Punk Rock Blitzkrieg: My Life as a Ramone - Softcover

Ramone, Marky

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1451687788 ISBN 13: 9781451687781

Verlag: Atria, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

The “entertaining and enlightening” (Stephen King) final word on the genius and mischief of the Ramones, told by the man who created the beat behind their iconic music and lived to tell about it.

When punk rock reared its spiky head in the early seventies, Marc Bell had the best seat in the house. Already a young veteran of the prototype American metal band Dust, Bell took residence in artistic, seedy Lower Manhattan, where he played drums in bands that would shape rock music for decades to come, including Wayne County, who pioneered transsexual rock, and Richard Hell and the Voidoids, who directly inspired the entire early British punk scene.

If punk had royalty, in 1978 Marc became part of it when he was knighted “Marky Ramone” by Johnny, Joey, and Dee Dee of the iconoclastic Ramones. The band of tough misfits were a natural fit for Marky, who dressed punk before there was punk, and who brought his “blitzkrieg” style of drumming as well as the studio and stage experience the band needed to solidify its lineup. Together, they changed the world.

But Marky Ramone changed, too. The epic wear and tear of a dysfunctional group (and the Ramones were a step beyond dysfunction) endlessly crisscrossing the country and the world in an Econoline—practically a psychiatric ward on wheels—drove Marky from partying to alcoholism. When his life started to look more out of control then Dee Dee’s, he knew he had a problem. Marky left music in the mid-eighties to enter recovery and eventually returned to help the Ramones finally receive their due as one of the greatest and most influential bands of all time.

Covering in unflinching detail the cult film Rock ’N’ Roll High School to “I Wanna Be Sedated” to Marky’s own struggles, Punk Rock Blitzkrieg is an authentic and always honest look at the people who reinvented rock music, and not a moment too soon.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Born Marc Bell, Marky Ramone, a Brooklyn native, joined the Ramones in 1978. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002 along with Johnny, Joe, Dee Dee, and Tommy, and has received both a Grammy and an MTV Lifetime Achievement Award. Visit him online at MarkyRamone.com to keep up with all the latest.

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Punk Rock Blitzkrieg 1


THE BEAT OF A DIFFERENT DRUM



My father’s father, Peter Bell, came to America from Holland in 1920 along with my grandmother. My father was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, on August 11, 1931, and christened Peter, after my grandfather. My grandfather was a chef at the Copacabana for ten years before becoming the head chef at the “21” Club. The Copa, as it was known, was located on East Sixtieth Street in Manhattan and was owned by mob boss Frank Costello. Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin made their debuts there. If you were a singer, bandleader, or comedian in the forties and fifties and made it to the Copa, you had made it, period.

My grandfather worked at “21” for eighteen years, right through its heyday. Established during Prohibition and located on West Fifty-Second Street in Manhattan, you could always spot the place thanks to all the painted statues of jockeys above the front entrance. Everyone who was anyone ate at “21.” My grandfather got to meet and hang out with stars including Humphrey Bogart, Jackie Gleason, and Judy Garland. These weren’t just a bunch of tall tales—my grandfather had the pictures to prove it! Whenever we visited my grandparents’ house, I would just stare at those photographs in awe that my grandfather actually knew the same people I saw on TV and in the movies.

In 1944, my father and his parents moved from Hoboken to Brooklyn. My dad went to PS 217 elementary school on Coney Island Avenue, and that’s where he met my mother. My mother’s maiden name was Gertrude Joest. Most people called her Trudy. Her mother, Johanna, was French, and her father, Julius, was German. They immigrated to America in 1923 and settled in Willoughby, Ohio. My mother was born on September 10, 1931, in her parents’ home. Julius was an electrical engineer, and the family was middle class, but most babies at the time were still delivered by a midwife instead of in a hospital.

When my mom was only two years old, her mother died. A few years later, Fredrick, my mom’s older brother, died of pneumonia at the age of ten. Little Trudy and her dad moved to Cleveland for a few years before relocating to Brooklyn, New York. They lived on Ocean Parkway for a couple of years, and then moved to a four-story brick apartment building at 640 Ditmas Avenue, a few blocks south of Prospect Park. It was a solid working-class neighborhood made up mostly of modest private homes.

Mom and Dad were friends for quite a few years before they started dating when they were around eighteen. About a year later, on December 15, 1950, they got married at city hall in Lower Manhattan. On July 15, 1952, my twin brother, Fred, and I were born at New York Infirmary Hospital.

Our family lived with my grandfather Julius in a three-story brick walk-up, off the corner of President Street and Rogers Avenue in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. The buildings were all attached, usually with a little store on the ground floor and a separate stairway to the apartments above. Fred and I shared a room with bunk beds, which was fine with us because we got along really well.

My father was a card-carrying longshoreman, and my mother worked as a secretary. They sent Fred and me to a racially integrated nursery school in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a neighborhood just to the north. In the mid-fifties, most neighborhoods were segregated, but Fred and I were happy to be with kids from different cultures and made friends right away.

One strange thing about our nursery school was the school bus. We didn’t have one. What we had was a Cadillac hearse converted into a kind of station wagon minibus. It was big and black and came rolling up to the school like there was a funeral to attend. When the kids saw the hearse coming up the block, we would all run to try to get into the backseat first. It was roomy and padded back there, and it was cool to think this same compartment was once used for dead bodies. I loved riding with the window down. We all loved looking out the back window and making weird faces at the cars behind us.

The only thing I really didn’t like about nursery school was when they put us all down for naps in the middle of the day. I thought it was weird the way they set us all up on little floor mats and turned the lights out. There was plenty of daylight still coming in through the windows. I knew I was supposed to be quiet like everyone else, but it was hard. I knew there was no way I was going to fall asleep, so the best I could do was lie there with my eyes closed.

I daydreamed about doing anything else but taking a nap. There were toys put away on shelves all around the room—wooden blocks, a Slinky, Play-Doh, Mr. Potato Head, a Lionel train set—and they were begging to be played with. After our nap, the teachers let us play a little rough, especially outdoors where we could just run around in the yard and make up our own games. To me, lying down on that mat and faking a nap was just a big waste.

In 1957, Fred and I turned five, and we moved along with Grandpa Julius back to the four-story building at 640 Ditmas Avenue, where my mother had lived when she was little. The bunk beds moved with us, so I still had to share a room with Fred. That was fine, because we still got along.

Dad and Grandpa Julius put their mechanical skills to work for Fred and me by helping us build a huge electric train set, which we played with for many hours. Dad also got us started building plastic models of cars, airplanes, and battleships. Fred loved making models of the Universal Studios monsters—the Mummy, Dracula, the Wolf Man, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. He painted them almost lifelike.

All the models required Testors glue, which had a very powerful smell that hit you sharply way up your nostrils. The smell was so bad it was good, and we got a little buzzed from it. That was the bonus of building models.

There were no more naps once we got to elementary school. PS 217 was the same place our parents first met. Mom packed our lunch boxes. We got to play in the schoolyard at lunchtime. I got along with the other kids for the most part but got into a fight here and there. One time some kid in the bathroom accused me of stealing his grape juice. Why the hell would I want some kid’s grape juice? So we got into it right then and there by the urinal until one of the male teachers burst in and broke it up. It was just kids’ stuff.

When Fred and I got home, our grandfather Julius watched us until Mom and Dad got back from work. The deal was we would usually get our homework out of the way before we played. If the weather was bad, we would watch reruns of The Three Stooges Show, Abbott and Costello, or Adventures of Superman. The Three Stooges Show was probably my favorite because they were out of their minds with the slaps, hits, and smacks, but at the same time they were a unit—a team. It was like three times as much comedy packed into a half hour as anybody else.

Most days, I’d be waiting outside our apartment building for my father to come home from work. When I saw my dad, I’d run toward him to give him a big hug. I really looked up to my father. He was very relaxed about most things but firm when he had to be. My dad was six-foot-two-and-a-half, 230 pounds, and wore the thick, black-rimmed glasses that were popular at the time. He reminded me of Clark Kent. My mother looked like an actress. She was outspoken, and she was tough when she had to be. But my parents seemed to have a great relationship. I don’t think I ever heard them argue, even once. If they did, it was never in front of us.

When the weather was decent, Fred and I would usually play punch-ball or stickball with our...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Atria
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1451687788
• ISBN 13: 9781451687781
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 431
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; Utrecht; 3584 AA; Niederlande