Cafiero John - Lobotomy: surviving the Ramones

Copyright Dee Dee Ramone (Douglas Colvin) 1997, 2000

Introduction copyright 2000 by Legs McNeil

Foreword copyright 2016 Blackheart Marks Corp., and Caf Muzeck

LLC. All rights reserved.

Contributing Editor 2016 edition: John Cafiero

Thanks to (2016 edition): Barbara Ramone Zampini, Joan Jett,

John Cafiero, Jerry Only, Kenny Laguna, Max Verrelli, Caroline Jaecks, and Carianne Laguna.

For more on Dee Dee Ramone, see DeeDeeRamone.com.

Third Edition

First Edition written with Veronica Kofman

Second Edition edited by Danny Weizmann

First Edition published by Firefly Publishing in association with Helter Skelter Publishing Ltd.

Second Edition published by Thunders Mouth Press, an imprint of Avalon Publishing Group Incorporated.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address Da Capo Press, 44 Farnsworth Street, Third Floor, Boston, MA 02210.

Designed by Pauline Neuwirth, Neuwirth & Associates, Inc.

Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-0-306-82499-9 (e-book)

Published by Da Capo Press

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www.dacapopress.com

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Table of Contents

Contents

by Legs McNeil

by Joan Jett

Dee Dee Ramone thanks The Ramones, Ira Herzog, Michael & Sally at Herzog & Strauss, Seymour Strauss, Daniel Rey, Larry Schatz, Ed Steinberg, Seymour Stein, Harold Holloway, Dr. Finkel, Dr. Hanch, Stanley Bart, Western Union, Neil Ortenberg and Thunders Mouth Press, and everybody who has stood by me in my life.

Dee Dee Ramone epitomizes the quintessential punk rocker.

In a time when rock stars have become neatly packaged products trading on twenty-five-year old ideas and music they neither originated nor improved on, Dee Dee stands as a reminder as to why rock & roll stars used to be so compellingwhen rock stars actually meant something. I know it seems hard to believe now, but they did mean something once, a long, long time ago.

And the reason why they were so compelling, besides those cute haircuts and tight leather pants, was because they were sexy losers. Before the music, we only got to see these beautiful losers in newsreels and newspaper headlines after their spectacular crime sprees came to a screaming finish.

Charles Starkweather, the James Dean look-a-like who, along with his girlfriend, Carol Ann Fugate, killed her parents because they didnt approve of him, then went on a week-long killing spree across North and South Dakota (and became the subject of the movie, Badlands) is the perfect example. The guy was a rock star. He had the look, the hair, and the sneer. We knew him. We understood when he said, Fuck it.

So when Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Moon, and Janis Joplin all got up there and did the same thing, only to music, we knew who they were. They were sociopathic criminals who found a forum in rock & roll, and became overnight superstars, because we loved them for getting away with it.

DEE DEE RAMONE , is the last of this breed of authentic rock star, for he was an authentic bad guy who got over, and in so doing, forever changed the face of rock and roll.

Dee Dee was the archetypical fuck-up whos life was a living disaster. He was a male prostitute, a would-be mugger, a heroin dealer, an accomplice to armed robbery and a genius poet who was headed for prison or an early gravebut was side-tracked by rock & roll.

When I was 18 and doing Punk Magazine and hanging around the Ramones Loft at 6 East 2nd Street with Joey Ramone, trying to find money for beer instead of working, Dee Dee used to come by in the afternoon to write songs.

Dee Dee had lived at the Ramones Loft, owned by the Ramones lighting and t-shirt guy, Arturo Vega, but was thrown out when his fights with his girlfriend, Connie, almost destroyed the place. I think the fight where they splattered the place with Arturos paints was the final straw.

After he was thrown out, Dee Dee would show up with his well-worn repentant look, pick up the three-string folk guitar and huddle in the corner with Joey to thump out one of his latest masterpieces. I would stand across the room astounded that his guy was actually capturing the complexity of our lives on the Bowery in the simplest rock & roll songs.

As a writer, Dee Dee always had a knack of distilling the most intricate ideas to their most basic forms without losing any of the context. Example:

I dont wanna walk around with you,

I dont wanna walk around with you,

I dont wanna walk around with you,

so why ya wanna walk around with me?

The entire story is there. Yeah, its blunt and simple, but if its so easy, why didnt you do it?

Hearing Dee Dees songs today, Im still amazed at how emotionally and psychologically accurate they are. Musical snapshots of living degradation. Whenever I hear Chinese Rocks, Dee Dees anthem to copping heroin (that Johnny Thunders appropriated, though he had no part in writing) all the images of that time come flooding back to me. I can actually see Connie crying in the shower stall at Arturos; Connie dragging Dee Dee out of the loft by his ear because he was about to fuck Eileen Polk in the bed by the windows; Dee Dee and Richard Hell taking the walk to Avenue C to cop; Dee Dee unable to sit down because Connie had stabbed him in the ass; Dee Dee pulling a knife on Johnny in the van because Johnny was calling Connie a pig... all those daily dramas of watching the Ramones go from a gang of incredible losers to an American institution.

I am forever grateful to have been able to witness, first hand, the mess of Dee Dees life, and then watch how he transformed all that craziness, all that shit, into art. I hate people who use that term. Theyre usually no-talents pretentious pieces of shit who never had an original thought of their own. But I can use the word artist without any reservation when it comes to Dee Dee.

Because the guy really should have been a crime-spree newspaper headline instead of a voice and an attitude that inspired millions of kids to write songs, play music, join bands and re-invent themselves according to their own fantasies.

IN A time when the only voice around originates from the corporation instead of the heart, and kids are lining-up to conform to the mediocrity, then wake-up in the sludge of the brutal sameness with an automatic weapon in their hands, Dee Dees life and work seems more valid than ever.

For Dee Dee taught us it was okay to feel like Charlie Starkweather or one of those kids with guns in Littleton, Colorado. But Dee Dee added, Why shoot your wad with just twenty minutes of fun, when you can scream out the depths of your desperation and keep the insanity going an entire lifetime?