Dee Dee wrote their best-known songs, Johnny was the architect of their reactionary sonic reductionism, stick-figured Joey’s overbitten nasal sneer presaged a new passive-aggressive mode of rock-and-roll dysfunction. And Marky? Well, Mawky Wramoan — who’s in town tonight to deliver a little slide lecture entitled “Ramones Around the World” — wasn’t even the first drummer in the Ramones (he was busy playing with Richard Hell), but he’s definitely the busiest member of the world’s greatest punk band emeritus. “I’m not ready to sit on my ass with a dog on each side in a rocking chair just yet,” he says in a buoyantly cranky New Yawk run-on monotone while complaining about the weather from his Brooklyn home. “You gotta do something or you die.”
Death and rebirth have been the hot topics of conversation recently in Ramones land. We’ll start with the former: it was recently revealed that Joey Ramone is undergoing treatment for lymphoma, a form of cancer that attacks the immune system. Marky says the prognosis for recovery looks good. “I talked to him on the phone. I think he’ll beat it, because he’s going through a more intense chemo now. He’s doing OKAY, and when the movie comes around this summer, hopefully he’ll do the movie.”
The movie? “Yeah, there’s talk of the Ramones appearing in a movie this summer. It’s all still being discussed, and I don’t wanna go into it unless it’s definitely gonna happen, but they’re talking about having a lot of well-known bands in it, and a bunch of big movie stars and actresses.”
So let the rumor mill roll: does this mean a Ramones reunion is in the cards? “We’re getting all these offers to have our songs in commercials, movies, to reunite, to do another album. . . . I never say never to anything. Because sometimes you just can’t say no. Everyone’s alive, y’know, and let’s just keep our fingers crossed for Joey.”
Let the record show also that next year the Ramones become eligible for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a prospect they’re not exactly discouraging. “Would I be happy to be in it?”, Marky asks rhetorically before answering in typically angular Ramones-speak. “I’d rather have one than not have one. I’m already in it [for an exhibit on punk rock]: they’ve got my sneakers, my drum heads, my sticks, my leather jacket.”
In the meantime, Marky has a full plate, even though he broke up his post-Ramones venture of four years, the Intruders. “I’m more concerned with playing with everybody [I can]. I’m gonna tour next month with the Misfits, where I’ll have my own segment in the Misfits’ set — I’ll be playing six or seven songs with Jerry and Doyle, and we’ll have a bunch of guest vocalists to sing different songs. And then I’ve got this spoken-word touring I do, y’know, like Henry Rollins. And I’m doing an album with a band in Europe — they don’t even have a name yet, but Universal wants to sign ’em already.”
Marky also plays on more than a half-dozen songs on Joey’s solo album, which is — for obvious reasons — in limbo. But that gives him time to do a couple of spoken-word college dates. “The guy who handles Rollins and Ice-T heard me when I was on the Howard Stern show. He liked my voice — I guess you call it ‘delivery.’ I show a 15-minute video of my own footage I recorded over the years, then I come on and do a slide show while I’m talking, because who wants to look at me for an hour? And then I answer questions: ‘Are the Ramones really your brothers?’ ‘How many millions do you have?’ ‘How old are you?’ ‘Is Dee Dee really gay?’ ‘How tall is Joey?’ You get all the skeletons out of the closet. It’s an easy gig. You just gotta tell the truth.”
Marky Ramone presents his spoken-word show “Ramones Around the World” tonight, April 5, at 8 p.m. at Mass College of Art’s Tower Auditorium, 651 Huntington Avenue. Duncan Wilder Johnson opens. Call (617) 290-5783.
