“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 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 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.”
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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.