The controversial “autobiographical” Ramones song
Every song that appears on the Ramones‘ iconic 1976 debut album is a classic. From the immediate impact of ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ to the warm tones of ‘I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend’ and even deeper cuts like ‘Chain Saw’ and ‘Havana Affair’ which are beloved across the band’s fanbase. But if one song was instantly turned into myth, it was the raw reality of ‘53rd and 3rd’.
Named after the street corner of the same name in Manhattan, ‘53rd and 3rd’ was a notorious pick-up spot for male prostitutes in the 1970s. According to the song’s lore, Dee Dee Ramones wrote the track from personal experiences he had on the street corner “turning tricks” in order to score money for drugs. Over the years, it became commonplace to assume that the song was based on real life.
“The song speaks for itself,” Dee Dee claimed in an interview, later reprinted in the book Ramones: The Complete Twisted History by Dick Porter. “Everything I write is autobiographical and written in a very real way, I can’t even write.”
However, Dee Dee was coyer about ‘53rd and 3rd’ while being interviewed for End of the Century: The Story of The Ramones. When asked for the “true story” behind the song, Ramone said: “I’d rather bypass that. These rumours, nobodies giving me a fair chance [with] what is real and what is fantasy. Everybody always blows up the negative. People try to make me out like I was some rough character: I was just the bass player for the Ramones.”
However, according to those around him, Dee Dee unquestionably pulled ‘53rd and 3rd’ from his real experiences. “They were, in one way, as real as real could be,” Sire Records owner Seymour Stein explained in the documentary. “You could have been walking down on the corner of 53rd and 3rd and really seen Dee Dee Ramone hustling.”
“What happens in the song is he’s lamenting that he’s the one they never pick,” Punk Magazine co-founder Roderick ‘Legs’ McNeil added. “And then when the guy finally does pick him up, he has to kill the guy, proving that he’s not really queer.”
The authenticity of ‘53rd and 3rd’ remains up for debate to this day. It seems highly unlikely that Dee Dee Ramone actually killed someone to prove he wasn’t gay while turning tricks, but most of the band’s entourage seems to believe that Ramone did indeed solicit on street corners in order to get money for drugs. Dee Dee himself wavered back and forth on how much of the song was reality and how much of the song was fiction before his death in 2002.
