My Ramones Connection
Here's one of my favorite mission stories. It's the winter of 1992 and I'm walking around with Chuck Ames, an old childhood buddy who just happened to be serving in the same place. We're out in East Berlin one night when we run into this old lady who couldn't hear too well. We introduce ourselves: "hi I'm so and so, and this is so and so, and we're with the Mormons." Only in German you stress the second syllable, which is pronounced with a long "o" as in "moan." So you can understand why she misunderstood and thought we said we were with the Ramones. What we couldn't figure out was why that would mean anything to an old east german lady. But she lit up and said, "oh, you're with the Ramones, well why don't you come on in and we'll catch up on old times." We looked at each other more than a little confused and headed on in. She kept mentioning her Douglas and wondered how we knew him. We didn't, so we turned the question back to her. "Well he's my grandson, of course." And what do you know... As we looked around at her walls in this humble little box of an apartment, there were pictures of the Ramones all over. Then she brought out the special picture of just her and her Douglas. Sure enough, there she was with Douglas Colvin, aka Dee Dee Ramone, a founding member of the band. And she's holding his bass guitar in his New York apartment. Turns out he flew her out there while they were opening for U2 on the Rattle & Hum tour. Chuck and I were pretty big Ramones fans in our pre-mission days, so we got a pretty good kick out of that one. Anway, that's my little brush with fame, albeit fame's grandma, but hey, if it hadn't been for her, the Ramones probably never would have been a band... And it's good to know that rock stars don't forget their grandmas.
- Dee Dee Ramone's official site (unfortunately a memorial site as of Summer 2002)
- More Ramones links
- Ramones Trivia Bit as cited on rocknworld.com
The Ramones were all big fans of 60's British Invasion rock and roll (Beatles, Who, Kinks, etc.). Paul McCartney's brother was in a band called Scaffold. To give himself an original identity he called himself Mike McGear. When big bro Paul would appear on Scaffold records he would call himself "Paul Ramone." Being big fans, the Ramones name is a nod to Macca himself.
Source: "From The Velvets To The Voidoids- PrePunk HIstory For A Post Punk World" by Clinton Heylin