Cretin Hop: Which Ramone thinks Phil Spector is innocent?
It’s Johnny, right? It obviously can’t be anyone else other than Johnny Ramone because that’s the answer whenever you have the question, “Which of the Ramones said something stupid?”
He was a lifelong Republican. A violent thug. An antisemite (just ask Joey Ramone what Johnny used to bully him about). A gun obsessive and the kind of man who signed off his band’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the words “God bless President Bush, and God bless America”.
The word was that he was everything the sweet, kind and gentle Joey Ramone wasn’t. There aren’t many people you want to shove into a room with Phil Spector, lock the door, then throw away the key, but Johnny Ramone is one of them.
Fortunately, that’s exactly what happened. Joey was a die-hard Spector obsessive, so when the producer and convicted murderer took an inexplicable interest in the band and became convinced he could finally turn them into pop stars, the only question was when they would work together, rather than if. In May 1979, the band started work with Spector on the fascinating misfire End of the Century, and while that may have been nearly two decades past Spector’s “prime” years, the Ramones really did get the best (perhaps that should be worse) of the puboid-haired maniac.
We’re talking guns, we’re talking four hours spent getting a snare sound right, we’re talking days spent playing the same chorus over and over again. For a band that (at Johnny’s insistence) was used to recording a song a day when doing their albums, this was a culture shock. One that showed the band the very worst of their producer, no matter how much they could relate to each other about their shared upbringings in working-class New York City.
So it makes sense that an obnoxious cunt like Johnny Ramone would experience all that and still go to the bat for a murderous psychopath like-wait, what?!
…so Johnny Ramone wasn’t the problem?
For those of you who aren’t Ramones die-hards, this is like coming across a story featuring a sober Keith Moon. Or a friendly Lou Reed. Or a bearable Matt Healy, these things just fundamentally don’t happen. However, looking at it without Johnny’s reputation preceding him, I can sort of see it. Johnny Ramone, for all his faults (and the man was 99% faults) was a no-nonsense, blue collar Brooklynite who had no time for people with ideas above their station.
Phil Spector, to put it more delicately than the murderous psychopath ever deserved, had ideas above his station. In fact, a number of the arguments that peppered End of the Century seem to be between Johnny and Spector about how long the process of recording the album took. These arguments did tend to finish up when Spector pulled a gun on them, but considering that Johnny Ramone never called Joey when the singer was dying of cancer, it’s safe to say that the guitarist could hold a grudge.
So, who was it that thought that Spector was innocent of the murder of Lana Clarkson he absolutely committed? Drummer Marky Ramone of all people, who seemingly stayed in touch with Spector after their traumatic experience in the studio together.
During an interview with the I Paper, Marky said that Spector had told him “the real story and everything that happened”. He continued digging this hole for himself later in the interview, saying, “It sounded like he was innocent, with all due respect to the actress, Lana Clarkson, but that’s his story. Do I know if it’s true or not? I don’t know. I have to believe what he told me. Why would he lie to me?”
Because he committed murder, Marky, that’s why. Ah well, no one joins the Ramones for their brains, I guess.