Ramones - Conflicts Between Members

Conflicts Between Members

Tensions between Joey and Johnny colored much of the Ramones' career. The pair were politically antagonistic, Joey being a liberal and Johnny a conservative. Their personalities also clashed: Johnny, who spent two years in military school, lived by a code of self-discipline, while Joey struggled with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Johnny, who was fascinated by the Nazis and Adolf Hitler, would sometimes torment Joey (who was Jewish) with anti-Semitic remarks. In the early 1980s, Johnny "stole" Joey's girlfriend Linda, whom he later married. As a consequence, despite performing together for years afterward, Joey and Johnny stopped speaking to each other. Johnny did not call Joey before the latter's death in 2001, but said in the documentary End of the Century that he was depressed for "the whole week" after the singer died.

Aside from this central conflict, Dee Dee's bipolar disorder and repeated relapses into drug addiction also caused significant strains. Tommy left the band partly in reaction to being "physically threatened by Johnny, treated with contempt by Dee Dee, and all but ignored by Joey". As new members joined, payment methods and image representation became matters of serious dispute. In 1997, Marky and Joey got into a fight about their respective drinking habits on the Howard Stern radio show.