Inducted July 3, 2002
"D-U-M-B!
Everyone's accusing me!"
Dee
Dee Ramone: Punk's heart and soul
You know, it's hard to believe he's really gone.
If anyone embodied the truly fucked-up, punk rock heart of the Ramones, it
was Dee Dee. An outlaw. Out-of-control, out-of-it and now out-of-body. To
say he went the way everybody expected is too simple. Friends did say they
thought it would have happened years earlier. One former associate, Richard
Hell, says he understands Dee Dee had been clean for years and his demise
is reliably understood to have been a momentary (and major) slippage backwards.
Dee Dee himself was sometimes quoted as saying his greatest achievement in
life was beating his addictions. It's true that, in the end, his addiction
beat him but that's still far too neat an irony in a life of contradictions.
The epitome of the Bad Boy Punk (if it's not a cliché), Dee Dee really
did provide the soul of the band that arguably did more to change the face
of a moribund '70s music scene (without actually achieving overground success)
than any of their contemporaries. Joey was the dippy hippy. Johnny the strong
arm downstroke king. Tommy was a drummer for the time, all ham fisted backbeat
and such a non-rock timekeeper. All were major contributors, in a band that
was the sum of its parts, but the Ramones would have been nothing without
great songs. Think of their best tunes - the ones that were slightly off the
wall but stuck in your mind. They didn't quite fit any mould you knew but
still were based on melody and intrinsic soul. Bet they were penned by Dee
Dee. And in the Ramones' Dee Dee-less days, a fair proportion of the better
songs still carried Dee Dee's credit.
Douglas Colvin was, by all accounts, the product of a messed up childhood
and a complex character. Goofy? Sure. Erratic? Yep. The guy who delivered
the immortal line "Pizza!" in the dressing room scene in "Rock
and Roll High School" in a way that made you suspect he must have rehearsed
it at least a dozen times before they got just the take they wanted. "Smart-dumb"
is the tag many acquaintances applied down through the years - Dee Dee was
the Ramone equally ready with a nonsensical one-liner or the production of
a switchblade (viz-a-viz the landlord incident in "Please Kill Me")
- and doesn't that sum up the Ramones perfectly? Cartoon characters with varying
degrees of the affliction called Poison Heart.
Dee Dee's musical star was not exactly brightly shining in recent years. A
friend of mine, Nick Nava, caught him live in San Francisco a couple of years
ago and said he was excellent but for most, his recorded legacy will be the
yardstick. Consider the post-Ramones body of work: A detour into rap, right
after his departure from the Ramones ranks on the eve of an Australian tour,
was ill-advised and difficult to listen to. One pretty good punky album (the
ICLC-badged "I Hate Freaks Like You") was followed by short-lived
projects (the Chinese Dragons) and mundane output like "Zonked!"
(where most of the rough edges were smoothed over.) The Raimainz project brought
him together with new and old Ramones members in C.J. and Marky, but it and
the most recent "Latest and Greatest" album were nostalgic exercises
in recapturing or, at best celebrating, the past. On the literary front, the
"Takin' Dope" zine was dodgy, "Poison Heart" a good if
depressing read (and apparently inaccurate - you can understand why.) The
less said about "Chelsea Horror Hotel" the better. Art (the sort
that hangs on walls) is a personal thing but the Dee Dee paintings I've seen
look like a product of the same kindergarten art class populated by Iggy and
the arch-mimic Bowie. That's the point, though. Dee Dee had failings - shit,
Dee Dee King was a SPECTACULAR one. The ability to snatch defeat from the
jaws of victory is very attractive, because we can ALL relate to it. More
on that later.
I
didn't know Dee Dee Ramone. I do know a Sydney journalist who interviewed
him after the release of the "Poison Heart" autobiography. The said
phone interview remained on tape only (it was never published) because Dee
Dee spent most of the trans-Pacific call rambling on about his dog Banfield.
I didn't go to the 1980 Capitol Theatre gig by the Ramones in Sydney where
Dee Dee's amp blew three songs into the set. Critics keen to dismiss the Bruddas
in the sneering way that only professional critics can manage did take note
that Our Boy continued on oblivious (which, they opined, probably had something
to do with the quality of drugs that Debbie Harry raved about on a promotional
run through the Harbour City about the same time.)
I did sit in a dark Hollywood bar a few months ago where some bleach-haired
self-described heavy metal guitarist with sunglasses welded to his head loudly
proclaimed that he had better things to do than hang out in said shithole,
sinking shitty drinks and playing shitty songs (Foreigner? Toto? Ph-leeeaze!)
on the shitty jukebox 'cos he could "hang out and drink beers with Dee
Dee at his house anytime I like". We all know L.A.'s at least partly
populated by people who WOULD say such a thing - and I swear he did, I was
only just warming to the task of sinking a few cold ones myself at that early
juncture so I was pretty coherent - but it's a mark of the man (Dee Dee) that
such a tragic human mistake (Mr Sunglasses) would utter that sort of claim
in public. You see, Dee Dee was the sort of person you would WANT to say you
knew, even if you had the self image of possessing the ever-so-slightest claim
to being "of the rock" in some way, shape or form.
True Confession Number One: Sometimes when I'm bored, I hang out on the Ramones
newsgroup where a bunch of fans and a hard core of shit-stirrers, some even
more bored than myself, shoot the shit. (Trivia item: Dee Dee's best man at
his wedding - George Tabb of the fairly rote punk band Furious George - is
among them.) Some of the chatter is slavishly adoring, some of it downright
nasty. If it's not Marky's wig, the late Joey's compulsive behaviour disorder
or Johnny's right-wing politics. More often than not, however, it's Dee Dee's
failings. They're into him for having hack solo bands or a wife young enough
to be his daughter or a past that included a stint at 53rd and 3rd. But, you
know, when Dee Dee died, there were glimpses of regret and even humanity among
the usual dross. There were also references to a foxy young South American
widow in L.A. now seeking a husband. Bet they wouldn't say that if they met
Mrs Ramone face-to-face. The (dehumanising) Net makes heroes of us all.
True Confession Number Two: My dog is named Dee Dee. It's true that the letters
D.D. could easily stand for "Dumb Dog" but his last name is Ramone
so there's no case of mistaken identity. He's carried the moniker for nearly
a decade, so yeah, I'm a fan.
Dee Dee was the living, breathing example of what punk (originally) was about,
before the pink Mohawks, designer torn t-shirts and temporary tattoos took
over. He wasn't the greatest player - some of his earliest efforts on bass
on the Ramones' first recordings made the bulk of the "back to the Grave"
and "Nuggets" predecessors sound like Jack Bruce - but that was
fine. Punk truly was about anyone having a go. Above all, Dee Dee was about
the music. The image - a huge part of rock and roll - went with it and so
did outrageous behaviour. But deep down, it was his human qualities (and failings)
that we all remember him for. Most of us never pushed things as far as him
or even dabbled in some of his places. But Dee Dee was real. And no end of
chart-topping, arse-licking, major record label marketing department-manufactured
crap can replicate that.
BACK TO THE FAZIOS
BACK TO THE BAR
