I was slowly making new friends in the same field I was in, and I had never done that before. I knew that there was all this upsurge of respect for us and what we had done. And there were the numerous imitators, these pop-punk bands. I never bothered with most of them. I knew they could never do what I did.
By the early nineties, we’d become really big in South America. I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but I was really surprised. It was great. We drew much bigger crowds there than we did anywhere. The first time I realized what was going on, I called Linda and said, “Wow, this is incredible. We’re like the Beatles here! This is how the rest of the world should be.” But soon I was a prisoner. I called her back a few hours later saying, “I’m having a breakdown. I’m just glad it’s not this way everywhere.”
I had left my room and came back to find these two maids in the bathroom handling my razor and looking through my things. I had to have a security guard outside my door. I couldn’t leave my room. I couldn’t go down to the lobby. I couldn’t go outside. I couldn’t go anywhere. And I wasn’t used to this. I was used to twenty years of walking around left alone and unnoticed. It was rough. The fans all wanted to touch you; they’d pull at your hair, too, and I don’t like being touched.
By the second and third time we toured there, we started having to play about a week of consecutive shows at the same venue to five thousand people a night. There would be big crowds of people waiting for us outside the hotels—all the time. I’d go outside, and I’d say, “I want you all to stand here. I’m gonna go out and walk around for half an hour, but I will come back, and I’ll sign all the autographs. Nobody follow me—you all stay right here.” They’d listen at first, but after the second or third day, they’d stop listening. One time they all jumped on me and started pulling my hair. I broke away and got in the door, and the hotel told us, “We don’t want you back here anymore, because this is out of control. We can’t deal with this.” We went to another hotel, and they said, “Don’t come down to the lobby.” But I did, and the fans stormed the glass! They broke the entire front glass doors down and all charged into the lobby. I had to run out of there. I saw them coming through, jumped in the elevator, and got away. We had to get a hotel that had a fence around it, with guards outside and everything. There was no way of going anywhere.
Joey didn’t really leave his room, either. CJ would go sit in the lobby and talk to the local girls there. He couldn’t speak the language, but he didn’t care. I can’t do that. I’d try for a few minutes, and think to myself, “What am I doing?” It’s too tiring talking to foreigners. It’s a slow process, and you can’t have meaningful conversation.
I was having a breakdown. I had the promoter fly Eddie Vedder down so I’d have a friend with me. I said, “My friend Eddie Vedder is really interested in playing down here.” He really had no interest in playing down there at all, but I said, “I think it’s a great idea for you to fly him down so he can see how great South America is.” The promoter said, “He will, he’ll come down?” I said, “Yeah,” and they flew him down the next day. The promoter paid. They put him up in the room next to me with connecting doors. We’d sit there and play the Strat-O-Matic baseball game all day long. But I would go downstairs two times a day to sign stuff for the fans. There was a fence around the whole hotel, so they would pass stuff over the fence, and I would sign.
It would be funny playing the shows there, though, because we didn’t know what the hits were. We’d play a song and feel it out, and realize, “Wow, I guess this was a big hit here.” But almost every other song the audience would sing along. For “The KKK Took My Baby Away,” the entire audience sang along. We must have had airplay there. The promoters own the record companies, and they own the radio. A monopoly; and it was good for us. We got paid a lot to play there, and they flew us in first class too.
The fans would sing along with songs, like “Psycho Therapy” and our version of “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” We’d play a song and it would get such a huge response that I always had to wonder if that was a hit there and I just didn’t know it. Almost the whole crowd was guys; there were some girls in the back. They were really good people who spoke very little English. When we played the five-thousand-seat place, there were these seats at the side of the hall that were more expensive. The kids on the floor would make fun of them up there, saying they weren’t real Ramones fans, and that the Ramones were a band for the working class. They did it in a kind of football chant, like you hear in England.
We’d go on to play fifty-thousand-seat stadiums there; and in May of 1994, only two years after its release, South America gave us our first gold record, for the Mondo Bizarro album. About a month later, we received our first certified gold record in the United States, for the greatest hits compilation RamonesMania, released in 1988.
It was really nice, but at the same time, I had to think that we deserved that everywhere; like in the States. We’d play for fifty thousand people somewhere else, then come back and play clubs for one thousand people. It was the same when we first went to London and played the Roundhouse or the Hammersmith for two or three thousand people, then we’d come back here and try to get a show at Toad’s Place in New Haven for five hundred people or play CBGB’s. There was no one to blame, that’s just how it went.
But near the end, our albums had long since gotten weak, and I was very protective of how we were looking and how the fans would see us. Some of us looked worse than others, and I was trying to avoid any clear shots of the band. On the last studio album, ¡Adios Amigos!, we went for the cover photo shoot, and I told them that we were keeping our backs to the cameras. Then I said that I wanted a firing squad shot that showed us against a wall being executed. But I wanted the name of the record company on the backs of the firing squad that was shooting us. They wouldn’t go for that. But I did get the concession that our faces would not be used on the back cover, only inside. The label people were always trying to get one over on us. I learned from End of the Century. Never turn your back—except on the album cover when you might be looking too old.
These were the things that I had to worry about as we moved toward the end. Any band will tell you, if they’re being honest, that rock and roll is a young man’s game and that when you’re in it too long, there are penalties. The last thing I wanted to be was like an aging athlete; Nolan Ryan, playing past his prime. You get up there, and you might be hitting .300, but you’re not what you were. The songs, too, were a little tired. There is only so much creativity in the human soul.
Since 1977, for some reason, I’d had my eye on California as a place to retire. I didn’t even know it, really, but I would mention it, jokingly, to interviewers. What’s not to like? The weather is great all the time, you can drive around, which I love, and the food is tremendous, with so many great restaurants.
By the early nineties I had reached my financial goal. I had a million dollars saved, and since then I’d even started to surpass it. I was in the lobby of a hotel in May 1995. The place was empty except for me and a fan, a guy who had often followed us around on the road. I was watching ESPN, and a thought crossed my mind that had been bouncing around for a while. I was now certain of retirement, and that the Ramones were done. I’d mentioned it to this fan as an aside.
Once I told somebody that I was going to do it, it was done. I thought more about it that night, when we played and later in the hotel. I ran it by Linda, and we started planning. I felt that we could do one more album, which would be ¡Adios Amigos!, one of our better ones, then play everywhere the fans wanted us to play, and that would be it. I talked to the band about it, and there was no resistance. None. We just knew it was time, kind of like a clock striking. There we were, with our rock and roll hearts ready to go on to whatever else we were destined to do. For Joey, it was to DJ at New York parties and do some solo project. For me, it was to do nothing but my hobbies, although I was still interested in getting into the movie business.
In fact, after we�
��d retired, I specifically wanted to direct a remake of the 1971 exploitation film Werewolves on Wheels. I’d even planned to cast an actor named John Enos as the lead; he was Traci Lords’s boyfriend at the time. I would casually bring up the idea to some friends in the industry from time to time, but in the end, as fate would have it, I never got the chance to seriously pursue it.
Even if we had gotten along, it was time to call it a day. We were treading water, and there was no point anymore. I thought we were becoming dinosaurs, which is why you see the dinosaurs on the cover of ¡Adios Amigos!
There was no firm date on retirement, which is why we kept saying that each tour was our last in 1995 and 1996. Our final tour was as long as we wanted it to be. And at that point, it became more enjoyable. The pressures had subsided, and I began to savor those last months. Everyone in the band got along better; even Joey and I had kind of an unspoken agreement that we could get along in some way.
Throughout our career, it was sometimes hard to put happiness together with the experience of being in the Ramones, except for that time onstage. There was always pressure to put out a good record without compromising in any way. And at the same time, we had to listen to a label’s ideas and be a little cooperative. Then there were the personnel issues, making sure that people in the band were not drug addicts and that they kept playing well. There were always lots of arguments, which was stressful. And it was sometimes hard to have fun at the job when someone would show up at practice drunk or stoned. I was always satisfied that we were the best, but it was a real job.
After the decision to retire, though, I knew that people were looking to us to be good for that last stretch, and there was so much appreciation—everywhere we went. Everyone in the band was straight, and I could relish each show. There was a peace, and it felt good. And the fans were still getting a great show.
The organizers of Lollapalooza had ignored us for years, ever since that tour began in 1991. I really didn’t care. Our fans liked clubs, intimate gatherings, not the amphitheaters that Lollapalooza played. But when word got out that we were ready to do one last swing through America, Lollapalooza called. I did this for Joey, who really thought it would be a good thing.
Marc Geiger, the guy who assembled the bands for Lollapalooza, came up to me at one point during the tour and said, “I got you on Lollapalooza.” I said, “I don’t give a shit; my career is over,” and I walked away. I had no idea who ran the whole thing, and I couldn’t have cared less. And then this guy was trying to take credit for having us on it, like he did me a big favor. He wasn’t there when we really could have used it, in the early nineties. Besides, it was really Soundgarden who lobbied to get us on the tour.
This was how the business was run, on who could take credit for the coolness factor. The Ramones were cool no matter who wanted to take credit later.
We were on almost every show of Lollapalooza ’96, and played as if we were headlining. In my mind, we were, because the people who were into us were not Soundgarden fans. They came to see us. We played before Metallica and Soundgarden and did a forty-five-minute set. I felt like I wasn’t even working. I flew home after every show, since we’d usually play every two days.
Johnny times his fastball at the Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame, circa 1990. Used courtesy JRA LLC photo archives. All rights reserved.
Johnny and friend Eddie Vedder visit the L.A. Dodgers dugout. Used courtesy JRA LLC photo archives. All rights reserved.
Eddie Vedder, Chris Cornell, and Johnny backstage at Lollapalooza. Used courtesy JRA LLC photo archives. All rights reserved.
Photo by Stephanie Chernikowski, under license to JRA LLC. All rights reserved.
Chapter 7
We had accomplished what we needed to. Joey was getting more and more tired. But still, never at any point did I see a band in the nineties and think, “These guys are better than us.” And we played with good bands.
I knew that someday it had to end. What a great job, what great fans we had. I mean, there are people who really have to work for a living. They work in coal mines; they sweep streets; they collect garbage. Being in a band was taxing on the mind because of all the travel, and there were certain pressures, but it was nothing like real work that most people do. I’m sure baseball is more grueling. I was very lucky.
Bands are fooling themselves if they think they’re as good after playing together for fifteen years as they were three or four years in. It just doesn’t work like that. We were no exception. Maybe there should be a mandatory retirement age for rock and roll. I probably would have been past it, at forty-seven, when I quit. But hey, I lied about my age when we started, making myself three years younger since I was actually the oldest guy in the band.
The last show was the end, and I knew it. I had no reservations about ending things. I had a life to look forward to. On August 6, 1996, the day of the last Ramones show, at the Hollywood Palace, I had blocked out the significance and the finality of it all. One thing I noted that was pretty cool is that the Palace was the same place that Dean Martin had mocked the Stones when he was guest hosting the variety show The Hollywood Palace in 1964. I always liked being on stages where my favorite bands had played. This time, though, was really the Last Time.
As for the show, it was number 2,263, the last performance we would ever make. I was happy to retire and be done with it, since I had planned this for many years. I had banked so much money and lived cheap. Funny thing, though, is that I could live on the royalty checks and barely even touch the core amount I had saved. We got so popular after we retired. I never expected it.
The show was being filmed, which was a hassle, and I was getting the pressure to come up with guests to go onstage and play with us. It was all on my head. We had special guests like Eddie Vedder and the guys from Rancid. I had to take care of all that.
That was how it ended, pretty much the same as it always was, with me doing a lot of the things.
After playing the last chords of the Dave Clark Five’s “Any Way You Want It” and walking out of the Palace that night, it hadn’t really hit me that it was over. I wasn’t quite sure that we weren’t going to play again. I said nothing to the other guys; I just walked out. It was the way I lived my life. I tried not to feel anything. The anger that I had used to carry myself through was now becoming a finely tuned dispassion for anything but relaxing. I was ready for the rest of my life, whatever that was going to be. Of course, I was really feeling loss of some sort. I just didn’t want to admit it.
Before the last show, we had gotten a big offer to go to South America again and play some farewell gigs there, right away, just a week or two after the Palace. We had just played Lollapalooza for six weeks and had a chance to make more money than we did on that entire tour, for just three shows in South America. Joey said he was tired, but I told him, “Look, I just did Lollapalooza for you.” The other guys wanted to do it, but Joey wanted to wait. So I said, “Hey, this is it. If we don’t do that, I don’t want to play anymore.” He should have known that I don’t give in on something like that. We do it when they ask us to do it, and that’s that. If we weren’t going to do that, I was done.
I got so tired of hearing from everybody about how fragile Joey was. It was always, “Oh, just be nice to him, he’s tired.” But it was used as an excuse for his behavior. Whenever we’d take time off, instead of resting, Joey would be out there doing all of these other projects. We’d get back on the road, and he’d immediately complain about how tired he was, and I’d think, “We just had a month off! Why didn’t you relax?” I wasn’t the only one in the band that noticed this, either. We all did.
He wasn’t resting anyway, and he wasn’t going to get himself in shape sitting around doing nothing unless he started doing some sort of exercise. You get home from a trip and three or four days later you’re rested. We weren’t working like those periods in the seventies when we had been playing constantly. Later on we weren’t working that hard. But he tortured me every day, say
ing, “I’ve got to think of myself”; and here I am thinking about the band.
I rarely had any contact with Joey after we broke up; two or three times maybe, at the most. We would talk when there was a business issue and I wanted his opinion, or when I needed to tell him about something that I was doing for the Ramones, but that was it. When we did the Anthology in-store on Broadway in New York in 1998, I asked him how he was feeling. This was after I found out he had lymphoma, which eventually killed him. “I’m doing great,” he said to me. “Why?” I gave up.
There were times on the road when a month would go by and I wouldn’t say a word to him. It was pointless. If I got off the stage and said, “Wow, it was a good show tonight,” he’d say something like, “Well, I thought it sucked!” And I’d think, “Why did I even bother saying a word? Why do I say anything?” This whole situation has always kind of weighed on me when I think of our fans. I don’t think the fans want to hear that their favorite band disliked each other. They want to believe that you’re friends, but that’s only a public image.
In my mind, though, there was always that chance that we would get back together in the studio, maybe to do a song for a compilation or to add to a re-release. I kept a guitar around to play, just in case something came up. I would never join another band; I knew that. There was no way to top the Ramones.
In my head, it was never officially over until Joey died in April 2001. There was no more Ramones without Joey. He was irreplaceable, no matter what a pain he was. He was actually the most difficult person I have ever dealt with in my life. I didn’t want him to die though. I wouldn’t have wanted to play without him no matter how I felt about him; we were in it together. He never quit. We broke up and he died. That was the official end of the Ramones. I wasn’t going to play without him. So when it happened, I was sad about the end of the Ramones. I thought I wouldn’t care and I did, so it was weird. I guess all of a sudden, I did miss him. But he made an impact through his life, so he’s still among us.
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