Punk Rock Blitzkrieg

by Marky Ramone

  They knew more than our names. They knew the lyrics to “Poison Heart,” which had been out all of a few days. This was just one more thing Dee Dee should have been around for. Joey could have done the cheesy eighties arena-rock thing, stopped singing, and pointed the microphone out over the audience. But that was never us. Neither were hugs, high fives, clowning around onstage, or long speeches about how great it was to be in country X. As far as we were concerned, that was all a waste of time. If we were really happy to be in country X, we showed it by playing.

  It seemed in Buenos Aires that was all understood. It seemed that even with a language barrier, the fans “got” everything we were about. Not to look a gift horse or a gift nation in the mouth, but I had to wonder why. There were at least a few obvious answers. In a class-conscious country like Argentina, where for centuries there was a caste system, the Ramones might have represented a leveling of the playing field. All you needed were sneakers, jeans, a T-shirt, and a leather jacket and you were one of us. Membership may not have been free, but it was certainly cheap.

  We weren’t experts on South American politics, but we knew that Argentina had lived through one oppressive military regime after another with a few breaks in between. The current government was democratically elected, but even the younger members of the audience had some memory of the last “reorganization” in the late seventies and early eighties. In “reorganization,” anyone perceived to be a political threat might be taken away in the middle of the night and never heard from again. That meant mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, and friends.

  I thought about that when the Buenos Aires crowd sang “The KKK Took My Baby Away.” They loved that song. They sang it louder and clearer than any other. Maybe they related to it in a way we couldn’t possibly understand when Joey wrote it as a goof. A song that was supposed to hit the funny bone instead struck a deep chord.

  The best explanation for our popularity below the equator was perhaps the simplest. The young people spent most of their lives dealing with shitty governments, shitty jobs, and shitty surroundings. A rock show—any good rock show—provided a short but huge relief from reality and sent a booming message to authority. A good rock band was a bunch of antiheroes. Maybe, just maybe, the Ramones—with our street look, loud obnoxious songs, and no-bullshit stage presence—were the perfect antiheroes.

  Rio was just as crazy in its own way. Kids in Ramones T-shirts waving handmade “Hey Ho, Let’s Go!” banners were camped out night and day in the street outside our hotel rooms. They not only knew where we were staying, they figured out which rooms by watching the windows attentively from below. We didn’t feel stalked. We felt flattered. Eventually we gave them what they wanted. We walked out onto the balcony, smiled, and waved. Their response was more than just screaming hysteria. From two or three stories below, they tossed up Ramones T-shirts. We knew what to do—catch them, sign them, and throw them back down.

  Getting from point A to point B in Rio required planning and coordination. Monte’s already full-time job became double-time. Every movement outside the confines of the hotel had to be squared with our security, who were big, beefy South American guys. Leaving the hotel was like a getaway, with fans swarming the driveway and then the van itself as we pulled away. It was tempting for the driver to tear out, but with fresh young Brazilian faces pressed against the windows on all four sides, that might have meant killing someone. There was an art to accelerating gradually and slowly shedding loyal fans. Our driver had mastered it.

  His job was never quite done, at least not till we flew out of town. There was the trip from the airport to the hotel. Then the hotel to the sound check. Then from the sound check back to the hotel. Then back to the venue that night for the show. Then back to the hotel at the end of the night. Everything was choreographed. Forget about leaving the hotel on your own to see a few sights. You might disappear, South American style.

  Mexico City sits about a mile and a half above sea level, which makes the air thinner. Marathoners from sea-level countries became light-headed and in some cases even fainted during the 1968 Olympics. Playing drums for a full set in the Ramones was like a marathon, but there was no chance my energy was going to let down. In Mexico City, what the air lacked in oxygen it made up for in sheer excitement. Besides, your lungs got used to it by the second day.

  In Mexico City, as in the other great Latin cities we were playing, the fans wanted a piece of you. Not literally, but the next best thing. They wanted a souvenir. Signed T-shirts were cool but not the pinnacle. For most fans, nothing beat a drumstick.

  But the simplest thing in the world wasn’t that simple. In my mind, quantity did not equal quality. I had seen other drummers bring dozens of pairs to a show and throw out to the crowd sticks they never used. I took the opposite approach. I signed a few pairs of sticks opposite the label before the show. I waited till the right time during the show, usually when there were a few moments between certain songs, and threw the pair one at a time out to the audience. Then I picked up the next pair. The souvenirs were genuine and personal Marky Ramone drumsticks. Not everyone could have one. This wasn’t Bat Day at Yankee Stadium.

  I had on occasion in my earlier days thrown sticks overhand like a fastball. Not a good idea. You could put out a fan’s eye that way. I never did, but the possibility concerned me. Over time, I developed a gentle but very accurate pitch. I could put a drumstick in row R, seat 15 most of the time. These considerations might have seemed like minutiae to a lot of people, but they were important to me. I felt lucky to be playing such large venues far from home. We were no longer just a band. We were ambassadors.

  In June 1994, we were on tour in Europe, leaving Brussels. Traveling from city to city by rail in the US would have been beyond unthinkable for a band. Europe’s rail system, however, was excellent and getting better. Just the month before, the Chunnel, linking France and Great Britain via rail tunnel, had opened after many years of work. Later in the year, all the connections would be complete and a passenger would be able to travel from Brussels to London in two hours without ever lifting off the ground.

  The Ramones had to fly this afternoon, but with our feet. The promoters had done their job by dropping us off at the Brussels Eurostar station, except at the wrong end. We had a couple of kilometers to walk and less than a half hour to pick up our tickets, board, and leave. The mezzanine at the station in Brussels was an endless array of columns in perfect square patterns. Outside, the arches and trusses gave the station a grandeur we rarely saw back home. Most remarkable of all was how incredibly clean everything was. That might have been the beginning of Joey’s problem.

  When the rest of the Ramones finally arrived and took our seats in the first-class compartment, we still had some time to settle in. The stewards took our coats and bags and offered us drinks. We were not as comfortable as we might have been because Joey and Monte were nowhere to be found. When Monte finally showed up he was huffing, puffing, and sweating bullet trains. Joey was being detained.

  We couldn’t blame Belgian rail security for wondering. Joey’s medication wasn’t perfect. He still tapped here and there. He was still Joey, still unkempt, and still attracting attention. To boot, he was seeing a wacky homeopathic chiropractor who saddled him with aloe juice and a wide variety of herbal pills. When Belgian security frisked Joey and went through his bag, they found a massive stash of salves, concoctions, and prescription medications, at least one bottle of which they were convinced was ecstasy. Monte, as always, was doing his best to be in two places at once. There was still a little time to broker a deal.

  “Don’t worry about it, Monte,” John said. “We don’t have a show till tomorrow. He’ll catch up with us.”

  He did, and with Monte’s hostage-negotiating skills, it was only a matter of minutes. Once we were shooting through the fields of Belgium at 280 kilometers per hour, Joey and Monte cooled down and settled in. To everyone’s amazement, Joey turned around and asked John a question.
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br />   “So, do you think the baseball players are gonna go on strike?”

  John was startled. There was in fact a Major League strike looming, and John probably would have loved to talk about it, but he would have been more prepared to answer a talking horse.

  “I dunno,” John said. “I dunno.”

  John stared blankly and Joey turned back around to face forward. He went out on a limb and was rebuffed. It was kind of sad, but we all knew it was the Prozac talking. Even Joey seemed to know that. It was like that weird, bold moment at a party when you’re so buzzed you walk up and talk to the prettiest girl there and ask her to marry you. Even sadder was the fact that John and Joey really did have something important to talk about, and it wasn’t whether a bunch of baseball players were going to stop playing. It was whether the Ramones were going to stop playing.

  Both John and Joey were talking about it a lot, just not to each other. Green Day’s album Dookie had gone platinum and then gone platinum again. That was bittersweet for the Ramones. Songs like “Basket Case” and “Longview” were catchy, powerful pop-punk. Anyone with half a working ear could hear the Ramones influence not just musically but in the attitude and the warped, self-deprecating lyrics. “Basket Case” was the new “Shock Treatment,” and “Longview” was the new “Sedated.”

  Personally, I felt energized by the new prominence of punk, though we weren’t reaping the rewards on our home turf. Even that wasn’t exactly true. We played all sorts of significant shows at home, and American rock icons like Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam were our friends and fans. It was an honor and a thrill for them to wear the pinhead costume at a Ramones show. Slash could usually be seen wearing a Ramones T-shirt. Across the ocean, Bono invited us to play a huge show with U2 in Oviedo, Spain, and his biggest thrill seemed to be finally meeting us. Bono told us he had seen one of our shows in Dublin in the late seventies, gotten inspired by our sound and attitude, and never looked back. These tributes made me want to go right out there again and do even more. But John and Joey didn’t feel the same way.

  John was well into his forties and had his eye on a house in California. He had reconciled himself to the Ramones having achieved cult status and to the idea that the sky was no longer the limit—time was. The band’s legacy had already crystallized in his mind, and he was okay with it. He wanted to relax, enjoy spending time with his friends, and maybe produce sci-fi and horror films like he had always talked about.

  Joey was also in his forties. He liked Green Day, but the band’s commercial success irked him. He and the other Ramones, after all this time, deserved better than being patted down in a Brussels train station. They deserved a real piece of the pie they had put in the oven so many years before. He still had music in him. Behind the prescription shades, his eyes lit up every time he talked about his solo project. But for the Ramones, maybe it was time to start winding down. And there was something else. Joey was sick. It wasn’t discussed, but we all knew it.

  John and Joey had played over two thousand shows together. Whether they liked it or not, the decision to call it quits was also going to have to be made together.

  Adios Amigos was an appropriate title for our final studio album. We still had some gas left in the tank, but the good-bye was well thought out. Our amigos were everywhere, including Iggy Pop, the forerunner of everything punk was about. Our amigos were all over the world and growing in number even as we prepared to wrap it up.

  For a supposedly dysfunctional family, we functioned really well and sometimes bordered on being a happy family. Daniel Rey produced and played lead guitar wherever necessary. We covered a Tom Waits song called “I Don’t Want to Grow Up,” which was the answer to the question “Why are you still playing in the Ramones?” We even covered the Motörhead tribute to our band, “R.A.M.O.N.E.S.”

  And Dee Dee wrote half the album. Who else could have written “Born to Die in Berlin”? When I slipped my hand through the wall years earlier, I knew for sure he’d make it back to Berlin. I just hoped he’d make it back to the States again.

  There was an expression on this side of the Atlantic called “phoning it in.” It meant not putting in anything close to your best effort. Strangely, we set up a phone in the studio so Dee Dee could call in and sing the third verse of the song in German.

  The back cover of the album was a photo of the band lined up against a wall, hands tied behind our backs, preparing to be executed by firing squad. In reality, we had a much better exit planned. We were going out in style.

  A lot of being in a band feels like pushing a cart up a hill. Record, tour, record, tour—left, right, left, right. There is the fear that if you let go, the cart will start to roll backward and pick up steam. But if you’re really lucky, there comes a time when the cart is rolling downhill forward and all you have to do is enjoy the ride.

  We didn’t know exactly what had happened since we flew down to Rio de Janeiro the year before. But in March 1996, something was definitely different. The itinerary was pretty much the same. Sleeping on the long flight down was the same. As far as we knew, the Brazilian government was the same. But from the moment we touched down on the tarmac it was bedlam. The fan base had grown incrementally with each visit, but this time it was more than a quantum leap. We were going off the deep end.

  Once we made it to the hotel alive, it was incredible to think we were going to have to leave again soon for the sound check at the stadium. That felt like swimming through shark-infested waters to a life raft and being told you had to swim back to shore. When we looked outside our balconies down into the parking lot, we saw thousands of kids. When they saw one of us step out, they pointed up and shrieked like they had spotted a shooting star. A simple wave from above would drum up more hysteria. It was the closest a kid from Brooklyn or Queens could ever come to feeling like the Pontiff. We would soon be surrounded by the masses.

  Less than an hour later, we sat in the van in the hotel garage as it prepared to venture out into the streets. A half-dozen members of the tour security force stomped around the foot of the driveway trying to keep the crowd at bay. Any moment we would have to roll through that crowd, and the last thing in the world we wanted to do was hurt Ramones fans. We were about to walk the plank. Or they were.

  “Very well-organized, Monte,” John said.

  “Jesus!” someone in the back of the van said.

  “He’s going to clear a path,” C.J. said.

  “Yeah, right,” John said.

  While we waited, a few girls had run up to the side of the van and were desperately pulling on the locked doors.

  “What do these kids want?” John said.

  “They want the band,” I said. “They want T-shirts . . .”

  “They want to tear you limb from limb,” John said. “That’s what they want.”

  As the van began to push forward, the sea of youth swarmed us. We moved slowly and steadily as if through a car wash of stray arms, legs, and torsos. The pressure of hands, heads, and elbows seemed enough to break the glass and flood the cabin. There was a moment of relief as the sea parted slightly and we hit the street. But it was just a moment. As the van picked up a little speed, the throngs of fans in the street saw their chances fading and went to more desperate measures. From behind, they chased us on foot, one or two making it onto the rear bumper, riding along for a few seconds before dropping off.

  Many more fans were able to press their flesh against the doors or even go for an extended ride before falling by the wayside. Healthy but temporarily insane young Brazilian faces were smashed up and contorted in the windows like monsters in a fun-house mirror. A lone daredevil threw his whole body onto the front windshield and bounced off, never to be seen again. We were traveling only about twenty miles per hour, so we were optimistic he would live to see another day if not that night’s Ramones show.

  Red lights were our enemies. They gave the delirious fans a chance to catch up to us and begin the process all over again. Whenever we shook off some of the swarm
, there were reinforcements waiting along the route to the stadium. Their campaign was mapped out like a battle. Even other cars rolled up alongside us to see how long they could stay abreast, wave, yell, gawk, stalk, stare, and catch a Ramone in his natural habitat.

  After the sound check there was an award ceremony with a sea of media. We were presented a Brazilian gold record for Mondo Bizarro. It wasn’t too little too late. It was a great feeling to sell so many records anytime, anywhere. It wasn’t the only album selling, either. Earlier albums from the Ramones catalogue had finally paid back the advances and were starting to pay royalties, including in the US. When we had economized on studio time to control costs and pocket the savings, we never planned on this happening, but it was happening. With Mondo Bizarro, it was just happening much faster and very far from home. All this had taken only about twenty years and a couple million miles on the road. It was definitely a bizarre world.

  Brazilian MTV was a lot like MTV back home. A twentysomething fast-talking hip kid in a T-shirt asked questions, waved around a microphone, and smiled at the amazing job he somehow landed. The VJ interviewing John, however, seemed more elated than his American counterparts. He was only a few feet from the great Johnny Ramone. The VJ wanted some inside stories from the CBGB days but had come to the wrong person.

  As was his style, John was brief and borderline polite, listing a bunch of bands from the early days and leaving it at that. But he did have a very thoughtful answer to why the Ramones had decided to hang it up. John explained that a decline was on the horizon and the band wanted to be remembered for playing at a certain level. It sounded like something Joe DiMaggio might have said.