God damn this is depressing. I don't really know what to say. I thought Dee Dee had gone off the smack years ago, but he either kept it up all these years (which is stupid), or took it up again (which is even stupider). I don't want to speak ill of the dead. I love the Ramones (i even organise an annual tribute show to them, which I'm not mercenary enough to plug here), but this was a stupid way for a 50 year old to die. Still, I'll really miss the idiot.
My band played the night I heard about it, and we wore black armbands.
I'm not sure it's fair to say that Dee Dee was a "total fascist". He did seem to have something of a fascination with Germany in general (he was born there), and he wrote the lyrics to Today Your Love... ("I'm a Nazi, baby", and so on), and may heave even worn swastikas and the like early on (I'm not sure), but, it seems to have been largely for shock value, and he ditched that sort of thing pretty early. Also, he wrote Bonzo Goes to Bitburg, a song opposing Ronald Reagan visiting the graves of Nazi officers. |