Dee Dee Ramone found dead

Even in death, he's in Joey's shadow.

Yeah, just heard about this. Weird thing was he was down here about a week ago presenting some of his artwork at a gallery a friend of mine was running (it was the closing show). I'll have to ask him about that...

poor dee dee. 53rd and 3rd is the best ramones song.

Dee Dee Ramone Found Dead in L.A. Thu Jun 6, 2:18 PM ET

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Dee Dee Ramone, a founding member of the pioneer punk band the Ramones, was found dead of a possible drug overdose in his Hollywood home, the coroner's office said Thursday. He was 50.

Ramone, whose real name was Douglas Glenn Colvin, was found dead on the couch by his wife when she returned home at 8:25 p.m. Wednesday, said Craig Harvey, operations chief for the coroner's office. Paramedics were called and he was declared dead at 8:40 p.m.

"The investigator noted drug paraphernalia, including a single syringe on the kitchen counter, and we are handing it as a possible accidental overdose," Harvey said. An autopsy was planned later Thursday.

The death comes 11 weeks after the band was celebrated with induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Lead singer Joey Ramone died in April of last year of lymphoma, a form of cancer. He was 49.

R.I.P Dee Dee! Sad news!

Very very sad - he wrote their best songs. RIP Dee Dee.

Wrote the best songs, wrote the best lines, invented the onetwothreefour. Very very very very very sad.

Everett True is in New York right now writing a book about The Ramones. weird and kind of sad coincidence, but at least they'll have a decent epitaph...

Very very sad. He was the cute one, too.

and he had the best name :(

Aw crap... I find it strangely ironic that both Reagan and Phil Spector have outlived Joey and Dee Dee

I'm sad about this. The Ramones was the first punk I heard, back in 1976 and it was so thrilling and astonishing and fun. I saw the Ramones on their first tour, and they were all that again. I saw them a decade later and they seemed almost unchanged (except that they moved around a bit). My brother met Dee Dee before the 1977 show and talked to him for a while. I was always envious.

The story of Dee Dee Ramone trying out for Television in Please Kill Me is priceless.

Rodney Bingenheimer informed me that he saw Dee Dee play a "tribute to punk" five-song set in LA Saturday night, and that Dee Dee looked better than he'd seen him for a long time - hair back to requisite black Ramones length, good uniform. Ain't it always the way? I was actually holding for Seymour Stein when I found out the news - it's very sad.

As Mark S says: best name, and Dee Dee also wrote some of the finest Ramones songs. Without a doubt. An idiot savant. Everyone I've spoken to was in awe at his songwriting ability - there's a great tale of him meeting Stephen King, and King asking if the Ramones had a song suitable for this new movie, and Dee Dee going off into another room and coming back with "Pet Semetary" 10 minutes later.

Sigh. He was also a genuinely talented artist.

I'm rather amused at seeing people who knock the Clash for exploiting/wearing their influences on their sleeves and being heavy- handed/obvious profess their love for a band as one-dimensionally cartoonish and homage-prone as the Ramones. Very interesting.

Or is it just left-wing politics that get everyone in such a tizzy?

This is truly sad though. The junkie angle makes it all the sadder.

Only heard about this on the radio tonight (Thursday) after midnight. I wasn't the biggest Ramones fan, but tis sad how fast the "old guard" appears to be dying off. However, I'm not so sure he accidentally did kill himself. No conspiracy theories, but surely he knew about the amount of drugs he was taking?

Strange coincidence, I was just listening to the first album this morning and marvelling at how wonderful that "oooh oooh oo-oooooh" bit at the end of Judy Is A Punk is. I always used to dismiss the Ramones as silly and contrived, but there's something heartfelt and sincere (in a good way) about their music - the early stuff anyway, which is really all I've listened to so far - which you don't get with the UK punks at all. Reminds me of 60s girl groups, which they captured the spirit of much better than, say, the New York Dolls. (Though the Dolls LOOKED more like a 60s girl group, admittedly)

In a way I don't think they were punk at all - the Sex Pistols wanted to destroy rock and roll, but the Ramones just wanted to save it. A doomed effort, sure, but they put up a pretty good fight for a while.

From the New York Times - this one's kinda interesting:

A Crowd in Black Remembers an 'Honest' Musician

by Jacob H Fries

Sonia Sanchez, 27, remembers the very first time she heard the Ramones. It was years ago — she and a friend were the last two stragglers in a club in Spain — and the disc jockey let one of the band's records spin from start to finish.

"I just ran to the turntable and tried to see what it was," Ms. Sanchez recalled. "I said: `This is my thing. I've finally found my thing!' "

Ms. Sanchez moved to New York City three years ago and opened Wows Ville, a record store on Second Avenue near St. Marks Place devoted to the Ramones — the four-man band from Queens that defined the sound of punk rock, especially for its fans in the East Village. At her store yesterday, she and a group of friends gathered to remember the band's 50-year-old bassist and songwriter, Dee Dee Ramone, who was found dead Wednesday night in his Hollywood home from what the authorities said appeared to be a heroin overdose.

As news of his death spread, traffic in the store increased. They greeted newcomers with silent hugs. They chain-smoked cigarettes, shuffled their feet inside Converse low tops and talked about a man who spoke so directly, so honestly, about how they feel each day. The spontaneous gathering was one of a few throughout the city, as people remembered a musician and a pioneering band that changed rock 'n' roll and thrust the city onto the punk rock scene.

Hilly Kristal, 70, the owner of CBGB, the music club in the Bowery where the Ramones regularly played, said that even after 25 years, even as the neighborhood has gone through generations of change, their music continues to find an audience. On Tuesday, several bands with names like White Collar Crime and the Last Burning Embers had played a tribute concert, called "1977 and the Ramones to Russia Live."

"When you hear a Ramones song, you know it's Ramones," Mr. Kristal said. "You can't say that about bands like the Sex Pistols and the Clash." Mr. Kristal recalled the days when he opened the club in 1973. On the second floor of the building was one of the city's largest flophouses. From his front door, he saw boarded up windows and a strip of bars that drew lines of rough-looking people at 8 a.m. The hardscrabble block also drew a lot of artists, including Andy Warhol and Joey Ramone, the band's singer, who died last spring.

"There was an energy," Mr. Kristal said. "Now it's getting civilized."

Wallis Meza, 21, who lives in the Lower East Side, went to Wows Ville yesterday to be with friends, with people who worship the same words she does. Dressed in the standard-issue leather jacket and a faded black T-shirt, she talked about Mr. Ramone as though he were a hip big brother who gave the best advice.

Her favorite bit of Dee Dee Ramone wisdom, from the song "Poison Heart": "I just wanna walk right out of this world because everybody's got a poison heart."

"It's simple, but it was perfect," she said. "Everyone can relate."

Ms. Meza said the band continues, and will continue, to speak to people, young and old. Just a few days ago, she saw a little girl with a stick-on tattoo of Joey Ramone's head.

Almost as powerful as his music, these fans said, was Mr. Ramone's attitude, which was rooted in the belief he could do anything. They talked about the band's recent induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and laughed at Dee Dee Ramone's acceptance speech. "I'd like to congratulate myself, and thank myself, and give myself a big pat on the back," these fans said, quoting it.

"That's what he teaches, he doesn't care, because he does it his way," said Ms. Sanchez, the store owner.

Johnnie, a self-described middle-aged punk rocker who would not give a last name, said he feared that today's pop music was as processed as a McDonald's hamburger. The punk edge has been rounded off, he said.

"I'm sure it will surface again," Johnnie said, standing outside CBGB, unable to take his eyes from the three candles lighted to honor the passing of the rock legend. "Just as soon as the kids today get off their computers and video games, and get back in the real world."

The Boston Herald has him listed as "Dee Dee Ramones"

One of my favourite ever bands. There are so many superlatives, so many moments, and it's all just another overdose story. How screwed up.