Punk Rock Blitzkrieg

by Marky Ramone

  “He fucking tried to bugger me! What the fuck?”

  “Look, you can’t blame the guy,” I said with a smile. “He gave it his best shot.”

  It was a long walk back to Richard’s apartment on East Tenth Street, and that was good. Ivan was a liberal guy, not at all a homophobe, but he was in shock. It was a combination of being dazed to begin with, the surprise element, and wrapping his head around exactly how to think of Terry from now on. But by the time we got to East Tenth Street Ivan started to see how funny the whole thing really was.

  Terry Ork was about business, too, and his place of business was just that. Cinemabilia was a store devoted to old movie books, posters, and magazines. It was a place where the radio and TV nostalgia king of New York, Joe Franklin, would have felt at home. Cinemabilia also served as home office to Ork Records. Terry could easily have afforded an expensive Marantz stereo for the office. Instead, he had a cheap hi-fi he bought at a discount store on Fourteenth Street. He wanted to listen to his product on the same sort of sound system most of his customers did.

  The phone on Terry’s desk was ringing off the hook lately. The five thousand copies he had pressed of the Richard Hell and the Voidoids EP sold out almost immediately. Terry also had a distribution deal with Stiff Records in England. Stiff was a new label dedicated to punk that distributed English acts such as Nick Lowe and the Damned. One of Stiff’s slogans was “If it ain’t Stiff, it ain’t worth a fuck.”

  Our EP was selling well in the UK, too. It was nice to know we were worth a fuck.

  Meanwhile, Terry did better for us than just book us at the club he always booked. In the spring of ’77 he got Hilly to pay us $4,000 a show for two shows at CBGB. We didn’t have to do much publicity. There was strong word of mouth about the band. Between Richard’s time in Television and the Heartbreakers and my stint in Wayne County, there was a carryover effect. CBGB put out its usual flyers and advertised the shows in the Village Voice, but that was customary for every headliner. Fortunately, both shows sold out and the crowd loved us. So Terry booked additional shows, one per month. Four thousand dollars was serious money. It could keep Richard’s rent paid up until at least the eighties.

  On a day when I didn’t have to rehearse or do a show I would usually get up at Roxy’s around noon. Around two or three in the afternoon, we’d grab a pint of vodka and share it. Sometimes Johnny Ramone would show up in the middle of the afternoon. There would be a knock on the door, and I’d usually be the one to answer it. I would say, “Hey, John,” and he would say, “Hi, Marc.” And that was pretty much it. We were like two ships passing in the day.

  About a half hour later, they would head out the door, John in his jeans, T-shirt, and leather jacket, Roxy in a red patent leather miniskirt and black bondage latex. Lately she was bleaching her hair white and putting on a ton of black eyeliner and bright red lipstick. On a superficial level, you could see why the two of them hit it off. The Ramones were the big fish in the sea, at least south of Fourteenth Street. Roxy hadn’t come to New York to catch minnows. She was a wealthy and wild girl who dressed to kill. She looked like an S&M fantasy chick. I thought she was more S than M.

  I supposed John was the masochist here. He was married to Rosana, his high school sweetheart. She was very personable and happened to be built like Sophia Loren, John’s idea of the perfect woman. Who could ask for anything more? John. He and Rosana had an apartment in Forest Hills, which was in another borough, not on another continent. It seemed like John was setting himself up for a fall. But it was none of my business. I was seeing Marion and had my own life to deal with.

  When it was time to go out in the evening, I would drink a beer or two to get loose and then make the rounds—82 Club, CBGB, Max’s. Everyone gave me free drinks because I played there. It was my circuit.

  Friday nights my circuit included the Roosevelt Hotel on East Forty-Fifth Street in Manhattan. Marion worked the front desk on weeknights from three to eleven, which was great for going out and staying out late. But she usually volunteered for the early shift Saturday, which was seven thirty in the morning till three in the afternoon. When you worked a night shift into a day shift, the hotel gave you a room overnight so you didn’t have to commute back and forth.

  I would show up at the front desk Friday afternoon, and Marion would hand me the key like I was a regular anonymous guest. I would then go upstairs to the room number printed on the key, let myself in, then sleep and watch TV all day. Just past eleven in the evening, Marion would join me for a nightcap. It was mahogany furniture, color television, plush carpet, and room service. For a nice Brooklyn girl still living at home and a struggling musician, it was the high life.

  One off night, I was at Max’s with friends just drinking. Around three in the morning, either I decided I’d had enough or someone else did. My brother, Fred, my friend Elwood, and I all left together and started walking downtown. Elwood told us he was working as a roadie for KISS, but I didn’t entirely believe him. A friend and roadie in Dust, J. R. Smalling, who was now KISS’s tour manager, had never mentioned Elwood. In any case, KISS had just finished recording their new album. Elwood was carrying a large black road case with metal corners.

  We started to walk along the Park Avenue side of Union Square Park. Just inside, at the center of this small park, was a huge statue of George Washington on a horse. Lucky for them, neither could smell the faint odor of urine always in the air. Near the north entrance to the park, we came across two white guys fighting. They were wailing on each other. It wasn’t one of those bullshit movie fights where each sweeping roundhouse punch gets its own camera shot. It was a blizzard of rabbit punches.

  The custom was to let two guys who were fighting keep right on fighting. The polite thing to do was to walk away instead of hanging around and watching. But there was something not right about this fight. One guy was much bigger than the other—literally a foot taller. So I walked over and pushed my way between them. They both froze. I yelled at the big guy, “Hey, don’t pick on this fucking little guy! Look at the size of him!”

  Out of nowhere, the little guy lunged at me. As I stepped back, I saw there was a knife in his hand. I felt it slice the underside of my left arm, through my leather jacket. As soon as I grabbed my arm, both the little guy and the big guy bolted, heading south along the sidewalk. Fred and Elwood were right behind them. The big guy got away, but Fred tackled the little guy, and Elwood clocked him over the head with his road case.

  As I took a few steps in their direction, I started getting nauseous and light-headed. I looked down and saw a puddle of blood on the pavement. If I was drunk enough to break up a fight between two assholes, I was apparently also drunk enough not to realize just how badly I was stabbed.

  A few seconds later, a patrol car pulled up near the curb and two cops got out. There was always something shady going on in the park, so the cops circled it regularly. Another patrol car pulled up a moment later near Fred and Elwood, who stopped beating the little guy long enough to explain to the cops what had happened.

  There was no time to call an ambulance, so the patrol car doubled as one. They put me in the back with one of the cops. They cuffed the little guy and put him in the front. The officer driving told us the first stop was Bellevue Hospital on First Avenue. The second stop was the precinct. There was blood all over my jacket, shirt, and pants. My blood. The cop next to me said, “Hey, don’t mess up the backseat. How about sticking your finger in the cut to slow it down?” He was joking, sort of. I needed a paramedic, but I wasn’t one, so I just squeezed my left arm with my right hand.

  I felt light-headed again as the patrol car rolled past the wrought iron gates at Bellevue. As I was wheeled into the ER, a nurse asked me if I had been drinking, and the answer was on my breath. Because of the alcohol, they couldn’t give me a general anesthetic. I was drifting in and out as they laid me out on the operating table. I didn’t get a good look at what they were doing and I didn’t feel a thing. Maybe that was becaus
e they gave me a local anesthetic. Maybe it was because of the shots I did at Max’s. I smelled burning skin and figured it had to be mine. They must have been cauterizing the wound.

  Roxy heard I was stabbed and showed up at the hospital. My father showed up right after. In the recovery room, I couldn’t tell which pissed off my father more—what some lunatic had done to his son or how his son practically handed out an invitation to be stabbed.

  “So much for being the Good Samaritan, Marc.”

  “Hey, I just saw it as this big guy picking on this little—”

  “You can’t assume anything. You don’t know these guys or what was happening a minute before you got there. I’m just glad they didn’t have a gun.”

  My father also wasn’t happy that we’d be going to court, but he would definitely make sure we were prepared.

  I found out in the morning that one of my main arteries had been cut. The attending physician wanted me in the hospital for a full week. I felt like crap, so I didn’t argue. After two days, though, I was feeling a lot better.

  On the second morning, I was feeling stronger and tired of eating Jell-O and watching soap operas. I asked to be discharged. But the attending physician refused to sign me out. So I took matters into my own hands. I rolled out of bed, stood up, and took off the long hospital robe I was wearing. My left arm was throbbing with pain, so I mostly used my right arm. My street clothes were in a bag in the corner. I put them back on slowly, dried blood and all. But I couldn’t find my sneakers. I looked down and saw the stupid smiley face slippers the hospital had issued me and figured what the hell. Who knew if I could tie my sneaker laces anyway? So I ducked out and hit First Avenue in the smiley face slippers.

  I called Elwood from a pay phone and told him I was on my way over to his apartment. He told me I was fucking crazy but come on over anyway, he’d be there. It was about a ten-block walk. Elwood greeted me with a bottle of vodka and a promotional copy of the new KISS album, Destroyer. I put the bottle to my lips and Elwood cranked up the record. The airwaves lately were filled with mediocre arena-rock bands turning out corporate hits for the music industry. But Destroyer, no matter how many times it might eventually go platinum, was not really part of that world. It rocked. For a guy who narrowly escaped being stabbed to death and was now released into the wild, the album was like the soundtrack of freedom. The song “Flaming Youth” seemed to be speaking directly to me.

  The wound to my left arm hampered my drumming for a little while, but I did what I had to do. If you have a rehearsal to go to or a show to do, you find a way to push through it. The pain actually didn’t compare to the aftermath of some of the root canals I had been through, and there was always booze around to take the sting out. Within about two weeks, I was pretty much healed.

  In the late spring of ’77, along with everyone else in the downtown music scene, I was listening to the Sex Pistols. I bought the single of “Anarchy in the U.K.,” with Johnny Rotten proclaiming himself an Antichrist, and I heard for myself the rage of English youth loud and clear in a way mainstream music was incapable of expressing. But when I picked up a copy of the British music newspaper Melody Maker and saw a photo of the band, I had an entirely different experience. The Sex Pistols looked like Richard Hell. They wore dark sport jackets that didn’t exactly fit, ripped T-shirts with safety pins, and spiked hair.

  It was ironic. Richard had started the look by accident years earlier, before I knew him. The look had made its way across the Atlantic and was now crossing back again as an export, as something original. In reality, it was derivative. The Pistols’ manager, Malcolm McLaren, was also a fashion designer and owner of the London boutique, Sex. He had done for the Sex Pistols what Brian Epstein had done for the Beatles except in reverse. McLaren had dirtied up his boys and given them a complete image to go with their snarls. Looking at Melody Maker, I felt like I was in on some kind of inside joke. I hoped Richard looked at it the same way.

  We couldn’t be sure he would. There was a narcissistic side to Richard Hell, and the attention he got from women tended to reinforce it. The wildcard in all of it was the heroin. We never knew which Richard we were getting. At times he was hyper. Other times he was level, even sedate. The smack could cause his anxiousness or resolve it. We never knew for sure, and we were never on solid ground around him.

  Sometimes backstage after a show, when everyone else was celebrating a good performance, he would sit somewhere isolated and barely acknowledge anyone else. Now that Richard was the missing link in a transatlantic phenomenon, there was every chance it would go to his head—or into a vein.

  A few weeks later, Fred, Elwood, and I had to appear in criminal court on Centre Street a few blocks from city hall in Manhattan. The district attorney had pressed charges of assault and reckless endangerment against the little guy, who was now neatly dressed in a little gray suit. I was put on the stand and asked to point out the assailant plus answer a few simple questions. The judge gave the little guy one year’s probation.

  My father wasn’t happy, and he had a lot more insight than most of us. After putting himself through night school, he had recently graduated from Brooklyn Law School, all while still working as a longshoreman. “Is that what attempted murder gets you in New York these days?” he said. “A slap on the wrist?” But by the time the doors of the Criminal Court building closed behind me, I had much better things to think about. We had just landed a deal with Sire Records.

  With the Ork EP selling well on both sides of the Atlantic, Richard Hell and the Voidoids caught the attention of Richard Gottehrer, along with Seymour Stein, the cofounder of Sire Records. Gottehrer got his start in the business as a songwriter and producer in the famous Brill Building with such hits as “My Boyfriend’s Back,” “Hang On Sloopy,” and “I Want Candy.” More important, Sire was the home of the Ramones, Talking Heads, and the Pretenders, so it was the right home for us, too. Recently, Sire had begun using the term “new wave” rather than “punk” to describe the new music scene. All we cared about was getting our music right and getting it out there.

  7

  LONDON CALLING

  My piece of the advance was put to good use, eating real meals instead of living off bread, peanut butter, and the kindness of friends and club owners. I bought nice new clothes including a leather jacket, plus a few good pairs of Keds sneakers to replace the ones worn through crisscrossing Lower Manhattan. I picked up a really nice boom box on Forty-Eighth Street.

  I even got a few more of my teeth fixed. The dentists we went to as kids did the best they could, but they were more or less patching things up. As a result, over the last few years a filling would pop out here and a crown there. I knew I needed a root canal, and I was getting by in life practically OD’ing on Anbesol, which slowly formed a little hole in the inside of my cheek. My dental plan was basically to get work done every time I got a record deal.

  We started recording the Voidoids album in the late spring of ’77 in Electric Lady Studios on West Eighth Street in the Village with Richard Gottehrer producing. Jimi Hendrix and his manager Michael Jeffery had originally bought the building with the idea of reopening the Generation Club, but the plans morphed into a studio that would be world-class. Ironically, Hendrix recorded at Electric Lady only during what would be the final days of his life. But the studio remained and became part of his legacy. The round windows, multicolored ambient lights, and the huge spacey mural wrapping around the hallway between Studio A and Studio B were all still in place. The twenty-four-track mixing console, tape machines, and effects were all topflight.

  The Voidoids sessions were pretty grueling. We would start in the late afternoon and finish up around sunrise. The level of performance expected was high—the bar was raised. It wasn’t like the EP session, where we did a good job and were in and out. There were mighty ghosts in this room. Good was no longer good enough, and this fact was getting to Richard Hell. When Gottehrer or Bob would listen back and suggest we try another take, Richard w
ould usually brood or get pissed off.

  That was a problem for the whole band but especially for me. Richard wasn’t just our singer and frontman. He was our bassist, and the drums and bass had to work together like the gears in a clock. I couldn’t have him doing another take on bass in a disaffected state of mind. If his heart wasn’t in it, his fingers wouldn’t be either. We needed Richard to save the screeching and complaining for the vocals. But I didn’t want to confront him when he stepped over the line. So I kept reminding him that we were a unit and he should remember that. Cool off, Richard. Cool off.

  Strangely, he did, and it didn’t have much to do with anything I said. The drugs probably kicked in. Suddenly it was Richard Hell wanting to do another take or getting a burst of genius. At the end of the funky-psychedelic anthem “Another World,” Richard began to cough. That was understandable, because eight-plus minutes of wailing and barking is a lot for anyone, punk or not. But Richard wanted it in, and we realized that was the perfect ending to this lovesick fantasy.

  I was happy with my own playing and with the trashy drum sound Gottehrer gave me. Meanwhile, Bob’s playing was outrageous. He rose to the occasion from what was already high ground. The song “Betrayal Takes Two” was a punk ballad, which sounds like an oxymoron. “Betrayal” had a bluesy feel, and when the break came, Bob nailed it to the wall. We thought he might actually be channeling Jimi Hendrix. The punk version.

  When the album was mixed and mastered, Richard gave us Hell. Upon reflection—in exactly what state of mind we didn’t know—Richard decided that about three-quarters of the album had to be redone. This is the last thing in the world a record company with an album in the can wants to hear. But Richard must have thrown his best tantrum ever, because Sire caved.

  On July 13, 1977, around nine thirty at night, Richard Hell and the Voidoids were in Plaza Sound on West Fiftieth Street in Manhattan. We were listening back to our latest recording of “Blank Generation.” Counting the EP and the Electric Lady sessions, it was the third version. Or maybe the tenth. We could take it or leave it each time. But this time, the tape slowed down, making Richard’s high-pitched wails sound almost normal. And then the machine stopped completely and the lights went out.