DISGRACELAND - The Ramones: TV Bombs, Psycho Therapy, Toilet Syringes, Turning Tricks and Saving Rock ‘N’ Roll

Episode Date: February 16, 2021

Sniffing glue, hooking for drug money, hurling rocks at the Beatles, and writing infectious sunshiny melodies about their grimy reality, the Ramones were what the world needed in 1976. As rock ‘n’ roll was getting bloated with excessive experimentation and unfortunate forays into disco, four cretins from Queens stripped it all away to two-minute three-chord anthems with hard, fast backbeats and buzzing guitars. They adopted the same surname to solidify their brotherhood, and they lived like brothers and fought like brothers to the very bitter end. Listen to hear how the Ramones saved rock ‘n’ roll. To see the complete list of contributors, visit disgracelandpod.com This episode was originally published on February 16, 2021. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTER Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: Instagram YouTube X (formerly Twitter)  Facebook Fan Group TikTokSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of, like, like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay, and this is bookmarked by Reese's Book Club from Hello Sunshine and IHeart Podcast, where we dive into the stories that shape us on the page and off. Each week I'm joined by authors, celebs, book talk stars, and more for conversations that will

make you laugh, cry, and add way too many books to your TBR pile. Listen to bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Brought to you by Cotton. of our lives. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about the Ramones are insane. They sniffed glue, bombed unsuspecting Queens residents with heavy television sets,

attempted to brain the Beatles with rocks. One Ramon was locked up in a psych ward, another forced to turn tricks for heroin. And despite it all as a band, the Ramones managed to survive and inspire an entire new generation of rock and rollers at a time when the genre seemed near dead. And man oh man, did the Ramones make great music.

Some of the greatest music ever made. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Florescent Function Hall, MK2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Love is Alive by Gary Wright. And why would I play you that specific slice of Dreamweaver cheese,

could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America, on July 4th, 1976, and that was the day the Ramones first played London, an act that marked the band's first major step toward saving rock and roll. On this episode, sniffing glue, TV bombs, psych wards, heroin, and saving rock and roll with the Ramones. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgraceland. 1967, Summer of Love,

Helter Skelter and the coming nihilism of the 70s was impossible, to imagine. Yet there it was, just around the bend. Rock and roll was the most culturally relevant it would ever be. Few knew it, but rock and roll was also taking its first steps toward death, toward corporate rock, toward disco. Rock music wasn't dead, but it would be soon, and so too with some unlucky hitchhikers out on Interstate 69 between Flint, Michigan and South Bend, Indiana. The van was an old shipbox with a big V8 and dark cargo area in the back. Killing the recent hitchhiker they picked up was never the plan. They needed one more, a force, to help them dispose of the bodies, so he was a recruit,

not a victim. Plus, they liked him straight away. He had that dumb charm about him. His name even sounded dumb. Doug. Douglas Colvin of Queens, New York. The next hitchhiker they encountered, though, wouldn't be so lucky. He or she would be decapitated.

garreted with a thin wire and two hoops. Fuck them, whoever they were, they deserved it, society deserved it, and so its children would not be spared. But first, some smokes were needed. Doug Colvin breathed the sigh of relief. He wasn't going in for all this crazy murder talk. He just needed a ride, out west, away from his mom and Queens, who had caught the 15-year-old using heroin,

freaked out and provoked this teenage runaway act. The van rolled into an abandoned roadside gas station parking lot. The plan was armed robbery. It went nowhere. The would-be killers were stoned, bumbling marauders, who were rounded up by local cops almost as soon as they made off from the gas station with the stolen goods. Doug was thrown into jail with his accomplices for armed robbery. Instinctively, the cops knew he was not like the others and showed mercy. They gave him as many as ten phone calls to try and contact an adult or guardian to arrange his release. They weren't even going to try him. They just didn't want to release him back into the wild on his own, which was exactly what they ended up.

up doing after his father, when reached by phone, told Doug, fuck you, rot there, you deserve it. He was on his own, and that was clear. The small town cops weren't about to get into the headache of caring for this clearly too dumb to do any harm juvenile delinquent, so they'd just let him go after three weeks. Doug hitched back to Queens. And there, he quickly took up with another local castoff, John Cummings.

He too was fascinated by murder. Charlie Starkweather, the 19-year-old James Dean-looking psychopath, who went on a one-week Midwestern murder spree with his 14-year-old girlfriend at his side, killing 10 people in the process, including her family, for no other reason than the fact that they didn't like him or his teenage attitude. John Cummings felt that. Doug Colvin did too. Doug thought it hysterical that when the Beatles played at Shea Stadium in Queens,

John Cummings went and instead of losing his mind to the highly contagious beetle mania running rampant, focused intently on the four lads on stage, and tried to knock any one of them on Congress. conscious that he could with the rocks he was beaming at them from the stands. The most celebrated band on the planet, in the history of the world, in person, the band who would inspire the name of his own band less than a decade later, and he was throwing stones at them. There was no real reason, just anger.

Jeff Hyman, another teenage cast off from Queens, felt something else. It wasn't anger so much as it was alienation and heartache. Whatever it was, it drove him to the margins. Boris Hills Queens, back in the 60s anyway, was conservative. working the middle class. Young boys went to school, kept their hair short, went to college or got a job, found a girl, eventually started families,

and kept their mouths shut. All the shouting about the war, about inequality, about peace, and about love, that was for the city, that was a subway ride and a world away. Queens was for working, for raising your family. Jeff didn't want a family. Even if he did, he wouldn't know how to start one.

Talking to girls wasn't easy unless they were the girls he met in the mental hospital. St. Vincent's, where he'd been sent as a teenager, when his obsessive-compulsive tics, like repeatedly getting in and out of bed before going to sleep, escalated into an undiagnosed case of paranoid schizophrenia. A mild case, quote-unquote, minimal brain damage, as the doctor said. Small comfort to Jeff's mother, who Jeff had pulled a knife on during one of his episodes. Once he was old enough, she kicked him out of the house,

and he began living in her art gallery, sleeping on the floor alone. For Jeff, normal life wasn't even an option. So when he brought a girl around to his new friends and told him that he met her in the bin, as in the loony bin, no one was that surprised. Psychotherapy had its perks with the thinking. But the loony bin was no joke. Jeff knew this.

Teenage lobotomies foisted upon teenagers for what they perceived as just being misunderstood, though, that was fucking messed up. None of it made any sense, not to Jeff and not to his new friends, John and Doug. They rebelled and bonded over music. John was into Sabbath, the Stones, Hendricks, music that was as tough and as hard as the construction jobs he worked.

But none of this music, it seemed, was going anywhere. It all felt like part of the same thing, the same hippie-dippy-dipped doomed-to-fail experiment. Increasingly, it was clear. Rock and Roll's energy was fading. Their new friend, Tommy, agreed. He would know he was at least in the music business, sort of. He engineered some records, even worked on Jimmy Hendricks' band of Gypsy sessions at the record plant in Manhattan, which for a kid from Forest Hills was saying something. As far as Doug, John,

and Jeff knew, their new friend Tommy might as well have been Phil Spector. And they loved Phil Spector's records, the girl group stuff. They were right now, all four of them, half-assing an acapella version of the crystals that do run run, while they struggled up the stairway of the fifth floor walk-up with the 25-inch Philco television set. It wasn't a console TV set, but it was still heavy as fuck. The picture tubes inside these old TVs were big. and in the Philcos problematic. Not like the reliable RCAs, the Philcos went bust and confounded even the best of Forest Hills television repairmen, so many of the lemons ended up on the bubblegum freckled sidewalks of Queens, waiting for some unlucky trashmen to haul them away.

But not if Doug, John, Jeff, and Tommy had anything to do with it. The TVs were a great delinquent father, so up the stairwells to the roofs, they went. After finally squeezing the set up the stairs, as they hauled the TV out onto the room. They all knew what they were there to do. This ritual, they'd done it before so many times. It was old hat. They discussed music nonchalant. Rock is dead, Tommy said to no one,

while Jeff continued to mumble out the chorus to do run run. Yeah, Doug Parrotted. He didn't seem too convinced, more agreeable, more wanting than the others, to just be a part of whatever was in the air, part of the gang. The opposite of John, who had seemed didn't care who liked him or what people thought of him,

not even his new friends. They pulled the TV over to the edge of the roof. John spoke up in transit. There's this new band downtown. It's supposed to be good. Oh, yeah, as good as Del Shannon? Jeff spat out. As good as the Stooges from Detroit, Doug asked.

He didn't really know how good the Stooges were. They were just something he'd heard some kids downtown talk about. If you were being honest, he'd have asked if they were as good as the Bay City Rollers. He knew about the rollers. He loved the rollers, but he wasn't sure if John did. It didn't matter. John ignored him anyway. They're called the dolls, the New York dolls.

The four of them then reached the edge of the roof with the TV, and they peered over down at the sidewalk. It was a long way down. We should go see them play. Oh yeah, what if these girls there, Jeff wanted to know, as if that would be unimaginable. They all bent down in unison, gripped the filco from the bottom,

bent with their knees like only young working men know how, and heaved the heavy television set up into the edge of the roof. They steadied it and waited for the precoct. perfect target on the sidewalk below. Little old ladies were the best. They scared easy, dropped their groceries, sometimes fell over, most times just stood back clutching their chest, catching their breaths and looking bewildered. It was hysterical. But new moms were even better. They were so uptight with their little brats running them ragged. Here came one now, and they waited. The shows are supposed to be wild, John said. I mean, we should really go see

this band. We should start our own band, Tommy said. They all looked at it. They all looked at at each other. And then they looked down at the bitchy mom and her bratty little kid. Tommy's suggestion was a good one. John scowled in agreement. Doug's eyes went wide and Jeff nodded. All of them looked down onto the sidewalk. Just as the mom and the brat walked directly below them,

and then they pushed the television set over the side of the roof. It exploded onto the sidewalk in just over a second's time, landing about two feet behind the mom. She screamed and so did the brat. Doug, John, Jeff, and Tommy. me, beat it. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl.

You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me?

The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. They said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe.

On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of family secrets. And just then, we felt the plain turn in the air, so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle. Each week, we dive head first into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves.

My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything. And me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some. fantastic guests like Amelia Clark.

When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. And my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance like he's about to attack me. Like making karate noises.

And his entire the Kardashians family over there, Everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead.

Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena Monjou. Camilla Marone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea

on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Jeff was fidgeting with the cheap turntable in the loft he was staying at. His new friend Arturo was letting him crash indefinitely. And Jeff, who is now calling himself, Joey was trying to get the turntable to play a new prize possession. Charles Manson's album, Lie, The Love and Terracol. Look at Your Game Girl Cease to Exist. Heavy shit by one of the heaviest and

shittiest dudes to ever hit the scene. Music that seemed dangerous as rock and roll was supposed to sound, but increasingly, in the early 70s, sounded watered down and safe. Manson was locked up now, but his music was out in the wild, hard to find, but Joey managed to snag a copy for collection, which he kept meticulously in his OCD way. Manson understood girls on a whole other level. A level Joey would never understand. Girls were a mystery. But glue was not.

And Joey's friend Doug wanted to sniff some more of it. More, more, more for Doug. When he wasn't getting high sniffing glue, he was doing heroin. Joey heard from a friend that Doug was seen out of 53rd and 3rd over in the West Village, standing on the corner trying to turn a trick for dope. It was a well-known pickup spot for old. old money dudes cruising for young men who would trade sex for quick cash. Doug did it because he had to, because he needed to hit the fountain in Central Park to score

dope or the East Village to score blow. Joey didn't judge. Neither did their other friends. It was New York in the 70s, hard as nails, and you had to do what you had to do to get by. Doug was seen in a way as a badass for being able to go through with it. Before settling in Forest Hills, Doug was raised a military brat in post-World War II Germany by two drunk, disinterested parents. Doug had toughness bred into him. He learned about drugs from the older GIs, and he learned about rock and roll from Radio Luxembourg.

It's where he first heard the Beatles. He was obsessed. His obsession uncovered a little nugget about Paul McCartney. Paul used the alias Paul Ramon to check into hotels and conspicuously. Doug thought it was so cool. So when he started calling himself Didi, he changed his last name from Colvin to Ramon.

And also like Paul, Doug started playing bass too. They had a band to put together after all. So Joey, once Jeff Hyman, started calling himself Joey Ramon, and so too did their other bandmates John and Tommy. But John Ramon stacked up next to Tommy, Joey, and Diti didn't sound right, so Johnny Ramon it was. It would be one of the last compromises Johnny Ramon would ever make. He assumed the role of bandleader immediately.

He commandeered what would be the Ramon's sound and image. There was a war going on after all. Rock and roll was about to be overrun by bloated corporate hacks and disco tax. And their band would have to be different if it was going to save rock and roll. They'd have to strip out all the frills, cut any and all the fat. Their sound would match their physicality, lean, rock star skinny. No guitar solos, no drum solos, no blues influence, no ballads. No metaphors, no sexual double entendres, no dynamics.

They would strip it all away and break rock and roll down to its basic essence. power, speed, energy, and volume, and blast it back at the audience. When at war, you pick aside, join up, and in order to distinguish yourself from your enemy, you wear a uniform. Johnny commanded his troops, Dee Dee, Joey, and Tommy to do the same, to dress like him, all of them, in black leather biker jackets, skin-tight jeans, skin-tight t-shirts, and cheap tennis shoes, kids, not Chuck Taylor's. They would rely on simplicity for their attack, hitting their audience head on with a weapon

they knew music lovers would fall victim to, something they weren't even aware they were missing, pure rock and roll. 60s girl group in Dell Shannon melodies, spirited Beach Boys Teenage Fun and a directness in the lyrics not deployed as effectively since Dee Dee's Beatles burst on the scene with, I want to hold your hand. Didi, Johnny and Company would counter 11 years later at their band's first show with songs entitled, I don't want to walk around with you, I don't want to go down to the basement, and of course, now I want to sniff some glue.

They called themselves. And their theater of war was a little dive on the Bowery called CBGB's. It was tiny, completely rampshackle, smelled of piss, cheap to get into, and cheaper to drink in. Other like-minded musicians had dug into the club as well, television, the Patty Smith group and Blondie among them, claiming it as their own, separate and apart from whatever was happening elsewhere in Manhattan's fast-declining live music scene. The Ramon's first CB set on August 16, 1974, was welcomed by all in attendance. They were, as Blondie's lead singer Debbie Harry would later remark, hysterical. But Johnny didn't see what was so funny.

He was dead serious, and so were his bandmates, despite the fact that they struggled through their set, which took all of 12 minutes, blasting through their songs with manic 1-2-3-4 count-offs by Didi and failing equipment in the band yelling at one another on stage. They looked and sounded unlike anything anyone had ever seen and were immediately welcomed onto the scene. They were clearly on to something.

They set up shop at their friend Arturo Vega's loft around the corner from CPGB's on East 2nd Street. In addition to letting Joey and Didi squat at his place and sniff glue and listen to Weird Charles Manson Records, Arturo designed the band's now iconic logo, a send-up of the Presidential Seal, which in August of 1974, the month of President Richard Nixon's resignation, was not exactly an aspirational association. Didi, if he was grateful for the logo, didn't show it. He had other things on his mind, like how to get enough money to cop dope and stave off his heroin Jones. Artura's loft was on the first floor, and the action from the street just outside his windows was constant.

Sirens, violent shouting, and the more than occasional brick thrown through the window from dealers pissed off Adi or his notorious streetwalking force of nature girlfriend, the highly destructive Connie. East Second was loud. It was going to be one of those nights when the street noticed. goes to sleep. Didi knew it. He was preparing for a long evening. He had no money, no dope, no protection, and no one to help. Connie was gone. Joey was useless. East Second was alive and in his head coming for him. And there was nothing he could do about it. Couldn't hit the street. The heroin withdrawals were on their way and they were debilitating, awful, severe experiences. And

Didi, all 130 pounds of him, was ill-equipped to deal with the pain, the nausea, the sweating, the aching, the vomiting. He was helpless. Nothing he could do about waded out, make like his bandmate Johnny and power through. That gave Dee Dee an idea. If he couldn't protect himself against the withdrawals, he could protect himself against the threat of violence outside his window on E's second, at least for a little while. He needed a weapon.

His own bricks to fire back out onto the street if things got heavy while he sweat out as Jones. Didi dragged himself to his feet and headed out behind Arturo's building. And there were loose bricks in the backyard. The city had recently done some excavating for whatever reason. Didi didn't know. He heard there was an old graveyard back there, a long-forgotten city cemetery that had been developed over with tenement and loft buildings. Years of Manhattan development had disrupted the buried bodies in the city

in order to save space was forced to erect a brick wall above the ground in Arturo's backyard and rearranged the corpses from their horizontal subterranean resting place into upright space-saving positions inside the brick wall. Didi didn't know about all that, or if he did, he didn't care. What he knew about was that he needed a few bricks. There were none scattered about, but the brick wall looked a bit worse for wear, like the rest of the neighborhood.

Didi was starting to feel it. The nausea was coming on, and so too was a tinge of paranoia. East Second was shouting out to him like it was coming for, to chew him up, to spit him out. One more violent vein of this unforgiven, forsaken city that in the 70s at least seemed hell-bent on cannibalizing its own. The street sounds were intensifying, swirling around, Didi.

He was starting to sweat, to shake. He second screamed, and Didi noticed a loose brick in the wall. He started to pull it, shook it a bit, wiggled it looser, looser, pulling it all the way out of the wall. When the brick finally shook loose from the wall, so too did the skeletal hand of a very old corpse from within the wall. The sight of the dead hand set D.D. reeling backward onto his ass. He started a shake again, but the shakes were more from fear than from his heroin Jones.

And D.D. was about to spring to his feet and sprint back into the loft, when he noticed on the dead hand hanging out of the wall, something shiny. Two rings, one gold and one diamond. New York City, a city that never sleeps, was also the unofficial capital of the land of opportunity. An opportunity for D.D. Ramon just came knocking out of a brick wall. He quickly pulled the rings of the dead Manhattanite's fingers and headed out onto East Second to pawn them off, score some dope, and take care of's Jones. But it was clear to Didi, just as it was to Joey and Johnny and Tommy,

then in order for the Ramones to survive, in order for the Ramones to make sure rock and roll survived, they'd need to survive the squalor of their city. And for now, that meant retreating, getting the fuck out of Dodge, so to speak, and to bring their war to another shore. London was calling. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl.

You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me?

The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of family secrets. And just then, we felt the plain turn in the air, so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle. Each week, we dive head first into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities, and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me

alive because I wasn't eating anything, and me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move, and he went out the front door, and he jumped in a car and drove off, and that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. And my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do?

Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance like he's about to attack me. You're like, making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming.

And I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting.

I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena Mongeu. Camilla Morone at Carrie Kenny Silver. And more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Ramones were nervous.

playing outside of New York City was no easy task. The sting of being booed off stage in Waterbury, Connecticut on their first venture out of town opening for Johnny Winter of all people. It never left. This was supposed to be different, though. The Ramones weren't opening for some tired, bloated rock and roll dinosaur. They were opening for the Flaming Grooves, a West Coast American rock band with jumped up teenage energy in style. Plus, the Flaming Grooves were of Somebody's, the Ramones to their estimate. anyway were nobody's.

Their self-titled debut album had been released that spring in April of 1976 on Sire Records. Their friends liked it as well as a few critics, but out of the gate, despite being a shotgun blast of pure rock and roll for a new era and hardening a newfound energy and directness and image sorely missing in rock and roll at the time, despite saying rock and roll is here to stay with songs that barely made it past the two minutes and 30 second mark and said everything they needed to say in that time, Despite all of that, an album that listed 14 tracks and clocked in at just 29 minutes and four seconds, despite that, despite the no frills, the no fat, the no fucking around, no one cared.

Or so the Ramones thought. When they arrived in London at the Roundhouse where they were performing that night, they headed to the back of the venue to enter through the backstage door, and they're waiting for them at the end of the darkened alley where four menacing-looking figures, blocking their entrance, standing their ground. And they were in leather, looking, or trying at least, to look every bit as tough as the New York street gangs that they believe spawned the Ramones who they were there to confront. Hey, one of them yelled before the Ramones got too close. Tommy Ramon started to shake.

He popped another value. Didi was amused. These guys kind of looked like they did. Joey seemed nonplussed. Johnny was ready to pummel them and any other dumb Brit Fox who got in the way of him doing his job that night. Before he could, one of them. spoke up again. Or the clash, man.

And we're going to be bigger than anybody. It was a weird comet, a weird way to start a fight, and also a weird way to introduce yourself. The Ramones ignored it once they realized there was no real threat and skirted around them and into the club. The clash were clearly confused. All that leather, the iconic presidential-looking Ramones logo, the Ramones must have been a gang, no?

And the Ramones didn't know or really care what the clash were thinking. They had a show to do. Once safely ensconced in their dressing room where it started traveling back to the band from their crew milling about the venue in the back alley loading in gear and getting set up for the gig. People were saying that all these local kids, cool-looking kids, clearly scenesters.

They were showing up early and wanting to get backstage to meet the band, to meet the Ramones. One of them, John Liden, asked Arturo Vega if he could get back to meet the Ramones. Arturo said, sure. John wanted to know if the Ramones were going to beat him up when he went back there.

What the fuck was going to? on. The Ramones' reputation, or rather their image and their sound, preceded them. Tough, street, hard, fast, violent even. No fucking around. They brought all that onto the stage rhythm that night in front of 2,000 people and crushed. The crowd loved them. The band encoreed three times, and they weren't even the headliner. It was July 4th, 1976, America's 200th birthday, and the Ramones had made sure that American rock and roll had conquered. London would never be the same. Hell, the world would never be. In the audience that night, in addition to the clash and John Leiden, who would go on to front the sex pistols as Johnny Rotten and his bandmate

Sid Vicious, there were also members of the dam, the pretenders, the adverts, and Generation X. Later, during their stint in London, as members of the Clash and the Sex Pistols cozied up to their new American rock and roll saviors in the Ramones, Johnny Ramon played the role of mentor. Mick Jones and Paul Simoninon of the Clash told Johnny that, now that we've seen you, We're going to be a band. And Joe Strummer worried aloud to Johnny that the clash were lousy and that they couldn't play. Johnny told him that, if you wait until you can play, you'll be too old to get up there. The clash took Johnny Ramon's advice and became one of the most consequential rock and roll bands of all time and the only band that mattered.

And the sex pistols took note too. Bassist Sid Vicious followed Didi around everywhere in London. He was obsessed with Didi's look, his playing, his attitude, his entire vibe, and Sid was eager to impress to show Didi that he was as rock and roll as he was. At a party, Sid was set on shooting some speed with Didi. They hit the bathroom. It was disgusting. There was feces and puke everywhere.

Never mind the piss. The toilets were completely overflowing with all three. The sinks were broken and Sid needed liquid to mix the speed to shoot it from the syringe into their arms. He looked around, thought about it, said fuck it. Dip the syringe into the shit and puke-filled toilet. vacuumed up whatever liquid he could into the syringe, shook it to mix the speed, pointed the syringe into the crease of his arm, and injected its contents.

Didi Ramon, who wasn't shocked easily, was speechless. The Ramones with their high-octane rock and roll, their old-school rock-and-roll attitude, their completely over-the-top and outrageously straight-ahead rock-and-roll intensity, had inspired something beyond their wildest dreams. In London, at least, rock-and-roll, it seemed, was very much alive. Traveling from show to show in a van, four guys, maybe a road manager and or a roadie plus a random groupie or girlfriend, it may sound glamorous, but it gets old quick, especially because you and your bandmates, despite your best intentions, are getting old quick. There is no way to stave off father time, but success helps.

And for rock band, success usually means a graduation from the van to a bus or maybe even a jet, but not for the Ramones. Back in the States, Johnny sat in the passenger seat. It was so he could control the radio, among other things. Whenever possible, they listened to the baseball game, Johnny's beloved Yankees. Aside from his bandmates, by his estimation, Johnny didn't truck with no Forest Hills losers like the Mets. And that's just what the Ramones were. Losers. They'd saved rock and roll, inspired millions, including, it seemed, all of London, motivating scores of young talented musicians to pick up arms in the fight to bring rock back.

from the brink. The Clash, Sex Pistols, Generation X, and they did the same back home in the States with the runaways, among others. They were beyond the tri-state area now, and the Yankee game had long since faded. Johnny Futs with the radio dial. He stopped when he came upon the Clash as Rock the Casbah. He let the song play, even though it annoyed the hell out of him. The fact that The Clash, a band he himself encouraged to get up on stage, was being played on mainstream radio, even more insulting on MTV, while the Ramones were forced to tool around New England in a dirty van, effectively singing for their supper, drove him nuts. And nonetheless, he let the song play out. The next tune to break through the speakers was Eyes Without a Face by

Billy Idol, formerly of Generation X, another UK punk musician who owed his career to the Ramones by Johnny's thinking anyway. His blood boiled. He went to change the channel. Indeed he protested. Johnny told him to go fuck himself and changed it anyway. Up the dial he went. Soon, the caveman beat for Joan Jets' I Love Rock and Roll Blasted back at them. It was too much. Another one.

Johnny shut the radio off. In the back seat, Linda, Johnny's new girlfriend looked out the window triumphantly. Johnny didn't notice. Joey did. He noticed most everything Linda did. It wasn't too long ago they were together. But then Johnny swept in and stole her away.

It broke Joey's heart. Even Dee Dee thought that one was fucked up. Joey still didn't understand women, and with his chronic, obsessive, compulsive tics, he feared no woman would ever really understand him. Tommy was gone. He'd quit long ago. His replacement, Markey was oblivious, drunk most of the time, happy to be part of the ride, for now. Didi wasn't.

It wasn't fun anymore. He wanted out. There was no joy in playing in the Ramones. So in the beginning of 1989, he quit one of the greatest, most influential bands, on the planet that everyone, fellow musicians, critics all seem to acknowledge, everyone that is, except for the record buying public on mass. The Ramones weren't obscure by any measure, but they weren't a household name like Joan Jed or Billy Idol. They were a club band, a damn good one too, one of the best. But despite countless efforts, different producers, including the famed and psychotic

Phil Spector, despite appearing in the film Rock and Roll High School, despite writing and recording the title track to Stephen King's Pet Cemetery film of the same name, and despite covering past hits by their rock and roll heroes and current song writing gold, like Tom Waits' as I Don't Want to Grow Up, none of it helped the Ramon's breakthrough to a mainstream audience and to enjoy the level of success they deserved. The psychology of it all was enough to drive you insane.

You're regarded in your day as living icons, as one of the most important, original, and influential bands of all time. You're out there slinging hundreds of shows a year. Your name rings out worldwide, yet you're not actually successful. You saved rock and roll, but it refused to save you. Breakup was inevitable. In 1996, after their album, Adios Amigos failed to sell, the band performed their last show with the Palladium in Hollywood.

And they were joined on stage at different times by Eddie Vetter of Pearl Jam, Chris Cornell of Soundgarten, and Tim Armstrong of Rancet, platinum-selling-selling recording artists, all of whom were enjoying high positions on the bill. board charts and regular rotation on MTV, there to help celebrate the legacy of one of their favorite bands, but whose success helped drive the Ramones off the road to ruin and into an early grave. Five years later, in 2001, Johnny, now living in L.A., got the call. Joey was dead. The lymphoma did him in at the age of 49. If Johnny was hoping for Ramon's reunion, it wasn't happening.

Neither was a cross-country trip to New York City to his bandmate's funeral. Even before the band broke up, the two hadn't really spoken in years. Joey's dysfunction and his drinking was a constant annoyance to Johnny. And Joey, for his part, never got over Johnny stealing his girl. There was no love lost between the two. A few years after Joey's death, Johnny was asked by a journalist for Rolling Stone if he attended Joey's funeral. Johnny replied, I was in California. I wasn't going to travel all the way to New York, but I wouldn't have gone anyway.

I wouldn't want him coming to my funeral, and I wouldn't want to hear from him if I were dying. I'd only want to see my friends. Let me die, leave me alone. Johnny wasn't alone on the night of March 19, 2002. He stood at the podium of the Waldorf Astoria alongside bandmates Didi, Tommy, and Markey Ramon, and accepted his award for being inducted on the first ballot into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Finally, the recognition the Ramones deserved. It was the least the powers it be in the music industry could do.

The Ramones had, after all, brought rock and roll back from the brink, injected a new energy into the genre and an era that desperately needed it, retracted rock from disco's death clutch, and bridged the gap between rock and roll's golden and modern eras. It was only fitting that the band who saved rock and roll take their rightful place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Johnny spoke first, as was expected. He leaned into the mic and in a headscarf.

Scratcher thanked Republican President George W. Bush for his award. Ever the contrarian. Punk is fuck until the end. Tommy then spoke. He played on the emotion of the moment. Believe it or not, he said. We really loved each other, even when we weren't acting civil to each other. We were truly brothers.

Didi took his turn at the podium and in typical D.D. fashion said, I'd like to congratulate myself and thank myself and give myself a big pat on the back. Thank you, Didi. You're very wonderful. I love you. With that, they left the stage to genuine applause and gratitude. Joey Ramon's award, however, remained on the podium. What a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland.

Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All-Axus member, Thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelampod.com slash membership. Members can listen to every episode of disgrace land ad free.

Plus, you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month. Weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelampod.com slash membership for details. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook at Disgraceland Pod, and on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at disgraceland pod. Rockerola.

When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe, on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests, like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. And my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. David O'Yellow-O. I love this podcast, whether it's terrible.

or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Moderato from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes a suspect is found guilty before a verdict is ever read in court. On the Wicked Words podcast, I talk with the writers who dig deep into the cases that changed history, including Marsha Clark, who went from prosecuting one of the most famous murder cases to writing crime fiction.

It doesn't matter that you didn't take part in the murder. If you were at the scene at all, you're guilty of murder. Every week, the real story is revealed. Join us every Monday for new episodes of Wicked Words. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.