My Audition for the Ramones
Picture if you will: Robbie Ramone
He’s a little paunchier than I expected, but for the most part, Johnny Ramone looks exactly as I imagined: snug jeans, white sneakers, sleeveless T, lank brown hair, shifty eyes.
“So,” he says as he straps on his Mosrite guitar, “why’d ya quit da Fleshtones?” His Queens accent is thick and nasal, his chin raised in alpha male challenge.
“It wasn’t fun anymore,” I say. I unzip a ratty gig bag, pull out my trusty Fender Jazz bass. The familiar heft in my sweaty palms calms me a little.
Johnny sneer-smiles and casts a quick look to Marky, seated behind a simple white Ludwig drum kit. Marky smirks and raises his eyebrows into his black bangs.
“We shoulda quit ten years ago!” Marky says, and laughs, kind of. Johnny laughs back. Kind of.
It’s 1989, I’m twenty-four, and word has spread fast that founding member Dee Dee has quit the Ramones to go solo. To the surprise of some, Johnny, Marky, and Joey are intent on replacing him, and the search is on. I cannot recall how I learn of the shake-up, but word-of-mouth in the pre-internet days is surprisingly efficient, especially among New York musicians, and especially if it’s a news flash like this. We consider the Ramones part of the firmament, a kind of living punk rock Mt. Rushmore, forever dependable, forever like the guys in Rock & Roll High School. But no. They’re mutable after all.
I’m not crestfallen, though. I’m almost purple with avarice. I want this gig. I can taste it. (It tastes of Yoo-hoo, pizza, beer, and sweat.) In an adrenalized fever daydream, I already have it. I’m asleep in my bunk on the bus, ears ringing from a three-hour set delivered to a steamy horde in Bogota; I’m retrieving my passport from customs at Gatwick.
I hunt down their management’s number, and I do not hesitate: I call. An actual male human answers. In a blood-thick voice, I tell him I hear the Ramones need a new bass player.
“I used to play with the Fleshtones,” I say.
“Oh yeah?” The guy sounds genuinely impressed. “I’ll talk to da guys and see if we can get ya an appointment.”
Ten minutes later, he calls back and tells me to be at SIR Studios on West 36th between 10th and 11th in four days. 2 PM, sharp.
“What songs should I learn?” I say, my heart pounding like a Ramones song.
The guy laughs. “As many as you can, man. As many as you can.”
I figure I’ve got a better shot than most, due in part to my two years – 1986 to 1988 – as bassist in a band that arose from the same turf as the Ramones: Queens. In addition to geography, the two groups share influences, especially the Stooges and the MC5. They know one another a little. (They are not friends.) The Fleshtones, like the Ramones, are take-no-prisoners road dogs famed for galvanizing, marathon performances people talk about for years. Much of my Fleshtones tenure has been spent tearing up stages all over the U.S. – what we call “the college circuit” – and Europe, where the band enjoys great renown. (See HERE.) They are nicknamed “The Iron Men.” I know and love the rock and roll road life (well, most of it), and some treasured memories take place on that twisting, unpredictable ribbon of highway.
Robbie Ramone. Yes, I can see it. Robbie Ramone.
I pull out some Ramones LPs and get started. Memorizing the bass parts isn’t hard, but that’s not to say the songs are easy. Although among the most rudimentary in the punk rock canon, this music calls for sustained aggression, strings struck hard with a pick. It does not sound right otherwise. I mainly use my fingers, but Dee Dee’s style and sound come from turning one’s forearm, wrist, and hand into a jackhammer, hitting the strings with all downstrokes. Not that it matters, but this is against the “rules.” In theory, it’s limiting, but that is part of the Ramones’ genius: they transform their limitations into assets. Many a “skilled” player cannot do what Dee Dee does, because learning bass “correctly” calls for fine motor control, usage of tiny hand and finger muscles, employing clockwork precision. Playing like Dee Dee is more akin to driving rivets into a steel girder with a machine, except the machine is your own flesh and bone.
I can do it, though. It’s just exhausting. Few Ramones songs are more than three minutes long, but at the end of each, my entire arm cries out for rest. Luckily, I’m still young, so I recover quickly. Over the course of a couple of long, sweaty afternoons of marathon LP listening, I nail the technique. I do not sleep a lot. To prevent destroying the LPs, I make a compilation tape and rewind it countless times.
I take to heart Management Guy’s advice and learn ten songs. I think: “They’ll be sick of playing ‘I Wanna Be Sedated,’ ‘Rockaway Beach,’ and ‘Blitzkrieg Bop,’ so in addition to those, I’ll learn deep cuts like ‘Pet Sematary,’ ‘Wart Hog,’ and ‘Bonzo Goes to Bitburg.’”
I’ve never witnessed the band live, but my wife, Holly, has seen them several times. I ask her what to expect.
“Be prepared to play even faster than the records,” she tells me. “Like really, really, really fast.”
The day of my audition, I dress the part. I wear tight jeans, red Chuck Taylors, and a T-shirt I bought at Coney Island that features a contraband White Castle logo on it. I don’t wash my hair.
In the days since I booked my audition, other players have been told to come to SIR and queue up for a cattle call. A line of candidates snakes down the block and through the building, probably two hundred guys. The diversity is a testament to the Ramones broad appeal: young, old, long hair, Mohawk-ed, women, African-American guys. The atmosphere is convivial. I see several folks I know, including some who are not actually bass players. Al is a Japanese-American guitarist.
“Ya never know,” Al says.
“I’ve got an appointment,” I say, so Al won’t think I’m cutting in line.
“Oh man, you’re perfect,” he says. “You’re gonna get this, I know you are.”
I start believing Al, but clouds loom. Turns out, the rigorous audition process has taken a toll on Joey.
“Yeah, he split,” says a kid in an Army jacket. “My friend was in there and Joey refused to sing. He just laid down on the table and started yelling ‘I MISS DEE DEE! I MISS DEE DEE!’”
Undaunted, I walk to the front of the line and tell the gatekeeper I have an appointment at 2. The murmur in the other bass players pleases me. They’re checking me out, and I am digging that. Gatekeeper sees my name on his clipboard, nods, and opens the door. A youngster with taillight-red hair walks out, dazed, carrying his bass case.
The charged air inside the spacious, windowless rehearsal room smells of warm vacuum tubes and dirty gym socks. Two guys from management shake my hand, size me up, and point me to an Ampeg SVT, an amp the size of a refrigerator. Marky and Johnny have been at it for several hours, and while they’re not exactly happy to see me, they’re curious and not unkind.
“So what you wanna play?” Johnny says, all business.
“I learned ten songs,” I say, turning the volume way up on the SVT.
Johnny nods. “And…?”
“How about ‘Pet Sematary’?”
“Nah,” Johnny says. “How ‘bout ‘Sheena’? You know ‘Sheena?’”
I tell them I do. Within seconds, Marky clicks his sticks.
In the ten years I’ve been a musician, I have not played so fast or loud. I haven’t played that fast or loud since. On record, “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker” is brisk indeed, but live, it’s breakneck fast.
Johnny’s guitar, coursing through a stack of Marshall amps, is a palpable wall of thick, distorted, metallic noise. Anger, celebration, defiance, joy. All there. He drops into his trademark slouch, feet shoulder-width apart like a shortstop, not phoning it in at all. Marky pummels the drums mercilessly, grimacing, slashing at the cymbals, propelling us with terrifying force. My bass is an apocalyptic roar, synced-up with two living legends. I smile. This is, and will remain, my most punk rock moment.
At times I fall a little behind, but I catch up and lock in, adding my sixteenth notes accordingly, filling in the bedrock with the proper feel and tone. In about two minutes, the song is over. The guys seem mildly pleased. The air reeks of burnt ozone. My ears throb like I’m in a war zone. I want more.
To my surprise and delight, we continue. We work through “I Wanna Be Well,” “I Wanna Be Sedated,” “Rockaway Beach,” and “Blitzkrieg Bop.” I hold my own.
I’m thinking we’re going to play yet another when Johnny says, “Thanks for coming down, man.”
No one says I don’t have the gig, so I head starry-eyed to the subway thinking I may, in fact, be joining the Ramones. Back at home I tell Holly it went great. We have a ridiculous fight. She mentions I’d just left a band because I don’t want to be a sideman anymore.
“Yeah,” I say. “But this is the Ramones!”
I don’t say it, but I’m thinking: Robbie Ramone. Maybe R.B. Ramone.
Of course I don’t get the gig. Amazingly, Management Guy takes the time to call me the next day.
“Thanks for coming down,” he says on the answering machine. “You were great, but you’re not really what we’re looking for. Best of luck.”
In the years to come, I will audition for the B-52s, the Waterboys, Deee-lite, Ronnie Spector, Richard Hell, and Lloyd Cole. I won’t get any of those gigs either, but the only artist who will call to say thanks anyway and good luck is punk originator Richard Hell. He will actually call me himself.
Only the punks have the courtesy to call me back.
I’m disappointed, but also, truthfully, a little relieved. I’ve reluctantly realized I would not be happy as Robbie Ramone, and they wouldn’t be happy with me. I am a transplanted Southerner, a man cut from very different cloth than the Ramones. (These differences led to trouble in the Fleshtones, too.) Even though I’d be a working musician again, I rationalize I’d be doing a lot of things I don’t love. The songs within me would not get written, and the adventures I know are on the horizon would not materialize.
I come down from my high-on-hope week and return to my bartending jobs and my Tascam Porta5 cassette recorder. A New Yorker my same age named Christopher Joseph Ward goes AWOL from the Marines to audition for the Ramones. He gets the gig, but must spend a few weeks in the brig before going on tour. Upon his release, they dub him C.J. Ramone and hit the road. Against considerable odds, the fans come to love C.J.. He sees the world with the band until their break up in 1996.
Upon watching the excellent 2003 documentary End of the Century, I fully realize how lucky I am not to have been Robbie Ramone. As band members die – only Marky, interim drummer Richie, and C.J. remain – and life moves all of us toward the innermost groove of our own allotted running time, my Ramones audition seems ever more dreamlike. Writing this is a way to assure myself that it did, in fact, happen. You reading this account, dear reader, helps keep the memory alive. I thank you.
I visit that alternate universe sometimes, a realm where my ears perpetually ring and my right arm possesses the brute power needed to execute the tunes, night after night. I conjure Robbie Ramone, hips bruised from a bass slung low, moving through a life so different from the one I carved out for myself. I recall the faces of Marky and Johnny, the exhilaration of being inside their songs, thrashing within the noise, actively taking part in bringing those immortal, fantastic tunes to life. I stay there for the duration of a song – usually about 2:35. Then I hurry home.
Robbie Ramone!
they shoulda picked you! not that i am a CJ hater, or anything, but they definitely could have used your input! but, then again, they wouldn't have taken it!! auditioning SUXXXX! moments of glory are to be savored.