“Marc, we need you.” It was 1987 and current Ramones drummer Richie Ramone had walked out of the band with shows coming up in the near future. The band was desperate. Marky Ramone had moved on after his departure in 1983. He had cleaned up and was working. He had a new grasp on his life. But the Ramones needed him and he signed back on. In total, Marky was with the band for fifteen years, 1700 concerts and nine studio albums. He appeared with them in the movie, Rock N Roll High School, played on such classic songs as “I Wanna Be Sedated,” and “Pet Sematary,” and has now written the definitive Ramones history in glorious detail.
Not lacking in stories, Marky lovingly, and bluntly, talks about his youth; how teachers were cruel to young men exerting any signs of teenage rebellion such as simply growing their hair, how racism wasn’t part of his vocabulary, how watching John Glenn orbiting the Earth was one of the most exciting events of his classroom days. He saw Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull, met Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, joined a band and opened for Alice Cooper all before turning twenty.
His days hanging out at Max’s and CBGBs, playing with Richard Hell in the Voidoids and the infamous Wayne County, seeing the New York Dolls and Blondie get their groundbreaking musical sea legs are all within the 390 pages. But it’s the Ramones that fill the belly of the contents. Brought to life are Joey’s constant battle with OCD, Johnny’s constant need for control and Dee Dee’s constant struggle with drugs. Describing his own devil’s dance with alcohol and his eventual recovery meant as much, or more, to Marky as stories of walking on the Berlin Wall with Dee Dee, recording with Phil Spector, hanging out at Stephen King’s house, and receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award Grammy. But the saddest moment in Marky’s Punk Rock Blitzkrieg, is when the drummer visits Joey, dying from lymphoma, alone in a hospital room.
All these stories and more are covered in Marky Ramone’s book. “It’s only been out for a month but it’s amazing the onslaught of the interviews, which I am grateful for,” Marky told me a few weeks ago about the book’s instant popularity. And although he was getting close to the two hundred interview mark, he seemed excited to still be talking about the tales of his life.
Punk Rock Blitzkrieg is not one of those small, throw a few memories together kind of book. You go into a lot of detail about your experiences. Is that the way you wanted it or was that just the way it came out once you started writing?
Well, that’s the way you should do it. That’s what life’s about, the experiences, so I wrote a four hundred page book. You know, the longer you’re doing things in life and the business you’re in, the thicker the book is going to be. So it’s everything. It’s my whole life story from when I can remember all the way up until the Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award and up till now. Obviously with the Ramones and Richard Hell and all the other bands I was in, it’s a long adventure, that book. It’s the most comprehensive Ramones book.
When did you know you wanted to do it?
It was five years ago. You just can’t write a book overnight so it was in the planning for quite a while.
When you were writing down and reliving these memories, what was the main emotion you were feeling?
Ninety percent of my memories are great, except for the deaths of Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee and Tommy. That was bad. But you think of the good times and most of it has been great. I’ve had a lot of fun but in life you have your ups and downs and when you’re down you got to come out of it and come back up, you know what I mean. So the book is really a lot about that and about the music business and if you persevere just as much as you put into something, you’ll get something back out of it.
Do you feel any regrets over some of the things you shared in the book?
No regrets. Everything is in there. I didn’t have to think twice. I have to live with the book and I’m proud of it and that’s what matters to me. It’s extremely informative to the musical genre and Ramones fans and everything in that book is really relative to time, what is happening with current events at certain times in my life while I was in a group. So it’s really not just about the music, it’s about everything that happened during the time I was in the business.
You write a lot about your father. What were some of the most important things he taught you?
To not be a racist, not be bigoted, to accept people for what they are, even if they had difference of opinions, whether it was politics or different religion. And if you’re going to talk about other people, their personalities, in your book, you better talk just as brutally honest as you would about yourself. He made that crystal clear to me.
You write about when you and your classmates were watching John Glenn go into space and how that was so exciting for you. Did that make you want to become an astronaut?
No, no (laughs). I was only about ten years old and I was into sci-fi movies, Twilight Zone and all that stuff, and when I saw that, it was becoming a reality. So I was just very happy to see this guy took off from the planet and he’s just rotating around the globe. It was great, just to see that in real life with all your fellow students and you’re rooting for him. But when The Beatles came on TV two years later, that’s what I wanted to be. Like Ringo (laughs).
When you used to go hang out at the Fillmore, you saw bands like Zeppelin.
They were great. They were from England, the ultimate English band, and I got to see a lot of groups there cause I knew the usher who worked there and he let me in during the day and I would play on the group’s equipment, a lot of different groups equipment. They would leave after a soundcheck and go back to their hotels so I would hang around and play on Jeff Beck’s equipment, Zeppelin’s equipment, Ten Years After’s equipment, all these guys. And here I am fourteen, fifteen years old and it was just a great experience.
Who do you think was the greatest drummer you ever saw?
Oh Buddy Rich, Ginger Baker, Keith Moon from The Who, Mitch Mitchell from the Jimi Hendrix Experience. They were all great.
CBGB and Max’s have grown into mythic legends. What is the truth behind the illusion? What were they really like?
Max’s was great, a great place to hang out, to play, to meet all the rock luminaries that would be passing through. I met a lot of different people there. It was the start of the glam scene there in New York. It was a lot of fun. It closed at 4:00 in the morning and then CBGB started and we all started hanging out there. We had a place to play and it really was just a hole in the wall. It was a dump but it was our dump and we were very grateful to have a place to play our kind of music. That was another place that stayed open till 4:00 in the morning. It was where all the bands started honing their skills: Blondie, Talking Heads, Television, Richard Hell & The Voidoids, the Ramones. It was the beginning of a whole new genre.
Do we still have places like that?
I don’t know. It’s very hard for me to go out to clubs because of who I am but the thing is that I’m sure there are places out there that are happening. I don’t know if it’s as large as that legacy is or the popularity at CBGB and Max’s was, but hopefully there is a place or will be a place like that eventually.
When you were writing about being in the Voidoids with Richard Hell, you called him a punk Bob Dylan. Why do you say that?
He had a great knack at lyrical content and he sang about things that was relative to what was going on at the time. He was very intelligent when it came to lyrics so I really equated the two, Bob Dylan and Richard Hell. Unfortunately with Richard, drugs got in the way and it stifled him.
Why do you think that Johnny Ramone was so controlling over the band?
Oh he wasn’t controlling over the band. He wanted to be. He went to military school and I guess they taught him to be like that but his bark was bigger than his bite and I never even listened to him anyway. No one did. But the leaders of the band, for me, were Dee Dee and Joey Ramone because they wrote the songs and that’s important. Johnny knew how to coordinate things but that didn’t make him a leader.
You have some really interesting road stories. Which one still makes you laugh when you think about it?
There’s so many. Being in Japan was pretty funny, being in Florida was funny. They’re all in the book. [Being] at the Berlin Wall and it wasn’t down yet. We were up there and they thought we wanted to go to the communist side, which we didn’t want to do, but they were very paranoid back then. The searchlights were on us and the problem back then, people were escaping from the other side to come into the free part of Germany. That’s why the searchlights were there.
You and Dee Dee locked in so well as a drummer and a bass player. Why do you think that chemistry was so good?
We always got along the best. We laughed a lot. He was a funny human being and I gravitated towards him because of that. If you have someone that makes you laugh all of the time, stick with him or her for life because that is what that guy always did. He always made me laugh. He was a great bass player and he wrote most of the songs and I just enjoyed his company.
In your book, you wrote about Phil Spector. You sound like it’s no big deal working with him but some of the others didn’t seem that way.
Me and Joey loved him and he loved us. Johnny and Dee Dee didn’t like him and he didn’t like them. People are different, what can you do? That’s life. He just didn’t see anything in them that he would call a friend. With me and Joey, he did. It was basically a work ethic. Phil worked slow, the Ramones worked fast. Phil didn’t like the whining and complaining from Johnny and Dee Dee about his way of working. So there were petty animosities and things like that but in the end, Phil never pointed a gun at anybody in the studio. That’s all stories, hearsay and rumors. And that’s another reason I wanted to write this book too.
You are very, very straightforward about your alcohol abuse and about your recovery. Why was it important for you to be that honest and not sugarcoat it all?
Because maybe it could help somebody who might have a problem down the road or maybe did have a problem and can relate to it. Maybe it could help somebody. You have to be brutally honest about that. You can’t sugarcoat something like that and I didn’t want a fluff book. I wanted a book that was going to hold up, be the quintessential Ramones book.
Why do you think the Ramones are still relevant today?
I think it’s the lyrical content that appeals to the youth. I think it’s the energy we had. The songs are short and sweet and they can easily be sung, they have great choruses and that’s it, you know. We didn’t self-indulge and we stuck to what we believed in. We didn’t change for anything or anybody. We didn’t have to change because the record company was breathing down our back. We just continued to be who we were and I think a lot of the youth sees that through the internet and YouTube and all these things. A lot of bands had to change to appease the record companies.
What do you think was your greatest achievement as a Ramone?
The 1700 shows that I did with Johnny, Joey and Dee Dee. Being in the band for fifteen years. Being in the Hall Of Fame and winning the Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award. I didn’t expect it but I got it so that was a pretty big achievement. Not too many people get that.
What do you think was the weirdest moment for you as a Ramone?
That everyone thought we were real brothers. We weren’t but we were like brothers, just not blood brothers.
What was your most nerve-wracking experience onstage?
We did a show in South America in front of 60,000 people. We filled up a stadium there and it was so much physical activities from the crowd that we felt the stage moving. So picture 60,000 people and about 30,000 of them are on the ground pushing each other and slam dancing and pogoing – whatever you want to call it, contact sport, and there’s the stage and they want to get closer and closer. So we were a little weary that this thing could just collapse, you know. That was pretty strange.
As a drummer, out of all the songs you have ever heard, which one boggles your mind the most in terms of the drumming?
I would say on Jimi Hendrix’s first album, “Manic Depression.”
What did Mitch do that impressed you so much?
He was over the top. He was really a Jazz drummer but he did these rolls that were just so incredible it just can’t be duplicated.
What’s next for you?
A long-needed vacation (laughs). I’ve been doing live shows, book tours, my radio show on Sirius XM. I’ve got my own beer coming out. I have to deal with my pasta sauce I have. So there are a lot of things on the plate and I’m only one person. So I think after the book tour, I’m going to chill out for about a few months. I could go to Miami Beach, I could go to Hawaii, but I’m going to wait till the book tour is over and then just get a dart and throw it at the map (laughs).
Are you still working with your classic cars?
Oh yeah, it’s my hobby working on my cars. I’ve got a 1972 Mercedes that I’m working on. I just got a Dodge Charger from 1970 that I’m going to restore. A 1965 Imperial, the same one that the Green Hornet had, that Kato drove in the Green Hornet series. I have a 1957 Buick Coupe that I’m working on. When I have free time, I like to just work on my cars and make them better than they were, you know.
You and Jeff Beck would have a lot to talk about
Yeah, he’s into cars too. In fact, I want to go see his car collection in LA but we are never able to run into each other. When I go to the hotel, he’s never there and I’m dying to see it.
One Response