You guest starred in The Simpsons in 1993. Which band does Mr Burns confuse the Ramones with?
CORRECT. After the Ramones sing a punk version of ‘Happy Birthday to You’, Mr Burns demands: ‘Have the Rolling Stones killed’.
“Matt Groening [Simpsons creator] is a big fan of ours, and we had to do our voiceovers a few times because of our accents. I have a Brookyln accent, so I had to do mine over at least six times. It’s a funny show and because there’s a lot of reruns, you can always catch it.”
Which former Saturday Night Live cast member was cast as frontman Joey Ramone in a Netflix biopic titled I Slept With Joey Ramone?
“That I don’t know. I’m not sure who it is, but I don’t think that’s even going to happen*. I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
WRONG. Pete Davidson. Would you like to see a Ramones biopic?
“Oh yeah, why not? I gave my book [Punk Rock Blitzkrieg: My Life as a Ramone] to Martin Scorsese, so who knows what will come out of that. The thing is, are a lot of these biopics completely accurate? Not really. But it’s better than nothing to introduce people to the band who never saw us or heard about us. We would have to search every planet in the universe to find actors who could recreate the Ramones, but I’m sure there’d be some good contenders out there!”
*Owing to a legal dispute involving the Ramones estate, co-owned by the families of the late Joey (who died from lymphoma in 2001) and guitarist Johnny, who died from prostate cancer in 2004.
Which rock icon reportedly played a bride in the Ramones’ 1988 ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’ video?
“Oh, God! I don’t know!”
WRONG. A pre-fame Courtney Love.
“It could be, yeah. There were a lot of people there that day who were all Ramones fans and starting out in the business. ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’ was the first ever Ramones song I recorded with Johnny, Joey, and Dee Dee. We went in to do the ‘Road to Ruin’ album [in 1978] at the studio in Manhattan, and we thought it was a good song. The subject matter was a little debatable to be played on the radio, but it was played a lot – and it still is – so I guess it wasn’t that bad because a lot of people definitely wanna be sedated! [Laughs] It was a pretty controversial song at the time for radio. Things loosened up a few years ago, but back then, it was a little out-there.”
What connects you to Nick Carter, Howie Dorough, AJ McLean, Brian Littrell and Kevin Richardson? (Clue: think of a boyband name)
“A boyband? Sex Pistols? [Laughs]”
WRONG. You’ve all been Backstreet Boys – albeit your band was fronted by Wayne County, who later became Jayne County, the world’s first trans rock’n’roller.
“When I played with Wayne County/Jayne County in the mid-‘70s, the Backstreet Boys was the name of our band. When the boyband came out decades later, I think Jayne wanted to sue them. Ours was 1974 and the beginning of punk. Jayne was very extreme and ahead of her time. We played one club in New Jersey and had a run-in with the Mob, who owned it. Jayne was a little too out-there to play that club, because she came on in drag, and the guys didn’t like it. We were told to ‘Get the hell out!’, and we weren’t going to argue with the Mafia! [Laughs]. They took our equipment and threw it out, and that’s when I realised I had to get out of there and team up with Richard Hell.”
Richard Hell and the Voidoids, who influenced the Sex Pistols…
“Of course he did. It was simple: Malcolm [McLaren, Sex Pistols impresario] was in New York and managed the [New York] Dolls and he saw Richard Hell and brought back his image. All the Pistols had long hair, and they cut their hair – they all had their Richard Hell-inspired makeovers.”
In 1976, which future-Manchester indie star wrote a scathing ‘review’ letter to the UK music newspaper Melody Maker, in which he denounced the Ramones as a “bumptious band of degenerate no-talents” who “have nothing to add that is of relevance or importance”?
“[Laughs] Let’s see… it was probably some guy who was stuck in the ‘70s hippy stadium music and couldn’t understand the Ramones.”
WRONG. It was a 17-year-old Morrissey. Moz would end up becoming an avowed fan of the Ramones, overseeing the 2014 compilation album ‘Morrissey Curates The Ramones’, and selecting ‘Loudmouth’ as one of his Desert Island Discs.
“That’s right! Later on, he apologised to us and he realised what he said was wrong. I guess it took him a little time to catch up to what we were doing.”
“I was a fan of Ramones when I was in Wayne County and the Backstreet Boys and Richard Hell. When I would see them live, I would say, ‘this is definitely something new’. I’d never heard anything like it, and I knew they would influence lots of bands. So I was very happy to join [in 1978] and be a part of that. It took us a while to catch on. You have these later-on so-called punk bands like Green Day, Rancid and The Offspring who all have the Ramones touch and all borrowed from us, and have some good songs too.”
“I’m very grateful for that. If the other Ramones were alive, they would appreciate that too. When we were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame [in 2002], Green Day did three Ramones songs [‘Teenage Lobotomy’, ‘Rockaway Beach’, and ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’] for us because Joey had died and we didn’t have a singer, so they offered to do it for us. I’ll always remember that they did a good thing for us.”
What does it say on the licence plate of the pink Cadillac the Ramones drive in the 1979 musical comedy film Rock ‘n’ Roll High School?
“It reads ‘GABBA GABBA HEY’.”
CORRECT.
“Rock ‘n’ Roll High School was a lot of fun to make. I mean, we’re not actors – obviously you can tell that when you see the movie! It’s not easy making a movie. You gotta get up at six in the morning, and me and Dee Dee would go out the night before and live it up on the Sunset Strip.”
During filming, fans would toss random pills and packets over the high-school fence, which Dee Dee would then consume like a game of drug-roulette. He even missed a day’s filming after turning blue, requiring his stomach to be pumped…
“At that point, he would do anything! [Laughs] But it never affected his playing. That’s the important thing. And he could charm people. He started the jumping, the ‘1-2-3-4’ count-ins, and twirling around, and a lot of other punk bassists followed that – he was influential.”
Complete the following Ramones’ lyrics: ‘Küss mich jetzt Mädchen, es ist alles wahr…’?
“Uhhh… I don’t know. What is it?”
FALSCH. The rest of the lyrics are: ‘Du kannst es lesen in der Morgenpost, OK/Der Winter wird wieder kalt werden, Berliner wollen Amerika/Von Menschen die sterben, Unter den weißen Blüten’ from Dee Dee’s German-sung bridge in ‘Born to Die in Berlin’, from Ramones’ final album, 1995’s ‘¡Adios Amigos!’.
“He could speak German. He was on the phone singing that [after he left the band in 1989], and then they incorporated it with the track, and I’ve never known to this day – and probably ‘til the death of me – what those lyrics meant!”
‘¡Adios Amigos!’ was a good album, and the perfect way for the Ramones to retire [in 1996] because we were at our peak and most bands don’t understand that. They just keep going, no matter how they sound. They don’t know when to stop, but we knew that was the right time. We were together for 21 years and Joey could still sing. We didn’t need tapes, samples, or lighting to disguise the fact it’s 30 years later and we’re all 20 pounds heavier. You gotta go with a certain kind of grace and dignity because that’s how you want people to remember you.”
So if the other Ramones had survived, would a reunion have been out of the question?
“We were against reunions, because we knew that if you stay away for years, you’re not going to be as good as you were. You gotta remember the vocal is an instrument, who knows how Joey would have sounded 25 years later? You gotta know when to call it quits and have your fans remember you at your peak.”
An easy one: which 1980 Bruce Springsteen song was originally written for the Ramones?
“Something ‘Heart’? ‘Hungry Heart’?”
CORRECT.
“Then his manager, Jon Landau, said, ‘Hey Bruce, keep it for yourself.’ It was OK. We didn’t care. It was basically a Bruce Springsteen song. Would we have done it as good as him? Who knows? That’s like Bruce Springsteen doing a Ramones song – could he have done it as good as us? In a way, it gave Dee Dee the incentive to write ‘Poison Heart’.”
Motörhead famously recorded the tribute ‘R.A.M.O.N.E.S.’ But which Ramones track did they cover on their 2017 posthumous album ‘Under Cöver’?
“I’m not sure.”
WRONG. ‘Rockaway Beach’.
“Lemmy was truly a big Ramones fan. He kept saying to me: ‘Don’t break up’, and I’d reply, ‘Hey look, it’s up to the four of us – and I’m only one number in the band’. When we did break up, he was really upset. At the time I was hanging out with Lemmy, I wasn’t drinking, but he was – amongst other things. After a while, if you’re with somebody who’s a little inebriated, you have to leave the situation because you’re in the lion’s den. But we were very happy that Lemmy was a Ramones fan because we really liked him.”
You and Joey appeared in a sketch on The Howard Stern Show in the ‘90s where you played golf with an impersonator of which US president?
“George Bush.”
CORRECT. The political divide in the Ramones is well-documented, with Johnny being a die-hard Republican…
“John was conservative. Me and Joey were Democrats – if we lived in England, we’d have voted for Labour. And Dee Dee was independent.”
Looking at the vastly different personalities in the Ramones (Joey was a liberal with chronic OCD, Johnny was conversative and allegedly antisemitic towards him, and Dee Dee was a kleptomaniac), why do you think the band were able to come together to create something special?
“That’s the thing. We were such opposites that we used that onstage, and that’s why the music and lyrical content was so different – it helped the songwriting and playing. Offstage, we never hit each other. We would have disagreements about politics, but we were like brothers.”
Although you never hit each other, there were other (surreal) moments of violence, like when the Ramones played a theme park in New Jersey in 1980 and Dee Dee (surreally) pulled a knife on you after you played a prank on him involving a frog…
“He used to carry around a switchblade. That time, he got a little emboldened and I had to take it away from him. Years before, I’d got into a fight in a park in New York and a guy stabbed me – though I kicked his ass. The cops threw me in the back of the cop car and asked, ‘Where’s all the blood coming from?’, and I replied, ‘My arm – I just got stabbed’. The cop said ‘Put your finger in the wound ‘til you get to the hospital’. I knew by then what the knife thing was all about. But if you’re going to use a knife, you don’t threaten – ‘cause that’s what Dee Dee was doing. Either you use it or don’t. I just took it away from him because he wasn’t going to do anything.”
The verdict: 4/10
“That’s wild! [Laughs] Is there someone standing behind you giving you the questions and answers?”
Marky Ramone’s ‘Blitzkrieg‘ live tour begins in London’s Electric Ballroom on January 21 and continues until January 28. For full dates, see here.