Commando

by Johnny Ramone

  At some point during our career, I think it was around 1978, Danny had taken on Linda Stein, Seymour Stein’s by-then ex-wife, as his business partner. She’d always been good to us and was a Ramones fan, but everybody was complaining heavily about her. There were phone bills, cab bills, and all these expenses we were getting that Danny had never charged us for before. It also didn’t help that Joey and Dee Dee’s girlfriends were plotting and scheming against Danny, because they felt he only talked business with me. The girls manipulated their spineless boyfriends, and Danny was voted out. No one manipulated me.

  Mark had no vote, but it wouldn’t have mattered even if he did. If he would’ve said, “Let’s stay with Danny,” Joey and Dee Dee would’ve said his vote didn’t count. If he’d said, “Let’s get new management,” then his vote would have counted. That’s the way it was. He probably would have gone along with them anyway, but he had no vote at that point. This is how decisions were made, we’d just vote. It was always this way, and it stayed this way until the end.

  When I realized that we had to change managers and that our career was not taking off like we thought it should—and I knew I was going to be outvoted—I pushed for Gary Kurfirst. He’d been managing the Talking Heads, and back in 1977 when they opened for us at the Orpheum in Boston, he made an impression on me. Arturo tried to give the Talking Heads less lights, and Kurfirst got on the case right away. There was a big argument over it, and I liked that he was sticking up for his band.

  I’d also known of Gary because as a kid, he lived across the street from me. I didn’t know him, but I knew his younger brother. In the sixties, Gary managed Leslie West and the Vagrants and promoted concerts at the Singer Bowl in Queens, like the Doors/Who show. He had a track record, and I was sort of impressed with him.

  It was a good change. Once we got Gary as manager, we started making more money. Not long after he took over, we got paid twenty-eight thousand dollars to play Bond’s in New York, the most we had ever made by far. But the money was going up by 1981. We made ten thousand dollars playing Brooklyn; Rockaway Beach, seven thousand dollars; Providence, Rhode Island, seven thousand dollars; Philadelphia, seventy-five hundred dollars; and Stony Brook, New York, ninety-five hundred dollars.

  Kurfirst was the Ramones manager for about twenty-five years even though we didn’t have a contract for the last twenty-three or so. Gary sent us a contract when we first went with him, and we signed it. When it expired two or three years later, we never signed another one. He would send me contracts, and I would just never sign them. He used to bug me about it, but eventually he just gave up. When our contract with Premier bookings ran out in the eighties, they’d send me renewal contracts too, and I’d say, “What do I need to sign a contract for? As long as you’re doing a good job, I’m not leaving.”

  When End of the Century failed to have a hit, I realized that we were not going to be as big as I had hoped. Right through to the end, I never again got too excited for success, because up until then, every album we did, we would think we had a big hit single. When we went with Phil Spector finally, people said, “Well, this is the one.” There was a big hype about punk rock taking off, but it didn’t happen. In England, they promoted punk rock, and everybody had some hits. That promotion was what it took, and that never happened in the United States. And when there was press about punk, somehow we’d get left out when it was positive and included when it was negative. It was a no-win situation.

  We knew there had to be a movement for it to take off, and in the fall of 1977 our third album came out at the same time as the Sex Pistols’ first one. We thought, “Okay, great. Maybe punk rock now. Here’s the movement.” But the media started playing up the fashion element. They’d show all these bands dressing in the punk fashion, and we weren’t a part of that, so we’d get left out. But when they’d start saying, “Oh, we can’t play punk rock,” then we’d get lumped in. In 1980 we were dropped by American Bandstand because Public Image Ltd went on the week before us. They acted like a bunch of assholes, and Johnny Rotten got up on the podium, so they canceled us the week later. We were always getting screwed.

  When I started, I believed that if you were good in this business, you would succeed. But it doesn’t work that way. It’s the bands who get this promotion, this push, regardless of whether they’re any good, who often succeed in a big way. Working hard helps, but that’s not all of it.

  We wanted to save rock and roll. These great bands were our idols. We weren’t against anybody. We were against what rock and roll was becoming, which was no rock and roll. That’s what we were against. I thought we were going to become the biggest band in the world. I thought the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, and the Clash were all going to become the major groups, like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and it would be a better world, and this would dominate the airwaves. It would be all punk rock, and it would be great. We turned to Phil Spector as a last resort to get played on the radio, but it still didn’t happen.

  So then it became a matter of this really being a job and working as hard as possible to take care of our fans and also make some money so that I wouldn’t have to go find a job after ten or twenty years of doing this. I could just see it. I would go look for work, and people would say, “Well, you want a job? What have you been doing for the last twenty years? Oh, you were in a punk rock band?”

  Well, that wasn’t gonna get me a job, you know? People would tell me, “Oh well, you’re really smart. Don’t worry—you’ll get a job as a booking agent or something.” I just didn’t believe that. If I needed a job, no one was gonna hire me. If I didn’t need a job, then that’s when people would probably make me offers. That’s how the world works.

  After End of the Century, I really started shooting for a financial target. I knew how much I had to make to retire, and I was hanging in there long enough to make that happen. Even then, though, I knew we were better live than most of the other bands out there. I knew we had to make this work—this was our career—so how we handled it would be important.

  Around this time, Linda was becoming my best friend. We were around each other for two years before it started to happen. She was still with Joey, and I was still with Cynthia, but we all toured together from 1979 through 1981. We saw each other on the road and back at home in New York. It ended up that we lived around the corner from each other; her with Joey on Ninth Street, and me with Cynthia on Tenth.

  By the end of 1980, Linda and I would meet for lunch in the neighborhood in the city all the time, and by 1981, we were pretty openly hanging out. There were other people who didn’t want to see us getting together. For some reason, it freaked them out; like my first girlfriend, Arlene. I’d dated her when I was eighteen or nineteen, and she’d left me. And I was determined that, somehow, I’d get back at her for that. I figured it might take years, but I promised myself that eventually, somewhere down the road, I would torture her. And I did. Years later I would lead her on just a little bit, any time I could, even though I had no interest in her. And she was dying to get back together with me.

  Arlene is now the wife of Joey’s brother Mickey, but when I was having problems in my marriage with Rosana, she kept hanging around waiting for me to leave my wife. I wasn’t interested. When I left my wife, I went out with Cynthia. And when I was having problems there and was going to move on, all of a sudden Arlene was back in the picture again—even though she was seeing Mickey at the time. Well, Mitch. That’s his name, but he always asks everyone to call him Mickey.

  I still wasn’t interested, and she was pissed. She would try to pop in and out of my life, but I never got together with her. Linda would come down to meet me, and all of a sudden Arlene would show up. She’d be getting mad that Linda was becoming friendly with me. One time she even came to a show and said, “Why do you want Linda, when you can have someone with an hourglass figure like me?” And this is while she’s seeing Mickey! Linda and her girlfriend were right there listening to all of this and laughing hysterically
: “Oh my god, do you hear what she’s saying?!” Arlene didn’t realize it, though.

  Mickey always knew she liked me. She’d come into the city with him to visit Joey, just so she could somehow try to find a way to leave there and meet me. She’d always say to Linda, “Oh, let’s call up Johnny and see what he’s doing.” And they’d come down to meet me. Linda and Arlene knew each other, and she knew that Linda and I were friends. One day the three of us went to lunch, and Arlene caught Linda and me holding hands under the table. She looked under the table and she flipped out, jumped up and yelled in the middle of the restaurant, “What the fuck is going on?” It was pretty dramatic. Like I said, I would lead her on a little bit, but each time I was interested in someone else. I had no interest in her.

  I basically had four girlfriends in my life, that’s it. I’d dated Arlene, then Rosana; and while I was married to Rosana, I started up with Cynthia. She came to the shows and it just happened. Rosana found out because Cynthia forced the issue and called her. So Rosana threw me out. I would still go back and see her on occasion, but I could never spend the night because I was living with Cynthia. There was a point when I was meeting with Linda (nothing physical yet), and at the same time I was seeing Rosana and living with Cynthia. It was very stressful.

  But the end result of everything was that Linda left Joey in the summer of 1982, and a couple of months later, I left Cynthia. The whole thing made situations tense in the band, but I tried to be sensitive, if that’s the word. In the fall, Linda and I moved into a studio apartment together on Twenty-second Street. Though I’d always have the van drop me off near my old place on Tenth Street as if I still lived there. Joey didn’t know we were living together, and I was concerned that he’d quit the band if he did. Joey would tell everyone, “If I find out they’re living together, I’m going to quit.”

  I had never really gotten along with Joey, but I didn’t want to hurt him, either. Joey and I weren’t close friends; we were business associates. Besides, if a girl doesn’t want to be with him anymore, what is she supposed to do? Stay with him anyway? If both people are happy, then nothing can interfere. But if things don’t work out, then there’s a problem in the relationship. I thought it was annoying that Linda stayed with Joey longer than she even wanted to, and we put off being together just because we were worried that it would affect the band. We were really trying not to cause him problems, until it just became totally impossible for us. In the beginning, after she’d left him, Linda even lived by herself for a while. Again, just not to cause problems. We tried our best, but you can’t live a lie.

  Linda and I never flaunted our relationship, and that was a way to get away from trouble. She stopped traveling with us in 1982, and at shows near home I would get off the stage, grab my stuff, and go. I was afraid that the Linda situation would affect the band. I looked at the situation like Keith Richards and Brian Jones and the Anita Pallenberg deal, where she left Brian Jones to go with Keith Richards. I didn’t know what to do, because I didn’t want to break up the band, and at the same time I wanted to be with Linda.

  Until I met Linda, I had made no withdrawals from my bank account, only deposits. I’d lived on my per diem and tour money. I was obsessed with saving money for retirement, and that doesn’t go well with generosity. But I wanted to impress Linda, so I started making withdrawals. I remember making the first one from my bank account—it was painful. Tears came down from my eyes! But I never hooked up with anyone else after I went out with Linda. Obviously, it was meant to be. And we’ve been together ever since, for the past twenty years.

  When I was a kid, I did as much as I could by myself, and I probably just got used to doing whatever I wanted. I didn’t realize it until much later in life, but I was selfish; up to the point when I decided to get married to Linda. That was the first time I stopped being selfish. I realized that she comes first. We were married at City Hall in New York. It was just Linda and me, and she brought a girlfriend. I paid five dollars for someone to take a picture of us, with Linda holding a plastic bouquet of flowers. Linda noticed a thumbprint on the photo and said, “Let’s take another.” But I said no. The first one had already cost me five bucks, and it was taking too long anyway. Linda started walking away with the plastic bouquet and a guy came running after her. I’d only rented them, for fifteen dollars. I said, “Linda, you gotta give them back, they’re plastic anyway.” That’s punk. Besides, I may not have been selfish anymore, but I was still frugal.

  I think Joey would have been fine if Linda had gone off with anybody else, but it really bothered him that it was with me. Joey was always that way; he would blame others even when it was his fault. I take personal responsibility very seriously. Most things in life are at the very least in part your own fault, the fault of bad judgment. He did the same thing if he messed up a song and forgot the lyrics. He would say, “Well, it wasn’t me.” I knew this was something that Joey would get very mad about. I wasn’t worried about him being mad at me, but I was worried that he would be angry enough to break up the band. I figured out later that it takes everyone to want to stay together as a band, and even though these were tense moments, nobody wanted to mess up the fact that we were the best at what we were doing.

  The Ramones, actress P.J. Soles (Riff Randell), and co-screenwriter Richard Whitley relax between takes on the Vince Lombardi High set during the shooting of Rock ’n’ Roll High School, December 1978. From the private collection of Richard Whitley, used with permission.

  Linda, circa 1978. Used courtesy JRA LLC photo archives. All rights reserved.

  Johnny in Washington, D.C. Photo by Danny Fields, under exclusive license to JRA LLC. All rights reserved.

  Photo by Danny Fields, under exclusive license to JRA LLC. All rights reserved.

  Dee Dee, Johnny, and Joey interviewed at the Hyatt Hotel, Los Angeles, January 27, 1978. Photo by Jenny Lens. © JRA LLC. All rights reserved.

  Photo by Danny Fields, under license to JRA LLC. All rights reserved.

  The Ramones, live at the Whisky a Go Go, Los Angeles 1977. Photo by Jenny Lens. © JRA LLC. All rights reserved.

  Linda and Johnny in the 1980s.

  Johnny and Linda married at City Hall—note thumbprint at bottom right. Used courtesy JRA LLC photo archives. All rights reserved.

  Photo by Jenny Lens. © JRA LLC. All rights reserved. (Right) Danny Fields, under exclusive license to JRA LLC. All rights reserved.

  Chapter 5

  Witnesses said he kept kicking me in the head. I don’t remember anything.

  The van dropped me off on the corner by my old apartment on Tenth Street in Manhattan after we played a show in Queens at L’Amour’s. It was around three A.M. on August 14, 1983, and I was going to get a taxi to my apartment on West Twenty-second Street. I walked by my old place, the one I had shared with Cynthia, and there she was, drunk, sitting on a stoop across the street. She was with this kid who I had never seen before, a punk rock kid who looked like any other. I thought he would be too intimidated by my showing up to do anything to me. I told Cynthia to go inside, and this kid starts telling me to get lost. I ignored him and tried to tell her that she shouldn’t be sitting outside. Even though I’d left Cynthia, I still felt very bad for her. Her drinking problem was really out of control.

  The next thing I knew, I woke up in St. Vincent’s Hospital, but they had to tell me where I was. My head was bandaged. They were giving me antiseizure medicine, afraid that the injury would trigger some response. My hair was cut off. I had bleeding on the brain, and the doctors thought I was going to die. Again.

  I’d suffered a fractured skull, and underwent brain surgery. It even made the cover of the New York Post. My mom, Tommy, and Linda came to visit me, and I got a lot of flowers from fans all over the world. I told the nurses to give them to some of the other people in the hospital who were in worse shape than I was. I was in the hospital for ten days. Then I had to take it easy for a little bit. I was ready to play in three months, and our next album wo
uld be titled Too Tough to Die.

  I was thankful that I didn’t have brain damage and that I was okay, but other people said that they saw something different about me after the attack. They thought that it had changed me. I didn’t feel any different, but I began to be more cautious, and looked to avoid confrontational situations. I didn’t back down, of course, because New York is a confrontational place. But I watched situations more carefully, even people around the Ramones who might want to get too close. I did not want to get into another fight. I saw the damage that it had done. I was now more vulnerable to head injuries.

  The guy who attacked me was charged with first-degree assault and sentenced to a few months in jail the next year. I went to court and testified. I never heard from him again. I was very angry. I wanted him killed. I’m all for capital punishment. I think it should be televised. I think they could make it a pay-per-view event and give the money to the victims’ families.

  So then I fantasized about getting a gun. I thought it would be great to have somebody try to mess with me and kill him. I mean, Bernhard Goetz was a hero. He did what everyone else wants to do. He was Charles Bronson. In real life, who the hell would want to approach Charles Bronson? They go for the Bernhard Goetzes of the world.