The Ramones album Dee Dee Ramone claims not to have played on
There are a few notable albums by the Ramones that don’t feature Dee Dee Ramone. The musician – born Douglas Colvin – quit the band in 1989 and was replaced by C.J. Ramone. The last three albums that the punks put out, Mondo Bizarro, Acid Eaters, and Adios Amigos, were all recorded with C.J. playing bass instead of Dee Dee.
Ramone was always around the band’s orbit, even if he wasn’t actually in the band. Two of those three albums featured writing contributions from Dee Dee (Acid Eaters was a cover album), and the liner notes to Mondo Bizarro indicate that the Ramones obtained the rights to a number of his songs in exchange for bailing Dee Dee out of jail. When the Ramones played their final show on August 6th, 1996, Dee Dee went up to sing ‘Love Kills’.
But there remains one album from the classic era of the Ramones that Dee Dee may not have played on. That would be End of the Century, the band’s notorious fifth studio album and the only one produced by rock and roll pioneer Phil Spector. In his 2000 autobiography Lobotomy: Surviving the Ramones, Dee Dee recalled a notable incident of Spector holding the band hostage at his home.
“He levelled his gun at my heart and then motioned for me and the rest of the band to get back in the piano room,” Ramone wrote. “He only holstered his pistol when he felt secure that his bodyguards could take over. Then he sat down at his black concert piano and made us listen to him play and sing ‘Baby, I Love You’ until well after 4:30 in the morning.”
Dee Dee became so fed up with the hostile working conditions that he claims to have left the recording sessions before even laying down a note of music. “We had been working for at least fourteen or fifteen hours a day for thirteen days straight, and we still hadn’t recorded one note of music,” Ramone explains, saying that he and drummer Marky Ramone left after Johnny Ramone explained that he was flying back to New York. “To this day, I still have no idea how they made the album End of the Century, or who actually played bass on it.”
There are three additional guitarists who are credited in the liner notes for End of the Century: brothers Dan Kessel and David Kessel, along with longtime band friend and frequent collaborator Ed Stasium. There aren’t any additional bass players credited, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility to see any of those three playing bass. However, Stasium dismissed Dee Dee’s claim in 2014, saying that the credits for the album are correct.
“It’s untrue that Dee Dee didn’t play on the album,” Stasium contends. “There’s one song that the Ramones did not appear on (‘Baby, I Love You’)… It’s no secret—Dee Dee had substance abuse problems. He may have forgotten, but Dee Dee played bass on the record.”
See if you can hear Dee Dee on ‘Do You Remember Rock and Roll Radio’ down below.
