Three Chords and a Grudge - This Ain't no Holiday Inn: Down and Out at the Chelsea Hotel 1980-1995 - page 120

Dee Dee told me, “When I was a kid in Queens, all of us kids had these nun-
chucks. But cops were finding all these kids lying around on the sidewalk dead
from blows to the head! So they outlawed nunchucks.”
And man, Dee Dee did the most screwed up stuff I ever saw. He had this
really cute girlfriend with gorgeous long blonde hair who he didn't give a damn
about. And for some reason, he once told her that if she cut off all her hair, he
wouldstaywithher.ShehadflownallthewayinfromChicagotostaywithhim.
OnceIwentovertohisroomtodosomething,andIcouldtellshewasnothappy.
She looked good as hell, sitting there with her shirt not all buttoned up. She was
bad to the bone. And he did get her to cut her hair off, and then he dumped her
ass. He could be such a jerk! So he had some bad stuff in his life, and I think he
was confused, but I also think that deep down inside he had a good heart.
Dee Dee's volatile personality is well-chronicled in punk lore. Once he destroyed Johnny
Thunders' guitar in an act of revenge, the story goes, after Thunders had stolen a few of
Dee Dee's personal belongings. It was not, in fact, about a few personal items.
ROBERT CAMPBELL
Most people think Dee Dee got revenge on Johnny because he thought Johnny
had stolen his sunglasses and his leather coat. The real reason was that Dee Dee
thought Thunders and Stiv Bators 72 stole his song “Poison Heart,” which he said
was the greatest song he ever wrote. They recorded a version of “Poison Heart”
and Dee Dee found out about it.
Dee Dee was so mad about their stealing “Poison Heart” that he took a bottle
ofdraincleanerintoJohnnyThunders'roomandpoureditalloverJohnnyThun-
ders' stage clothes. And then he took Thunders' guitar, which was his trade-
mark, like Eric Clapton's black guitar, or B.B. King's guitar Lucille. If you
thought of Johnny Thunders, you thought of his Les Paul Junior with a sticker
on it—and Dee Dee smashed it to bits. But it wasn't about a jacket and a pair of
sunglasses—it was about stealing a song.
Dee Dee also said that Richard Hell 73 wrote one line of the song “Chinese
Rock” but only one line, and that Johnny wrote none of it. Then Johnny's people
said that Hell wrote the whole song. But listen to the song! “Chinese Rock” is
definitely a Dee Dee Ramone song.
Dee Dee also told me that Johnny Thunders had hated LSD, but there was
some rumor that he'd been taking acid on the last night of his life—he'd hooked
up with these freaks in New Orleans. When Johnny Thunders died, it turns out
he had leukemia. He would have died anyway, whether he'd OD'd or not.