Commando

by Johnny Ramone

  After that attack, I was living in New York, and I still loved it, but now I was thinking more about danger. It’s odd how something like that changes you. I think I got a little softer. I kept thinking how I could go around the system, like Goetz did. He didn’t worry about gun laws. He was the law. In the end, though, I never owned a gun. It was just a fantasy. I was no Charles Bronson.

  I think the jury system is a mess. I’ve never served on a jury in my life. They send summonses to me and I refuse. People have come to my house with a summons and I tell them there’s no John Cummings here. I feel offended that they even bother me. I’ve been ignoring this my whole life. The jury system should be three well-paid people who do this all the time. How do you get twelve people to agree on something? It’s ridiculous that a jury is made up of twelve people who are too dumb to be able to get out of jury duty. These are people who hate their jobs and want to get paid twenty dollars a day to sit around trying to agree on something. I’m amazed that anyone is ever found guilty of anything.

  But I’ve always been like that. Somehow, I have to beat the system. It makes me feel good about myself. I can’t follow orders. On the other hand, if it’s my own initiative, I’m gung ho. Like the Ramones.

  A simple example is when I lived in New York, in the late eighties, I found out that Connecticut turnpike tokens worked in the subway, and they were only fifteen cents. You could really save some money. So I went out and bought a bunch of those tokens. Here I was with almost a million dollars in the bank, and I’d be sneaking onto the subway. It was all part of beating the system. The cops were still watching the turnstiles in the subway back then, so I’d walk up with a real token in my hand just in case. At the same time, I always hated turnstile jumpers. What a loser way to do it. You should be able to think your way around the system. It was something that I never outgrew, just getting around the way things were set up. Who are they to tell me how to do things anyway?

  When I got out of the hospital after that fight in New York, I started to think more about how to handle the street and be safe, so I wouldn’t get jumped again. Later on, I scored some mace, the same police-issue mace that was fired into the crowd and sent everyone running when we played Washington, D.C., that night in the early nineties. I got it to carry around New York in my bag, and one time I really did have to use it in self-defense.

  I had just gotten out of a cab near my apartment on Twenty-second Street after a show, and there was this gay bar, Rawhide, on the corner. I called Linda before heading back because I was going to the store and I wanted to see if she needed anything. And some queer came out of the bar and started insulting me, saying, “Fuck you, fuck you, you asshole.” And I’m just using the phone. He was drunk and high and all kinds of messed up, and he started coming toward me. I didn’t know what he was going to do, so I pulled the mace out of my bag and hit him with it, but it had no effect. He was two feet away, and I kept spraying him, and he kept coming. He wouldn’t go down. I got nervous; I was really scared of him. He kept yelling like a crazy person, and I moved away, but he was moving into the street, still coming at me, yelling. I knew I could take him, but I was still nervous and thinking, “What if he comes right at me? Do I have to kill him?” I was glad to get away from him. I walked home. I liked that mace. It made me a little more confident that I had some kind of weapon to keep things even on the street.

  For all the bullshit, New York was a great place to live, and I got to spend a little more time there in the eighties and part of the nineties. The band was doing well; I was starting to save a little money. I was investing, and I kept buying bonds. I put a small amount in the market; it was 25 percent into funds or stocks and 75 percent into bonds. So my investments remained stable and kept the risk low. My money was growing, and I had a dollar figure, one million, that I was aiming for, and retirement was becoming a reality. I spent a little money for the first time in the early nineties.

  By the mideighties, I was also starting to know more people in New York. I was out all the time. I would walk everywhere, stop and grab a pizza slice somewhere, and keep walking. New York cops would see me walking and ask if I needed a ride. I would put them on the guest list for a show and ask them to come backstage afterward, but they never did. I think they were afraid of what they would see. I would tell them, “Nothing is going on,” but they just didn’t believe that.

  One of the things I am most proud of that we did was a benefit at CBGB’s for the New York Police Department so they could get bulletproof vests. It was on April 10, 1979. We even had protesters outside the club, these Commies. I later heard that they’d even passed around flyers telling people how bad the Ramones were for having this benefit and helping the police.

  The department had some rule that these guys had to buy their own vests. So we got enough money to help out a bunch of these cops. This was when New York wasn’t safe at all, before Giuliani fixed it up. The cops became my friends as soon as I stopped being a delinquent. I never worried about them.

  The manager at Balducci’s, the grocery store in New York, told me I was the nicest celebrity, so he would charge me a bluefish price for shrimp. Sometimes he gave me free shrimp cocktail and charged me two dollars a pound for filet mignon. I think he was a Ramones fan.

  The most unlikely place I was ever recognized was on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street. I was there with a friend of mine who worked at Fidelity and had invited me to come down and watch the traders. I walked down there on the floor, and everybody knew who I was. They were handing me phones and asking me to say hello to their friends. I talked to everybody. That was in the nineties. I thought, “All these Ramones fans work on Wall Street?” I didn’t expect anyone there to know who I was. I think the only place I ever went in New York and didn’t get recognized was the Rush Limbaugh television show in 1993. Linda and I went and sat in the audience. No one said a word to us.

  I also had some of the perks that doing well offers. I had a beautiful Ford Fair-lane, 1958, hardtop retractable, whitewalls, stainless steel, turquoise and white. By then, Linda and I had moved out of the studio apartment into a one-bedroom place on Twenty-second Street. We’d take the ’58 Fairlane down to the Time Cafe at Lafayette Street and Third Avenue during the summer. We’d park right in front and eat at a table outside so we could keep an eye on the car. I didn’t need it, but it was a luxury I could afford. I paid fifteen thousand dollars for it, and it cost three hundred a month to park it at our building. I sold it eventually, but not before I restored it for another fifteen thousand dollars. From 1996 on, I got new cars. First a Camaro, then Cadillacs, good American cars.

  Most of my friends in New York weren’t in the music business. I had friends who shared my interests, baseball fans or movie fans, who had regular jobs. Some were slightly in the movie business as production people. A couple were low-level city employees, blue-collar. I always liked working-class people. When I was in construction, I hung out with the black welders on breaks, and then I would hang out outside with Dee Dee during lunch and after work. I guess I always just preferred the company of regular people when I lived in New York.

  While we were still in the band, I never liked to be around people I didn’t want to be around, and when I was, it fed my anger. I had to be around the band, and Joey, all the time, so I was angry about that. Likewise, if I went to a club to see a band, I didn’t want to see people there that I didn’t like. I didn’t want to see many people from the past. If it was 1982, I didn’t want to be seeing someone from 1977. I wanted to move forward. It was a very general feeling and sometimes even random.

  There were people I liked, though, like Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers. I never minded seeing them individually or as a band. Dee Dee knew them better because he would do drugs with them, and they were all junkies. When you talk to junkies, it’s hard to have a conversation, because somehow their mind will always be on getting drugs. I’d see Thunders in the street or at a club, and we’d talk. The be
st conversation I ever had with him was shortly before he died in that New Orleans flophouse in 1991. I saw him at the Limelight in New York a few months before that, and we talked baseball. I always liked him and thought he was one of the most influential guitar players in rock and roll. I would have liked to have done a recording with him, maybe a cover song or something, because I always felt that he was sloppy and always had a band that could be a lot tighter. He would have been better playing with me. I could have tightened up one element of the sound.

  He was an exception. I really liked talking with him. Others, well, I didn’t want to see people from Television, like Tom Verlaine or Richard Lloyd. They irritated me. I hated Mink DeVille. I liked most of the Dictators, but I didn’t want to see them out. Richard Hell, on the other hand, I thought was funny; he was a beatnik. The Dead Boys guys, I always liked them. I met Stiv Bators on our first trip to Youngstown, Ohio. I liked him right away. He was funny. One time we were driving along and there he was in the next car, sticking his ass up to the window, mooning us.

  I was friends with most of Blondie and the Talking Heads. I think. For the rest of them, I never knew who was in what band anyway. I couldn’t keep up. I became friends with Lux and Ivy from the Cramps too. They’ve always stayed true to what they were doing. We’re still friends to this day. Around 1997, Linda and I went to visit them at their house in Los Angeles, and Vincent Gallo came along. He said it was like the Addams Family visiting the Munsters. I took it as a compliment because we were the Addams Family, and I’ve always loved Gomez Addams.

  If Linda and I went to the Limelight, I could walk into the room and everybody would freeze for some reason. People were scared of me. That was the anger I carried around, and it seemed to trouble everyone. It didn’t really bother me.

  By the mideighties, the band had sort of settled into its place in music. The Ramones were still the best live band out there. And I was starting to see clearly what my financial goals would be and how I could retire. At the end of 1984, I had between $75,000 and $100,000 saved, with a $250-a-week salary plus merchandise money, which was about the same amount. We weren’t through yet, and we were selling out most of the places we played, especially overseas.

  From 1982 through 1984, we never left the country to play except for Canada, which was a newer market for us. Again, I was content with my life in New York.

  We lost Mark for four years while he dealt with his drinking. In October 1981, he missed a show in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and that was his first step toward being out of the band.

  We had played in Columbus, Ohio, the night before, and the next day Mark told Monte he would join us in Virginia Beach; he had a ride with someone else. I said, “Monte, what are you letting Mark go with somebody else for? This isn’t our policy; this isn’t a good idea,” but Monte insisted it was okay.

  We got to the hotel and no Mark. We kept calling and trying to get ahold of him. It was a nightmare. We went over to the club and waited. Monte finally got him on the phone, but nothing worked; he was still drunk. If we could have gotten him there, he could have played. He was a great drummer. We were ready to get a private plane to get him to Virginia, but we lost contact with him. There were fans outside, and they were rioting. They set fire to something. The next day, we had to play Washington, D.C. We all made it to that show, and then we went home.

  I didn’t realize yet that we had to make a change, but I was very upset and embarrassed for the Ramones. I fined Mark five thousand dollars for missing a show. We had to drive back to Virginia Beach the next April and play for free.

  Mark had a problem. He did his drinking where I wasn’t always seeing it. He would tie one on, and then the next day he’d be in a bad mood all day. He wasn’t fun when he was like that. It would be awful because if Joey was in a bad mood, it didn’t make any difference. I couldn’t tell. But with Mark, he was usually fun, funny, and kept things loose. So that would really bother me.

  Mark was a different person than Dee Dee or Joey. Mark would work hard. I didn’t bully him at all, and part of the difference was that I found him funny. Joey and Dee Dee were intimidated by me, so anything I said was bullying in their minds. But Mark was so goofy that it would be hard to do, because everything was a joke with him. Besides, what could I do about bullying a drunk?

  When we were recording Subterranean Jungle in 1982, his drinking was really bad. We had to replace him on one song, the cover of “Time Has Come Today.” Billy Rogers, a drummer who’d played with Johnny Thunders and Walter Lure, sat in for that one. The producer was telling me that Mark couldn’t play. During those sessions, he was leaving early, saying he was tired. That just wasn’t like him. Then he’d go out, and someone would see him drinking. So he left us with no choice but to tell him he had to go.

  We picked up Richie, a guy who had been around. It was easy and Richie was good. We only tried out two other people. Richie’s playing was terrific and he could sing backups. But he left us in a bind in a dispute over money and we lost three shows in New York when he refused to play. He wanted more, and I thought we were still in negotiations. He wanted a piece of the merchandise money. Mark never even wanted that, except for things he was directly involved in, like if he signed drumsticks or skins. I understand that Joey had told someone that we were going to get rid of Richie, which wasn’t true. So after about four years in the band, Richie quit, right in the middle of a tour, without any notice; and I never saw him again. He completely disappeared after that. Last I heard, he was a golf caddie.

  For a second, right after Richie left, we had Clem Burke from Blondie drum for us. He was going to be Elvis Ramone. He lasted two shows, one in Providence, Rhode Island, and one in Trenton, New Jersey, and it was awful.

  He couldn’t keep up, not even close. I felt two feet tall when we played those shows. They were so bad I wanted to disappear. Clem was all turned around, speeding up and slowing down. We must have done some fast working, because four days later Mark was back. Joey was all for it, and he knew that it was time. He was smart like that with those changes; it was one of his better qualities.

  In 1987, Mark came back, sober, and it was great to have him. What is great is that Mark finally straightened himself out. Remember, he was sober in the Ramones for twice as long as he was drunk.

  The biggest blow of all in our career, I think, was the loss of Dee Dee. Actually, he lost his mind in a different way than Tommy. We must do that to people.

  First of all, Dee Dee did not play on the last three Ramones albums that he was credited on. He lost interest in playing the bass. He would be in the studio, but he just didn’t care. He didn’t play and was happy to let Daniel Rey or whoever was around do his parts. Live, we turned him down in the mix, and he could get away with a degree of sloppiness. Yeah, it drove me crazy, but I could cover for him. But worse than that, he wouldn’t even move; he would just stand there and not even try.

  Dee Dee was getting crazier and crazier, and it wasn’t just drugs. By the end of his time in the Ramones, in 1989, he wasn’t doing hard drugs anymore. His life was somehow miserable. It was likely the combination of the band and his marriage. He would throw tantrums all the time, yelling, throwing stuff. Most of it he took out on Monte. He was just so unreasonable. He was bloated and just looked really bad—he was on too many medications. This was about the time he got into the rap thing. That was nuts. He shows up at the airport in all his rap clothes, with a big gold chain and a clock hanging around his neck, and he comes up and starts talking like a black person—you know, “Yo, whatsup?”

  I was totally disgusted. He was into rap music, which was everything we hated. It sure wasn’t Ramones music. It’s funny now, but I wasn’t laughing then. I told him he had to dress regular, and he said, “Fuck you.” It was really embarrassing.

  But you know, I never, ever thought of replacing him. He showed up when he was supposed to be there. He was Dee Dee, our bass player. Most of us at one point said that we were quitting, except me. I never said tha
t. But to hear it from Dee Dee was normal, and I never took him seriously.

  I didn’t see it coming, but he did leave, finally, in July 1989, after some shows in California. I never wanted him to go. I’d always presumed Dee Dee was staying. We said we were in it together until the end. It was a deal we had. But I think he wanted to try to change his life to the point of having no responsibilities. I’ve tried to analyze it, and that’s the only thing I can figure. And you can’t have life without any responsibilities. It’s impossible.

  Dee Dee had left his wife a month before. We went on tour, came back, and I get a call from Gary Kurfirst’s office. I had no idea. “Dee Dee just called, he’s quitting.” I said, “Oh, okay. Fine.”—“What do you mean fine? You gotta come down here, we have to have a meeting.” I said, “I don’t wanna come down. He wants to quit, let him quit.”— “No, you gotta come down, Dee Dee’s coming, and we have to have a meeting.”—“Okay, fine, I’ll come down.”

  I go down there, and Dee Dee doesn’t show up. So I said, “No problem. We start having auditions tomorrow.” And that was it. We never spoke about it afterward. What was I supposed to do, ask Dee Dee why he left? Whatever he’d say, it wasn’t going to be the true reason. It would be meaningless. If I’d asked him on the day he left, and I’d asked him every year since, I would have gotten a different answer each time. I’d been around Dee Dee for too long to always find these things entertaining. Sometimes it was, but eventually it could just get annoying.

  One day, after he left the band, Dee Dee came by the studio, and he was fine. We were talking. When he had quit, we’d made an agreement that he would continue to write songs for the Ramones. His songwriting was still great, and he was very prolific. That day, we were all getting along, but when I left, he flipped out. He told everybody that he hated me and said that he wouldn’t write any more songs, and he was mad that we only took three of his songs when he had given me a tape of fifteen of them. But this was all after I left. He would never say things like that to me directly.