* Ramone memoir cobbled together interviews before his death
* Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett recalls punk genius
By John McCrank
NEW YORK, May 7 (Reuters) – Johnny Ramone, guitarist for
seminal punk band the Ramones, pioneered a fast, no-nonsense
sound that made him one of the most influential guitarists of
all time.
“Commando: the Autobiography of Johnny Ramone,” released
nearly 8 years after Ramone, born John Cummings, died of
prostate cancer at age 55, reads like a Ramones song: short and
to the point, but with plenty of color to keep things
interesting.
The book, recently published by Abrams Image, was written
from a series of interviews Ramone gave in the final years of
his life for the purposes of a memoir.
“He wanted to have his last words because he knew he was
dying and he was always kind of a misunderstood character,”
Ramone’s wife, Linda Cummings Ramone, said in an interview.
Linda enlisted author and former Black Flag singer, Henry
Rollins, as well as her manager, John Cafiero, to put together
the 176-page book, which is peppered with photos and collected
memorabilia.
The result is a raw telling of Ramone’s life story, from a
blue collar New York upbringing playing baseball and roughing up
neighborhood kids, to early Ramones gigs with Blondie and The
Talking Heads at punk-rock bastion venue CBGBs.
It also sheds light on the ongoing tensions that took place
within the band, and his more than 20-year romance with Linda,
who once dated his former friend and bandmate Joey Ramone.
“When I left Joey to go with Johnny, it was intense, because
nobody wanted the band to break up. The band was always first,”
Linda said.
“Joey and Johnny didn’t talk. Did I have something to do
with it? Well, yeah, of course, a bit, but musically Joey and
Johnny were growing apart. That was more the tension in the
band,” she added, citing a 1994 Christmas card shown in the book
that Joey sent Johnny, a gesture Linda said showed how those
tensions had thawed toward the end.
Other parts of the book detail Ramone’s thoughts on his
famously brash personality, his sometimes meticulous nature and
musical inspirations.
While Ramone described himself in the book as an angry
person for much of his life, beginning as “the terror of the
neighborhood,” he also lets on that his favorite place on earth
was Disney World, and when he listened to music, chances were he
was listening to Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, or Elvis.
He was also a fastidious saver and was planning for
retirement even before the first Ramones show in 1974. Following
the band’s last performance, in 1996 at the Hollywood Palace,
the Ramones were making more money than when they were together,
having established fans around the world.
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One of those fans was Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett. He
said he first heard the Ramones in 1977 when he was 14 years old
and Ramones standards “Sheena is Punk Rocker,” “Rockaway Beach,”
and “Blitzkrieg Bop” all played on the radio within a week.
“I was hooked,” he told Reuters, adding that Ramones had an
enormous impact on the way he plays guitar.
Hammett first met Ramone in 1986 at a comic book convention
and the two later became close friends. He said he asked Ramone
why it was he always down-picked, rather than strumming the
guitar in a typical up-and-down style. Ramone, who was
self-taught, said it was just to keep time.
“I thought to myself, ‘Wow, something as simple as that was
the basis of his style that went on to create the basis of punk
rock and heavy metal’.”
Other fans and friends included Pearl Jam frontman Eddie
Vedder, seen in ‘Commando’ wearing the wig Ramone had made when
he was receiving radiation treatment, and Lisa Marie Presley,
who ensured Ramone was the best man at her wedding to Nicolas
Cage.
Presley told Reuters in an interview that Ramone, who had an
Elvis-themed room in his house long before she took him to visit
Graceland, played a major role in her life.
“He had a paternal thing with me. He was looking out for
me,” she said in an interview, describing Ramone as “grumpy, but
charming.”
Much of “Commando” shows Ramone living and breathing his
band, which took its name from a pseudonym, Ramon, that Paul
McCartney once used.
Even after the band called it quits, it was not until singer
Joey Ramone, born Jeff Hyman, died of lymphoma in 2001, that
Johnny Ramone, No. 16 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the
top 100 greatest guitarists of all time, really knew it was
over.
Bassist Dee Dee Ramone, born Douglas Colvin, died the
following year of a heroin overdose. That was around the time
when Johnny Ramone, who was himself battling the cancer that
would take his life, was working on what would become
“Commando.”
Helped by the little black books that he filled throughout
his career with the details of every Ramones show – all 2,263 of
them – Ramone opened up the past, from punching out Sex Pistols
manager Malcolm McLaren, to the challenge of working with
gun-totting producer Phil Spector, to touring the world.
“It’s exactly how Johnny would want it,” said Linda. “It’s
like a Ramones show. Boom, boom, boom.”
(Editing by Christine Kearney)
