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Joey Ramone: A Literary Relationship

After the people I’ve written books about, the coolest punk celebrity I met in New York is undoubtedly Joey Ramone. John Holmstrom, then editor of Punk magazine (this was in ’77) now publisher of High Times, introduced me to him in ace punk fashion. Joey was staying with the band’s lighting designer and a talented painter Arturo Vega, around the corner from the renowned punk club CGBG. One night after a gig John and I came careening out of the club and took turns creaming Legs McNeil, who had had the affrontery to recently attempt to sleep with my girlfriend when I was in Australia! I guess he thought I was far enough away that he was out of danger, but no such luck! Immediately we had left Legs lying in the gutter, where he had been attempting to pick up a chick, I found myself following Holmstrom literally straight up the face of Vega’s building via those metal screens that close across windows at night keeping hoodlums out. Entering the loft through a second storey window we charged the unsuspecting Ramone, Vega and a couple of their friends but soon found ourselves getting the worst of the altercation. Joey had me pinned to the floor, one bony knee plunked on each shoulder demanding I surrender. No sooner had we introduced ourselves than we became fast friends. Everybody loved Arturo, but Joey was clearly something of a loner. A wildly creative, intelligent guy surrounded by a lot of less intelligent guys (not Dee Dee who he got along with best), he liked nothing more than to settle down in a comfortable bar or apartment around three am and spend the balance of the night solving the problems of the world. The problem was, I tried to explain to him, I was desperately trying to make a living as a nine-to-five writer. Consequently we met much less often than I would have liked, but even when he was on the road Joey made a real effort to keep in touch, as one can see from these two letters:

“Hey ol boy whats the doop?” he wrote from LA where The Ramones, in perhaps their single most productive period were making an album with Phil ‘The Great’ Spector, and filming Rock n Roll High School with the great ex-Warhol Superstar Mary Woronov (Chelsea Girls). “What’s doin. Hanging out swatting flies recordin the album it sounds incredible really explosive!! cant wait for ya to hear it though its only ½ done. Just saw a picture of Wayne County” (which Joey thoughtfully included) “with his new operation he looks more like Debbie Harry everytime I see him. Saw Robert Gordon & Spedding he’s great – say hi to Jeff and everyone. See ya soon. Hi from everyone here. P.S. Los Tacos is the best Mexican dump in LA better than Lucy’s. No bands. No gas. Aggressive flys. They repainted The Trop pool black and filled it with turquois green shitty water it looks like a lagoon Joey Ramone.”

In another missive from the road he wrote: “Last nite I saw somethin on TV that really flipped me out. This was the first report ever let out in the whole US bout cloneing. This guys puttin out a book called Who Will Be The Next God. Anyway Upjohn the Quaalude Corp. & 20 other major drug corp have gotten the rights from the Federal Gov to syntheticaly create & clone & own!!! people & that until recently only frogs could be successfully cloned. But some scientist from New York has just successfully created a 14 month old kid thats an exact replica clone of himself. That’s fuckinamazin that’s really weird. I mean when ya think about it. Anyway I thought you should. They said that this would come out nationally in June. Hanging out in N. Carolina. Don’t understand what people do here since I haven’t seen one person outside of the hotel. Last night went to see High Anxiety. It sucked but was really great, I’m really into Cheap Trick. They’re fucking incredible. Listen to their 1 & 2 album. Legs story in new Hit Parader was fucking riot. Best thing he’s done fantastic. See ya. Joey Ramone.”

In fact, perhaps appropriately considering he wrote songs and I wrote celebrations, our friendship turned into something of a literary one: the next thing I found myself doing was collaborating with him on an editorial he had been commissioned to write for High Times in 1978. This is the first of its eight pages:

“Living on the Bowery’s very exciting, people are getting stabbed and murdered all the time. It’s very exciting, lots of atmosphere. Tomorrow we’re playing The First World Festival in Toronto with Ted Nugent and Aerosmith, a whole day affair for 100,000 people. Gotta get up and fly at 5.30 am.

Excerpt from: The Diary of Joey Ramone.

I just saw The Who movie The Kids Are Alright. It’s fucking fantastic. It doesn’t come off as just another documentary, it’s loaded with charm and character, excitement and the genius of The Who (if you love The Who as much as me). But for me it was more of a movie that reflects the current sad state of rock and roll. After seeing The Kids Are Alright, I felt really enraged.

The Who are the perfect example of what Rock & Roll stands for and was always meant to be. Whether it be 60’s, 70’s, 80’s or 90’s the definition of rock and roll is: Daring. Exciting. Going out on a limb. Very visual catchy and melodic tunes. Not ½ hour boring guitar solos or mindless songs about sex: She Left Me. Who the fuck cares!!! The kids of now are being deprived, cheated and brain washed bad. It’s not their fault, most of them just don’t know better. Rock and Roll is dying ’cos the media is trying to kill it as it’s always been trying since the days of Elvis and Gene Vincent (50s). They’re spreading propaganda about how youth listening to this music have their minds poisoned and turn into habitual sex crazed hard core tri-sexual, mindless pill popping pot smoking drop out mass murderers, which we all know is bullshit, but it’s always worked successfully to promote the clean-up-the-image campaign. Remember Pat Boone and Doris Day – the soft decor public image that parents will approve of. Rock and roll is for rebels and outcasts. Rock music was not meant for your parents pleasure.”

As well as being a great painter, film maker, publisher, journalist, photographer, trendsetter and icon, Warhol was a great writer. His novel, a, which will be re-published in 1998, will give us all a chance to read what I mean. Grab a copy. It tells you more about Warhol’s Factory in the Sixties than any other book. It is a bonechilling read.