Johnny and Linda Ramone used to have barbecues every Sunday. It was always an eclectic small group of people that would be brought together by Johnny. The gang included Vincent Gallo, Eddie Vedder, Rob Zombie, Rosanna Arquette, record executive and commissioner of our fantasy baseball league Andy Gershon, Rose McGowan, Steve Jones, Billy Zoom, Gerry Harrington, longtime rock-and-roll manager and true pal Michael Lustig, and a few others. I’ve stayed friendly and hang out with most of these folks, and some of us promise to get together, but we were all united by lunches with the Ramones.
The Stray Cats and the Ramones had the same business managers in New York, and we had met on a festival bill we were both on back in the 1980s. I have a very vivid memory of meeting the Ramones in the parking lot of a Holiday Inn while we were both on tour. They were in their usual tour transportation, the famed van, and John was riding shotgun reading his copy of Baseball America. We were in a tour bus, and I remember thinking, Why aren’t these guys in a bus, too? Around the same time, we were on a festival bill together, and John, being an avid autograph and memorabilia collector, had Britt sign a few original movie posters from films she had done in the 1960s.
I had been a fan of their music since I was in school. They embodied the New York City punk rock scene and proved that a band of outsiders from the neighborhood could go all the way. The band was loud and fast, but the songs were catchy and always had a strong musical hook, a clever chord change, and a deceptively simple lyric. Looking back, I see now even more clearly that like all the classic bands I still like, there was always a reference and a nod to the original American rock and rollers.
The Ramones had very good musical taste and influences. I was too young to have seen them in the early days at CBGB, but I had seen them in the 1980s quite a few times. One memorable show at the Roxy stands out, and I remember pogo dancing with a visiting Swedish relative of Britt’s and losing my keys. To be from suburban New York City and be able to tour the world was as much of a dream as I could muster, and the Ramones were living proof that it could be done. They were from Queens, and being from Long Island, I could relate to the whole thing. John and I had an Irish-Catholic New York upbringing and love of the New York Yankees and Elvis Presley as our common threads. We would become very close when he and Linda moved to LA.
We were part of a wacky fantasy baseball league that was very serious and important to us all. Our league included musicians, nightclub guys, a former DA from the Bronx, and a few other assorted characters. We had one season where two guys who shared a team sued each other. We had long catered draft days at Gershon’s house where everyone came with some notes and a few magazines. One year, a member was in Rome on business and did the six-hour draft on a cell phone. The bill must have been in the thousands. We had the league for years, and John especially took it personally. He tried really hard to win every year and did so a few times. John came armed with stacks of paper with statistics, graphs, and any info to help pick the players, all notated with his tiny, perfect handwriting in the margins. He was a meticulous cat in everything he did. This was before everyone was online, and every league member would handwrite and fax the lineup into the commissioner every week. It’s much easier these days, and I often think about John doing fantasy baseball in this day and age of instant scores, updates, and stats; I know he’d easily win every league. I don’t remember how I got it done, but I always did. I fondly remember waiting on Monday morning when the fax machine kicked on and all the statistics for the week would come through on my old-school roll-paper machine. We had one member who had longtime ties to the ownership of the LA Dodgers and had four of the best possible field-level box seats right on the visitor’s dugout at Dodger Stadium with a choice parking spot. Neither he nor John liked to drive, so I would get the call and bring TJ with me. So we went to a lot of ball games together. We drove downtown, listened to the oldies station on the radio, kept score, and ate peanuts, but never got a foul ball. TJ and John became close, too.
Everyone at the barbecues was somehow linked either by rock and roll, movies, or baseball. TJ was the lone kid in the mix. I didn’t have a nanny, so I was the guy with the kid. He went everywhere with me. John and Linda’s house in Sherman Oaks was a combination of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse and Graceland done up in exact 1950s Palm Springs Rat Pack style. They hadn’t really ever hung out with anyone in New York, and now that they had a house in LA, I think they liked entertaining their friends and bringing a certain group together.
There was a small guesthouse where the roof hung out over the pool. TJ, Eddie Vedder, and I would climb up the back fence, scamper over the sunbaked roof, and jump out and over the patio into the water. It was a bit challenging, ill advised, and dangerous. We did it until Eddie slipped and hit his head. They asked us to stop, and we did, but not before dozens of successful jumps were made over the years.
John and Linda were the perfect rock-and-roll hosts. They tried to keep everyone’s favorites on hand. If someone mentioned a preferred brand of potato chips or beer, it was there the next week. There were vegetarian and fish options available off the grill. The ball game was on the TV, some vintage rock music was on the stereo, and everyone chatted away and got along well. This was a punk rock So-Cal version of a salon. Everyone there had been through it all on their own time and had lived to tell in a nonpreachy way. There was no darkness, no drug vibe, and no one was there to pick anybody up or do any business. I think that after years on the road and living in cramped quarters in New York City, they genuinely enjoyed being in sunny LA, entertaining and bringing together interesting groups of people that they were friendly with. Britt and I had done this when we lived on Doheny Drive, so I related and respected what they were doing every weekend. I also appreciated the good home-cooked food that TJ and I would get without going to the Rainbow.
Linda was the queen of her pink-and-green castle. She would cater and serve everyone while always tooled up in classic designer miniskirts and boots under an apron like June Cleaver–meets–Nancy Sinatra with a twist of Debbie Harry. The queen’s accent and expressions never softened.
“Wadda ya need, Slim? Yoo got wot ya want?”
“All good.”
I liked ginger ale, and TJ liked root beer.
“I got Canada Dry and Schweppes.”
“Whatever. They’re both fine.”
“Well, which one?”
“Um, Schweppes.”
“Coming up.”
A glass full of ice and ginger ale complete with lime wedge would appear with a cocktail napkin underneath.
When it came to the root beer and dealing with TJ, John got really involved. He liked root beer, too. Each week he would stock a new brand, and he and TJ would sip and compare like wine connoisseurs. TJ had a Ramones-style pageboy haircut, and the sight of the two of them in their bathing suits comparing notes on root beer is a classic image in my mind. These afternoons were good for me to unwind, as TJ would swim with the others and hone his skills of being able to hang with anyone.
One time, John asked TJ what he thought of that week’s selection.
“It’s okay, but last week’s was better,” TJ answered as he shrugged and slurped.
“It’s the same kind; you said you liked it last week, so I got the same one this week,” replied John in his clipped tone.
“No, it’s not; this one is different,” answered TJ.
“The same,” said John.
“Different,” said TJ.
This went back and forth a few more times, and it was starting to get like a school yard argument. I saw this from across the room and stepped in to tell TJ to back off and not argue with an adult. Linda had also seen it and told John, “Leave the kid alone, John. Who cares?”
There was one last round of disagreement before I glared at TJ, and he told John he was sorry and that he was thankful for any root beer. John accepted the apology, and we moved on with the day. John was forty-seven, and TJ was eight.
Next week, we turned up as usual for a barbecue and a swim. There were a few of the gang already there, Dion and the Belmonts were on the record player, all was cool on another sunny Sunday. John greeted us, said hello, and then gave TJ the come-here motion with his finger. TJ obeyed and followed John to the kitchen. John went to the counter and presented a tray with a white napkin over it. He pulled the napkin off like a magician doing a flourish to a trick. On the tray were three Dixie cups, each with two ounces of root beer in them. Each had a little index card to correspond to the cup.
“Drink this one,” John said as he handed the first one to TJ.
This was repeated three times, and after each one, John asked TJ to identify the brand of root beer and then turned over the index card to reveal the brand name, written in his perfect little printing.
“A&W,” TJ said.
“Wrong; it’s Dad’s,” answered John dryly.
Next one, TJ guessed, “Barq’s, definitely!”
“Wrong again; it’s Hires!” John confidently answered.
Last one, TJ sipped and offered his expert opinion and guessed wrong again. John defiantly stood in front of TJ like a prosecuting attorney who had just gotten the criminal to confess and said, “I rest my case; you don’t know the difference!”
TJ was momentarily flabbergasted, as were Linda and I. Then I was flattered that John had gone to all this trouble to prove his point to my kid. I think that TJ was the first, last, and only child that John ever interacted with. He needed to prove his point even to an eight-year-old. That was who he was. TJ said, “Okay, you win,” and went off to jump in the pool.
John had a two-toned blue-and-white 1957 Ford convertible with a retractable hard top. This car was heavy and hard to stop, start, and steer. It was a real beast to drive. I have always driven old cars and am familiar with them. John, being a native New Yorker, didn’t like to drive in general, but this car was supercool, and he liked being in it. I would get the chauffeur’s job, and we’d all pile in for cruises along snaky, scenic Mulholland Drive.
When John got very sick, a few of that gang would go and visit him. We sat on the leopard-skin couch and watched baseball games and talked about everything except the fact that he was terminal. He just wanted to spend as much time as he could in the house that he loved, to pursue his hobbies, go to baseball games and good restaurants, and entertain some friends on the weekends. He looked at rock and roll as a job, saved his money, and wanted to retire in a civilized way. He was one of those cats who, like me, is very happy and proud to be from New York but really understands and loves living in LA. You can turn on the New York when it’s needed but have had most of the rough edges rounded off by traveling the world. It’s unfair that he worked on the road for so long and brought such great music and attitude to the world only to have his retirement spoiled by illness.
* * *
He was a special guy, one of a kind, and I’m very honored that he was a close friend. I’m still very close with Linda. Every year, there’s a tribute where she celebrates Johnny’s life at his graveside statue at Hollywood Forever Cemetery with the showing of an old horror film on a drive-in movie screen, a little gig, and some remembrances. This past year was the tenth one, and it’s turned into a fan favorite, drawing a couple of thousand people. All the old gang helps out, and it’s a chance for everyone to be in the same place at the same time. A little bit of a sadder occasion than a poolside barbecue in the sun, but it’s a good charity event that raises money and awareness.
John’s early passing made everyone feel a bit more mortal. He was the strongest, most rigid guy I knew, and if it could happen to him, it could happen to anyone, including me. It seemed like a bum rap for him. Unconsciously, I felt that every day in Beverly Glen, every ball game, every drive in the hills, every box score in the sports section should be appreciated a little more and not taken for granted. I was definitely affected by his death. It was the first time I had ever experienced the slow passing of a friend. I had known a few people who died suddenly from drugs or a car accident, but this time, we sat on the couch together, and I watched it happen slowly. We still go up to the Ramones’ ranch for the occasional barbecue, where we inevitably talk about the fabled root beer incident.