The thing about school is that if you're forced into learning stuff, you're not going to be into it.
— Joey Ramone
The first record I bought may have been Del Shannon's 'Runaway.'
When Dee Dee would start singing, he would stop playing the guitar, because he couldn't sing and play at the same time.
When I was hitching, I'd be completely decked out. I used to wear this custom-made black jumpsuit, these, like, pink, knee-high platform boots, all kinds of rhinestones, lots of dangling belts and gloves.
There's nobody as good as the Ramones, never will be.
All punk is is attitude. That's what makes it. The attitude.
To me, John Lennon and Elvis Presley were punks, because they made music that evoked those emotions in people.
We always stayed true to what the Ramones are.
Well, I think we're the greatest rock 'n' roll band in the world.
Nobody picked up guns in those days. You put on music, and it made you feel great.
Forest Hills was a middle-class neighborhood filled with snobby rich people and their screaming brats.
One day I got a phone call, and Johnny and Dee Dee asked me if I wanted to join their band. I said, 'Yeah.'
I'd just sit with Dee Dee on the corner off of Queens Boulevard and drink and insult people and stuff. That's when I got kicked out of my house. My mother told me it was for my own good.
I mean, like, rock n' roll was always about spirit and fun.
Rock n' roll is very special to me. It's my lifeblood.
The Eagles and the Captain and Tennille ruled the airwaves, and we were the answer to it.
The Ramones own the fountain of youth. Experiencing us is like having the fountain of youth.
For better or worse, MTV sort of bridges the whole country together almost like the BBC does in England. It's opened up everything so wide that it's possible for everyone to have different ideas.
I remember being turned on to The Beach Boys, hearing 'Surfin' U.S.A.,' I guess, in 1960. But The Beatles really did it to me.
They asked me to sing - actually, it was Dee Dee, because he had seen me in Sniper and thought I wasn't like anybody else. Everybody else was doing an Iggy or a Mick Jagger.
It was the glitter days, and the New York Dolls and Kiss would come play at the Coventry, all those bands would come in from Manhattan.
When I was a kid growing up in the '60s, music was an outlet for enlightenment, frustration, rebellion. It was more about individualism. Today it's just like a big business.
When a band like Blondie re-forms, you wish them the best.
To me, punk is about being an individual and going against the grain and standing up and saying 'This is who I am'.
Everybody's just emulated us and now everybody just kinda takes our sound as their foundations.
I enjoyed my life when I had nothing... and kinda like the idea of just being happy with me.
