joey got interrogated a bunch of times. But I never did, especially coming back to America. They could probably see how glad I was to be home. I’d be standing there in the customs line, and I’d start a conversation with the agents. “Hi, how you doing? It’s great to be back in America.” Maybe they went through my bags a couple of times, but that’s the most they ever did to me.
I remember the two times where I’d felt they’d harassed me the most: once going into Ireland from England, and once coming from overseas into Hawaii. The guy just acted like he hated me because I was an American, and I thought, “Boy, I didn’t know Hawaiians hate Americans. I thought you were an American too.” But it was still just basically bag stuff, like pulling apart every little thing, and dumping my vitamins out all over the place. I hated that, though, because you know you haven’t done anything wrong, and I didn’t do drugs or anything; and I’m so pro-America that I would wonder, “How could you pick on me?” But maybe he thought I was a smuggler or something. I think I was coming in from Singapore or somewhere. Landed there for a connecting flight, but hadn’t played there.
There used to be a time when everyone in America loved being an American. People would immigrate here and they wouldn’t want to be “Italian-American,” or “Irish-American.” They’d want to be “American.” I never considered myself an Irish-American. I don’t even see myself as Irish; I look at myself as American.
We had offers to play in Hong Kong, and I always wanted to go there, but I wouldn’t agree to do it because it wasn’t going to add any more profit to the tour. Even if I wanted to go there, I felt I couldn’t play unless we were going to see additional money. It would have added another three or four days on with no additional profit, so I thought, “No, can’t go.” We never played behind the Iron Curtain either. We had offers, but I refused. I don’t know if they could have made me an offer big enough to go. I just expected the place to be so horrible and disgusting, and I felt I’d bad-mouthed Russia so much in the past, I was afraid they might know about that and do something. So I was a little worried about going there, and I just felt like it wasn’t worth it. There were enough places for me to go and play.
In Europe I probably looked forward to going to Italy the most, because I liked the food. Then Spain would be my second choice. Scandinavia would be misery to me. The low sky, just clouds and overcast, and if you get too far north, it doesn’t get dark at night, or it’s dark all day. It was so depressing. The only place I ever really liked when I left America was Japan. It’s such an impressive place, and the people are such hard workers. It’s so clean. Everything about it is impressive. They’d be so on the ball. I enjoyed it there.
But whether we were in France or in Japan, our fans were always great—although I’m sure nobody in Japan would ever spit at you. That would probably be unheard of; everyone is so polite. I went to a baseball game there, and when they’d hit a foul ball into the stands, the ballgirl would come by, and whoever got it would just give it back to her. They didn’t fight over foul balls or anything. The Japanese fans would file into the room before the show. You’d play at seven o’clock at night, with no opening band, and they’d all stand there quietly. Everything would be dead silence, then you’d come on and play a song, and they’d go crazy. The song would stop, and they’d all listen to what you were saying, even if they didn’t understand the language. I loved it there. They’d all get the look just right, too. The whole audience would come with the black leather jackets on. They’d all have the punk look down, nice and neat, and perfect—clean. Every little detail. They’d get the buttons on and just really know how to take something and copy it to perfection. Even though they didn’t speak English, I’d communicate with them somehow.
The Johnny Blitz benefit at CBGB’s, May 4, 1978. Photo by Stephanie Chernikowski, under license to JRA LLC. All rights reserved.
Tommy, Joey, Dee Dee, and Johnny vote thumbs down to Commies in New York City. Photo by Danny Fields, under license to JRA LLC. All rights
reserved.
Photo by Stephanie Chernikowski, under license to JRA LLC. All rights reserved.
The Ramones at the U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C. Photo by Danny Fields, under license to JRA LLC. All rights reserved.
Chapter 6
I’d always stop for milk and cookies to take back to the hotel—my after-show ritual. I wanted to get back and watch SportsCenter on ESPN. It was almost the same in any U.S. city, and the fans knew where we were going.
Rock and roll is an unhealthy lifestyle. You have too much freedom. You have no boss, and you can do whatever you want. You can play stoned. You could never go to a real job stoned. And there is a lot of pressure to produce. You can see your career going upward, and then downward, and that can be very depressing. You also get so wound up playing a show that a lot of people need something to bring them down. People who don’t know how to handle the situation take drugs. I didn’t. I went back to my room with milk and cookies.
I owe my personal success to hard work, intelligence, and luck, as well as knowing how to handle that luck. There’s also a certain amount of talent that I’d developed. But most of all, it’s the fans. The fans were the biggest reason for the band to stick together and play all those years. I owe everything I have to them. They came to the shows, and any money I made is because of fan support. It was such a good feeling knowing that if I talked to them for one minute, they seemed to be so excited and it would make their day. They were always there; they never deserted us. No matter how hard you work, the least you can do is give back a moment of your time. That meant signing everything whenever I could, and I never got tired of it. It sounds like I’m being silly about this, but I never got tired of fans. I liked them, especially after sitting in the van all day.
I collected autographs myself for a long time, mostly baseball players’. I was a fan, and I knew that I never wanted to be treated badly by someone I might look up to. I would stand in line to get the autographs: Mickey Mantle, Stan Musial, Willie Mays, Warren Spahn. Spahn was always a nice guy; we talked baseball. And he had no idea who I was, which was even better.
I asked ballplayers for autographs even when I was in my thirties and forties. I recall asking Brett Butler for an autograph when he was with the Dodgers and how nice he was about it. I know he didn’t know who I was. I also asked Tom Seaver for one as his career was winding down. I was standing there at the railing by my front-row seat, and there was nobody around, but he said, “Not now.” If not now, when? I know I didn’t want to be like that. I hope I never was.
I always told the fans who had bands to make sure they stayed in school and had a job, and not to make the band their whole life.
I even hired some fans. CJ, our bass player, was a fan before he was a Ramone.
I knew that Rick Weinman, who became my guitar tech, was a fan before we hired him. He would come to all of our Louisiana shows in the seventies. First he sold merchandise, then Arturo fired him, so I gave him a job working for me.
I always took the Baseball America yearbooks on tour. They listed all the games, minor and major league, so I would get the itinerary and see where we could catch a game. Usually, I would key in on a day off and try to get there early. I took people from the crew. I’d say, “There’s a game in this city—who wants to go?”
Sometimes people would recognize me at the parks, but I knew all of that came with the territory. I was okay with it. I went to a Boston Red Sox game in 1990, and one person asked me for an autograph. Next thing I knew, there was a line by my seat. I signed for a while, and then I had to leave. We had a show that night, and I only had a half hour to be at the game. That never happened at Yankee Stadium, where it seemed like everybody knew who I was, but they just said hi. What would have been worse was if I’d gone someplace like Fenway and nobody wanted an autograph.
I always had in mind to treat people like I’d like to be treated. I tell anyone who’s becoming a celebrity how important that is. I hope someone pays attention to that.
It had two sides to it, being a little bit known. Sure, there could be perks, but I knew they were treating Johnny Ramone special, not me, really. It was funny. I treated this celebrity status like a joke. I was an entertainer.
Another thing about celebrity was that people would come up to me and say that Johnny Ramone had been at their party the other night. I’d let them know, “Well, I’m Johnny Ramone, and you don’t know what you’re talking about.” But that was that. I never dwelled on it, although I did see it more in Los Angeles than in New York. People would kind of try to use you to get some status in the eyes of others, to show off.
In the early nineties, we were in a club in North Carolina after playing a show, and this kid kept motioning me over to where he was sitting. I ignored him, and he came up to me and asked me to come over and say hi to his girlfriend. I said, “No, you can bring her over here.” Then he said he’d pay me to go over and say hi. I said, “There’s no amount of money you could ever pay that will get me to do that.” So people would abuse the idea of someone being accessible and friendly.
And there were the fans who just wanted to be part of anything having to do with the Ramones. At a packed show in 1988 in Orlando, Florida, a kid spit on Joey, and I was enraged. You mess with one of us, you mess with all of us. It was an insult to the Ramones. So in between songs I said, “Which one of you fucking faggots is doing the spitting? Come on up here!” I’d be very protective of anyone doing anything to the band.
Some guy in the front started raising his hands saying, “Me, Johnny, pick me, I did it,” and by the time this kid got the words out, I hit him right in the head with my guitar. Then security grabbed him and started beating the crap out of him. And I thought, “Oh shit,” this wasn’t even the kid who had spit. He just wanted to be involved. He was volunteering! He probably has a good story about that even today.
As we got older and played with younger bands, I noticed that a lot of them wanted to meet us, almost as fans rather than as the opening, or in some cases headlining, band. While the eighties were pretty down and kind of lonely, in the nineties I started to see all of these new punk groups.
CJ always talked to the other bands, but I would never do that. He was our ambassador. They were still the competition, and I didn’t like them. I was introduced to Soundgarden by CJ when I was walking through the hotel lobby in Australia. I was going to walk right by, and CJ stopped me and said, “Soundgarden says they like you guys.” So I stopped and talked and found out that they had recorded one of our songs, “I Can’t Give You Anything,” for an upcoming single. They played the song for me, and they did a good job, so we got along. If they had fucked it up, I doubt I would have spent much more time with them. We hung out for the rest of the tour and became friends.
For most people, there was a chain of command to talk to other bands, and I didn’t want to deal with that, so I didn’t talk to them. We played with U2 at a stadium after they requested us. Our dressing room was down the hall from theirs, and I know that some of our crew wanted to meet them. But U2 had these big security goons out there blocking off the entire hallway. I didn’t like that, and I thought, “This band is not treating people right.” I didn’t understand why they asked us to play on the bill and then just roped themselves off like that. I didn’t really care to meet them anyway.
We didn’t have the big security force, but if other bands wanted to talk to us, they would talk to CJ first, since he was out there talking anyway. Everyone got to know how it worked. I had no interest in most of these other bands we were playing with as our time drew to a close.
I noticed that in the nineties more and more bands were telling us of our influence, people like Kirk Hammett from Metallica. Then I met Eddie Vedder and Rob Zombie and realized that these were really our fans, not our competition. I was getting closer to my dollar figure for retirement, and I think I started to feel more relaxed with the whole situation. These bands were our fans, and I was becoming okay with it. Pretty soon, I started
making friends with some of them.
We toured with White Zombie in 1995. We got to the first gig, and there was a flap about T-shirt booths and where they were going to go and how much we could charge. Some bands wouldn’t allow us to sell our merchandise cheaper than theirs, knowing that we always sold much more than almost anyone. So I went to the promoter and said, “Who do I talk to in White Zombie about this?” He pointed to Rob Zombie and said, “Him.” So I thought, “Great, now I have to deal with this freak, with his dreadlocks and his beard and his getup.”
I wasn’t into those new bands a whole lot, and sometimes I would see things I didn’t like. We played with the Red Hot Chili Peppers in Finland in 1988. They ran onto the stage with no clothes on while we were playing. “What a bunch of assholes,” I thought, and I told them so. They came back to the dressing room to apologize, and I did not accept that. And I was the only one in the band who was really pissed. I got to know them later, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers were cool. Still, what they did that day wasn’t cool. John Frusciante and I have become good friends, but he wasn’t in the Chili Peppers when that happened. I think he joined the following year.
The people I’ve always hung out with have been eccentrics in some way, or people that I share common interests with. Eccentrics were always more fun than normal people, though. Usually, no one else wants to be friends with these weirdos. I like that about certain people too. People say that John Frusciante is strange, but I really like him. In Rolling Stone’s top 100 guitar players of all time I’m ranked at #16, and Frusciante is #18.
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