Dot: Oh, this is my first podcast wow. You look great. I’m gonna also record this audio. You’re my first ever video podcast, Rob.
Rob: Well, that’s a thrill to me because where would we be without these Zooms and podcasts to stay in touch as we are getting through the back end of this, uh,drama that we’ve all been dealing with over the last year or so? It’s been nuts, you know, so I’m just so happy to see your face again and, uh, can’t wait to see you in person. When we kick off the priest touring in September with Sabaton,
Dot: I would love to go to that one concert. I think it’s in Sweden, where you have a ton of bands.. Wow.
Rob: Yeah. It’s what, it’s what keeps us motivated to know that we’ve got all these exciting things to get back into again. You know, it’s been such a challenge for all of us. Um, yeah,
Dot: I was wondering, what have you been doing through this whole, I mean, apart from podcasts, because I heard you’ve done a lot of podcasts, but what have you been working out?
Rob: It’s Hollywood lighting. That’s what I call it. It’s the Hollywood lighting. I’ve been doing what I needed to do, like all of us, to get through this, business and staying in shape. For singers especially, our, our, um, our work involves all the physical parts of projecting your voice. So you’ve gotta keep the lungs, your heavy metal leather lungs are gonna be kept in shape. So practically every night, including the current 120 Fahrenheit heat in Phoenix, we go out every night and we do like an hour’s walk in the hills, and then I do my swim for 20 minutes. You’ve gotta, for us in the music business especially, well for everybody really having the smallest amount of exercise is just so therapeutic physically and mentally. So yeah, I’ve been doing my walks and then coming home and having a big slice of cake and some chocolate.
Dot: Wait a second…
Rob: That’s my balance. Everything’s balanced. The only extreme thing I’ve got in my life is metal always will be.
Dot: Swimming is the best exercise ever because it tones up everything at the same time. And it’s good for your respiratory. So that’s why you look so, I mean, you weren’t unfit before, but most people during the pandemic spread out a bit and you’ve shrunk. How much does the leather jacket weigh that you wear on stage?
Rob: Lord. Oh, I just did a project, which I can’t really talk that much about it, but I just did a little project recently for Netflix. And I wore that big spiky jacket that Ray Brown made for me a few years ago. And I hadn’t worn that jacket for the longest time. And when I put that on my back, I thought, my God, I must have been crazy walking around the stage in this thing. Cuz it weighs about 50 pounds. You know, it’s a work of art. Ray Brown is a genius, and he’s been making Priest clothes and many other, many other artists clothes for decades. But when I initially went to him with this idea, he goes, I know what we’ll do. We’ll do like a heavy metal version of Tina Turner from Tina Turner’s acid Queen Tommy Opera, where she wears this red leather coat. I can see in my mind, okay. Right. Just go off and do it, you know. But, I tell you, my new clothes for the 50th anniversary tour are a little less, how can I say? intrusive on my back, because if I didn’t have my Doctor Dot massages a couple of times a week, when I’m on the road, I wouldn’t get through it. You know, it’s tough. Yeah. Big time.
Dot: Yeah. I miss getting your calls saying, Hey, I need a I need a massage. You know? And that’s so, so flattering that we can help you get out there and tour,because I missed the live shows. I missed seeing your concerts, you know?
Rob: And we miss seeing you guys as well. I couldn’t do my tours in Arizona. I know it’s being incredibly difficult for your business. Yeah. What you do is such a beautiful thing, but it maintains obviously touching and healing the body. And as I said to Thomas, when this thing kicked up, I said, God, I wonder what Dr. Dot’s gonna do because it’s just gonna crush all the hard work that she put into building this business. But I’m so happy for you that at least now you can get reestablished and back on your feet again.
Dot: Yeah. Slowly but surely, you know? Yeah. There’s a lot of restrictions. Dotbots are wearing masks and taking extra precautions.. in LA for example, loads of bookings, Bruno Mars and lots of other artists are calling us for video shoots and Anthrax, like every day in a row they were recording something. So if you need a therapist in Arizona, of course we deliver like dominoes, you know?
Rob: Sure. Yeah. Absolutely. I got your number. I’ve got it in my phone. Always.
Dot You’re so cute. I remember we met, I don’t know if you remember, I remember the first time I met you was backstage at Live Aid in 85 and you were the nicest one. I was there as a guest of Mick Jagger and his entourage there, his manager, everyone was in a hurry and, and upset and kind of snobby. You took the time to talk to me and pose with me. And you look so cute in the picture, you’re smiling. How long we’ve known each other?
Dot & Rob backstage at Live Aid in Philly, PA July 1985 ^
Rob: I know exactly what you’re saying. That was an incredible day, wasn’t it? It was just unbelievable. Unbelievable. In many ways. There’s an episode in my book Confess that began right after Live Aid when I went back to the Four Seasons and I met someone, which we talk about in Confess, but I know what you’re saying. The thing about shows is it’s such a privilege and it’s such a great opportunity to get out on stage anywhere in the world.
And I’ve always felt that that’s a grateful place to be in, you know? And I know it’s hectic and we’ve got a job to do. And I know we’re all kind of jumping from one pedestal to another, but it doesn’t take anything to just try and stay balanced and calm and just enjoy it, enjoy it, you know, have a good time. Most of us were already on stage for like 10, 15 minutes, so there wasn’t a lot of pressure. It was a big party. I loved it. It was a great, great thing to recall.
Dot: And you were, you were giving an interview to someone else on a little micro-cassette recorder, and I was patiently waiting to talk to you, you were so kind and polite. And I hope your fans understand that you’re not just a metal God, you’re also a really kind person. And I love that about you. I mean, I’m sure everyone knows by now on Instagram with all your cat pictures. You have a cat?
Rob: I got Mr. Smokey up behind me. Mr. Smokey passed some time ago. And because Thomas and I are so busy on the road, actually, I guess I’m making excuses because we could have taken in some foster kitties, you know, but we get so attached we wouldn’t want to give them back. You know, have another house full of cats. But we do support the great work that cat shelters and animal shelters do. And we have some connections with a couple of places in California and up on the Upper East Coast and around Seattle. So we do what we do, what we can do. You know, animals are people too.
Dot: I know. I have a little cat. I love her. That’s my fur baby. Like we have a rhythm. She gets me. I get her. I don’t even wanna think about what’s gonna happen when she’s gone. I will be crushed.
Rob: Well, it’s unconditional love with, with animals, you know.
Dot: Well, cats are not so unconditional. They’re nice after they get their food.
Rob: Yeah, I know what you’re saying. Cats can go, what’s this expensive vase over here? I just push it up this ledge. You know, they have that tendency to be so,I’m in control. You know it’s a privilege to have me in your life. That’s kinda the deal.
Dot: They crack me up. So I have some questions. So you’re in Kentucky?
Rob: Outta the blue. Yeah. It’s a great organization in Kentucky. I’ve only just recently found out about it, but they like to make these wonderful gestures to people that have had involvement in the state of Kentucky. And Priest have played in Kentucky a bunch of times. We’ve got a massive show coming up with our good friends, Metallica. If you can try and get to that show, please do. Because Metallica and Priest in one show, it’s just who opening. It’s a great festival. As soon as it was confirmed, Lars was texting me going, “oh my God, I’ve just found out that we’re gonna be on the same stage together.” Cause you know, he’s like the biggest heavy metal maniac in the world. So I think as a result of all of this, they send out these little recognitions, and it’s a little bit like the Shriners as well. They do tremendous work for all varieties of charities and organizations. So it was a blast.
They sent me this thing in the mail. They sent one to Thomas as well, because he’s a highly decorated veteran. We are both Kentucky Colonels, you know, and that’s really sweet.
Yeah. There’s a bunch of stuff they’re going to send me in the mail. I’ll be striking a pose with that stuff at some point on Instagram, on Facebook.
Dot: That’s funny. Ok. I have a personal question. I know it’s probably stupid and the fans are gonna scoff..But I saw that film Rockstar a long time ago, which I think is the Best Rock-Documentary. I thought Almost Famous was cute, but Rockstar really nailed it about what it’s like on the road and what happens when you’re famous and there’s drugs and alcohol around and how you get in this bubble and someone has to wake you up. Was that based on you at all? Cause some people sayit was, and some people say it wasn’t.
Rob: I think the issue of the guy going in the band was a close reference. But it’s a shame really, because if you take away all the critique, if just watch the film,firstly, Mark, he’s a tremendous actor. And everybody did a wonderful job, but for some unknown reason it just got attacked by the music industry, which I thought was really unnecessary. But the core of the story, that’s what it is. There are so many elements where as a musician watching this movie, I’m like, yeah, that’s me.Yeah. Been there, yeah. Had that experience. So it was quite almost like a real life documentary to a certain extent.
Dot: Because then they took somebody from the audience and he became the singer. Was that realistic? I don’t even know.
Rob: I think that there was some references there that you could kind of put on a parallel with Priest. Not entirely true life, but as we know, you get these instances where, like Dave will pull somebody outta the crowd . Well, I pull somebody out on the stage and your mind is blown by these incredibly talented fans. Yeah. So I can understand the possibility of that.
Dot: But I mean, but that never happened in your band. Some people are like, oh, that’s totally based on Judas Priest. And I’m like, I don’t recall Rob Halford being plucked out of the audience and becoming the singer.
Rob: No, it’s just the way things kind of get. Urban myths, it’s rock and roll, full of urban myths, that’s the way it is.
Dot: But that movie is so realistic as far as what happens backstage.
Rob: Yeah, it is.
Dot: And you were sober when I met you at Live Aid, you’ve been sober for so many years, right?
Rob: It was just before you saw me. You saw me at probably just after that. I began the downward spiral. This is the great, it’s not great, but this is the way that addiction can play a kind of fake card. What I mean by that is when you see a person and you interact with the person, as you and I were interacted, you give the impression that everything is under control.
And it’s not, you know, I’m sure you and I had a great conversation because even though, I was probably blitzed at the time cause it was an early show, I was about to take the big deep dive down. And so I look back at that and I used that as a reference that when you have..
Dot: A great smile on your face in our pictures, you’re like, Hey.
Rob: Yeah, yeah. It was a great day. It was a great day. And I loved my booze and drugs. I loved them. I loved them. It made me feel great, but it took control over my life. It took control over my decisions. It took control over my ability as a musician. It was stunting part of my creativity. And I didn’t realize that Dot until I began sober journey, because suddenly I had this great clarity. I have this great clarity as a musician, my lyrics, I feel got better.
My singing got better. Just everything about me as a person with a job to do in Priest improved. And that was just making that life changing decision. You know,my friend Gary Hall from Slayer Exodus has just announced the same journey. He’s realized, that it creeps up on you.
It it’s very insidious, if that’s the right word, in the context, the way that booze and drugs or any addiction creeps up into you, into your life. You have no intention,but these things happen. Yeah. And this is a great, you I could talk for hours about our mental health, our mental well being. That it’s so important in our lives.You’ve constantly gotta take almost a daily check daily, a daily mental thermometer, check about how you feel, don’t suppress anything.
Right. You’re isolated and everyone’s offering you drinks, especially when you’re young. Hey, they want to be indispensable. So they’re like, I’ll get him hooked on this and then you have to keep me around. And so they offer drugs and alcohol and the artist is like, oh, wow. Free stuff. I’m partying. And what they don’t realize is they’re hurting the artist when they do that.
And I’m sure he’s unintentional and there’s a lot of peer pressure in our work cuz you know, a lot of peer pressure. You’re trying to catch up with somebody else that’s getting success and they’re there with a bottle with champagne or whatever, and you go, oh, I’ve gotta do that. And you don’t really, it’s all about finding your own path and journey to get to the best place that you wanna be at without hurting yourself and hurting other people. And so we’ve lost so many people in music,for lots of different reasons. One of them is you need somebody in your life to go stop doing that.
I’m telling you now, stop.
Dot & Rob backstage in Newark, NJ March, 2018
Dot: Who told you?
Rob: To stop? I didn’t really have any kind of intervention in my life at all. As I recall. I talk about it in the book, it got to a really desperate, desperate place …a plea to help. I tried to take my own life. And I think that is the most expressive way of being at a place that is so lonely and desolate. I’m in this great band and I’m successful, blah, blah, blah. And yet I’m the lostest person that I know. So I had to make the choice myself in recovery. We tell each other that really all of our beautiful family, friends, relatives with our fans can keep telling you this, this, do this, do this.
But until you say, okay, I’m gonna make this choice now today, I’m gonna quit this, I’m gonna quit that. So you are responsible. It’s your responsibility. This is your life. You know, everything that happens in life to a great extent is your responsibility. Don’t attack me by saying, well, this happens or that happens that if you control, it’s like this is outta your control. You know what, from the moment you wake up to the moment you gotta sleep. Anything can happen in the day. But what I mean by that, as far as accepting your responsibilities as a person, it’s important.
You’ve gotta, you’ve got to really find that place. You know, it’s not about handouts, it’s just being able to discover that all of us have this incredible resource of strength and in the power that’s just waiting to be untapped. And when you get to a sober place, it’s just endless. It’s just an unbelievable stream of whatever you need. You can take it from what’s already inside of you.
Dot: Yeah. You can’t control the world, but you can control your reaction to the world.
Rob: Exactly. That’s the thing. You are in control of your emotions. If somebody makes you mad, it’s not their fault. You are taking what they’re projecting to you and you are making the madness and issue out of it. You know? And so that’s another thing I’ll learn in my sobriety. Sobriety is just accepting responsibilities for reactions. Every action has a reaction. So when somebody yells at you or somebody’s angry about something before you lash back, process the information.
That’s a thing about Twitter. People are twittering. They’re not thinking, you know? Yeah. You’ve really gotta think about the choice that you make in the reaction that you give back. And some of us, including myself, have made bad choices and bad reactions. But that’s life. Life is about learning.
Dot: So are you tweeting?
Rob: Oh, no, I can’t tweet. I wouldn’t tweet because I am opinionated. I’m like the next person and I try to practice what I preach. I love my Instagram, I love my Facebook. Where all my beautiful fans around the world that love to stay in touch through that process.
Dot: Angry place anyways. Twitter’s angry. Right?
Rob: I think it can be, I think it’s a great tool for instant kind of addiction itself. You can get just as addicted to social media as you can to anything.
Dot: However, social media can act as some kind of work. You know, a lot of people, use social media for work.
Dot: Yeah. It’s important. I use it as well. Now the the amount of influence that you have as a public person, some people kind of wait to see what you have to say about something, and so you really have to make sure that the information that you’re sending out is good and strong and positive, you know?
Rob: Can’t stand negativity. It has no place in life. It just brings pain and suffering and heartache. Negativity is just like a black hole in space. It’ll just suck everything in. Just watch the news. If you want negativity, just watch the news. You know?
Dot: Speaking of negative things, I have a really cool question from a fan. I just recently joined a Facebook Judas Priest group so that I could get some questions for you. Right. And there’s, there’s 15,000 people in this group and I was like, Hey, I’m gonna call Rob. Do you guys have any unique questions? Cuz I wanna hear what they have to say. Lots of cat questions, but I had to narrow it down. One of ’em I like is from Eric Sabahi from McKinney, Texas.
I don’t believe there are any curse words in Rob’s or Judas Priest lyrics. Curious if that was by, by design. And if so, I would like to know the background on that decision. And he says, kudos, by the way.
Rob: Thank you. That’s a good question. I love to swear, but I use it in an expressive way, getting your emotions out. I don’t really think that it has much of a place in our world in Priest. I mean, I see it, I see and hear it a lot in certain types of music. That’s your thing. It’s your choice that the great thing about music and all art should not be censored in any one shape, form or whatever. Everything, when they start censoring art, it multiplies and it becomes a very dangerous thing to do.Again, it’s all about choice. If you don’t like something, don’t listen to it. If it’s something on the tv, it’s making you angry, change the channel. Something that makes you angry on the social media. Go somewhere else. For me to use explicit language in a Priest song, I don’t think I’ve found the moment yet. I have a lot of friends in metal that utilize that the power of those words. If that’s the word that really emphasizes the part of your message, then by all means you, you should use it. Maybe on the next Priest album, I might effing blind, as we say in England.
Dot: I know that the Brits love to swear in a different way than we do. Cause I lived in Germany half my life, and I would be in an Irish pub and, and Irish or English guys would say, hold my beer cunt, I’m going to have a slash They just call each other cunt all the time.
Rob: Right. Yeah that’s a beautiful part of my home coe gets so freaked out over the C word, but British say, oh, come here cunt. Gimme a hug. And it’s just a word and it’s used in a really, again, it can be used in a great context. It’s that to say something like that to a person, is like affection as crazy as it sounds.
Dot: I have a question from Phil Collen of Def Leppard, I met him before you, he was my first rock-star client in 1983. Aging myself here. Anyways, he says in the early nineties, Def Lepp were playing in Phoenix and Rob lived there. He volunteered to drive me around Phoenix and then drive to the airport and pick up my then girlfriend who was flying in from France. But I noticed what an insightful and knowledgeable host he was and wondered if he’d ever secretly craved being a documentary host, having had a similar travel experience that I’ve had based on being in a traveling rock band. The reason I ask is I’ve definitely fantasized about doing a kind of Sir David Attenborough meets Bear Grills type thing. It just never came up. John Leks did something like that.
Rob: Wow. That what a great story. That’s beautiful. Love you Phil. We have such a great friendship, of love and mutual respect for each other in Def Leppard. I think Leppard went out with Priest when some of the guys were still in their teens. I think it was a European tour we did together. So, that’s a great question.
The thing about the thing about life is it’s never too late to do anything. You know, I’m about to turn 70, but that doesn’t mean I should stop putting the blocks on things. You know, you fulfill, fulfill your dreams and, and your ambitions wherever you may be. And so, who knows, maybe Phil and I’ll do it together, who knows? Or maybe Phil can do it Phil can do his documentary.
Dot: In between his workouts. Have you seen him without his shirt off? I mean, he looks phenomenal. He’s a great, he’s a great inspirational person for staying fit and healthy and sober. Like you.
Rob: Yes, exactly. So, yeah, I think again, just because of who we are and and the place that we have to talk out about these types of things, he’s a really great inspiring person for that.
Dot: It’s great that there’s so many metal people like you and Phil that are sober and you get massage and take care of your health and everything. I always say your health is your wealth. And it’s true, isn’t it?
Rob: It’s very, very true. And I tell you, I’ve seen it because, I’ve been doing this for 50 years, and now when two buses pull up, the guys will jump up the bus and open the bay doors and they’ll pull out weights, and they’ll pull out ropes and whatever it is, they’ll work out when they can. You sit on a bus for six hours, you get out and you wanna run out on the stage, but you get your cardio going, you get limber, you get ready for work. And that’s what they do.
Dot: So it’s great to see that, particularly in younger bands. Younger bands are very knowledgeable, and they know that, you really have to get an understanding that being healthy on the road, pay dividends. If you’re not healthy, you’re not gonna be on the road. You’re gonna, end up dead in the backseat of a car or something.You have to take care of your health.
A fan named Matt Miller from Ottawa, Ontario says, who is the best new band you’ve heard in the past 10 years? And do you think Priests might take out any younger openers as part of your 50 anniversary tour?
Rob: That’s a cool question. It seems impossible to catch up now. I check my three or four social media sites that I go to every day, part of my ritual and the amount of bands. It, it’s just great. It’s jus an endless supply of talent all around the world. Everybody’s really going forward and wants to be successful. And we wish all of them well. There’s a local band, in my hometown called Wolf Jaw Wolf, and then Jaw Wolf Jaw. They’re a three piece, they’ve got a great vibe about him and I think that they put an enormous amount of time and effort already into making a good band. And maybe they’ll be ready to go to that next level soon. Its endless opportunities to be there for each other. So, you know, the door is always open.
Dot: Have you ever heard of a band from Belfast called The Answer? Because I thought they were pretty good as far as new bands.
Rob: No, but I’m gonna check ’em out now. What kind are they, Metal?
Dot: They opened for ACDC on one whole tour, I was massaging both bands and I was like, wow. I mean, they kind of strike me as, I don’t wanna compare them too much to Led Zeppelin, but they’re like a groovy, harder Zeppelin. It’s hard to explain. The singers sound like Robert Plant and his youth, somehow.
Rob: That’s what I love about Greta Van Fleet. When Greta van Fleet, burst out on the scene, said that they love Zeppelin. And I thought what was great about that,here’s the thing about a lot of these newer bands, they’re referencing bands from the past, like we all do. When we started as Priests, we didn’t have a reference. We didn’t have a metal reference, we were there at the beginning, but a lot of bands will say, oh yeah, it was Priest, or it was Sabbath, or it was Maiden, or it was MalHead, or it was Scorpions, or it was this band from 30, 40 years ago that we listened to as young musicians.
It’s a great compliment. Yeah. Some of the greatest music, in my opinion, came through the back end of the sixties. The seventies was a great turbulent type of decade, but by the time we got into the eighties and the nineties, some of the greatest things were happening in music. And they still live with us today.
Dot: I see so many people slagging them off. They hate Greta, you know? Oh, wait, why are they bad? Because they all play instruments. They all sing. They write their own stuff. Give them a freaking break. At least they’re playing instruments and they’re not just rapping to some beat or something. Like there you gotta give them a chance. You know what I mean?
Rob: Here’s the thing about that Dot. Once people start attacking you, you’re doing something good <laugh>. It’s always the bands that are really gaining tractionand becoming successful. It’s just a bizarre thing. Instead of lifting people up, there’s a portion of people that just start trying to bang them down, you know? And it can affect you in a bad way, it can really affect you mentally and psychologically. Psychologically. You’ve gotta push that away.
Push it away. He has no merit. Yeah. He has no merit. He has no value. If anybody’s attacking you, hey, that’s their choice. That doesn’t mean you’re not doing good things. You’re not making great things happen, everything has its context. My witnessing over the decades I’ve been in music that some of the greatest bands will tell stories of people said we sucked and we’re never gonna make it. We’re never one of the first ever reviews of Judas Priest was Don’t give up your day jobs.
Dot: Yeah, exactly, when I lived in Germany, I brought out a book in 99 and I was upset at some of the reviews. They were all from women mostly saying, talking about my tits rather than the book. And I was crying. And my German friends, some of them came to me and they said, listen to me. There’s an expression in German, which means everybody can get sympathy or praise, but envy must be earned.
Rob: Yes, exactly. Envy must be earned. So when you got the haters coming at you and they’re envious of you, you earned that. That’s it. That’s a great way of looking at that kind of situation online. It’s pushing back, turn it back into a log, because that’s the best thing you can do.
Dot: You gotta take it and use it as fuel. I got a question from Earnest Herrera from Houston, Texas. When you retire, would you consider being an actor? Since youdo have a little theater experience from your teenage years, you would want to, you would make one hell of a villain in a James Bond movie.
Rob: This is so cool. This questions so cool, because Thomas and I have just finished watching this amazing new production that Robert Downey Jr. and his wife put together on the graphic novel Sweet Tooth. You have to watch Sweet Tooth on Netflix. It’s absolutely beautiful. It’s a beautiful story about love and reconnecting, but there’s a guy, there’s a villain. There’s a villain in Sweet Tooth called Abbott General Abbott, and he’s got this full on beard and he’s got the ears and everything, and Thomas goes, that could’ve been you!
We’ve all dipped our toes in the water. I did a thing ages ago for the movie Spawn, a Netflix project that comes out later this year. Just a little, little something. It’s little bit like when you’re making a music video, if you look at some of those early music videos Priest made. And we worked with directors like Julian Temple, he would put an outside story context within the music. So you do a little bit of acting per se.
He wasn’t really acting as such, but you know, the physical gestures of getting outta the gold Cadillac in Soho, were getting out the car and going into a bank, and after midnight where I pull up outside of City Hall on the bike and I’m high, it’s all that kind expression. I have nothing but praise for actors because to see them work and I’ve been able to see them work, to go from a conversation like you and I are having then to go into a really dark place for a scene or to be angry or to be crying the way they act, they’re able to switch this on. It’s just, an extraordinary talent, you know?
And I have a few friends in the business that are able to do that. And I’m just amazed by what they can do. I’m nowhere near that league, it interests me. I love it. I love it because all music is fantasy. All music is escapism. Even if it’s got a strong real life message. We go to shows to escape, we go to shows to escape what’s happening in our lives. We’re together as metal maniacs for that show for that night.
It’s just the most incredible thing that we can unite with. And that’s escapism. That’s where we go to the movies, that’s where we go to see a play. That’s why we goto see a show. It’s escapism.
This new Priest tour, all of that. We worked hard to maintain that type of balance with Priest. You’re going to see something that gives you a memory. And we’ve always worked hard in Priest leaving with a really strong, heavy mental memory. And the last thing you ever see the Priest show is the Priest will be back, on the big screen, that’s what we’ll be doing soon.
Dot: It’s an experience. I have a two-part question. So before you answer it, you gotta hear the both parts. Bill Shaw from Pennsylvania – Diamonds in Rust as a Metal ballad was absolutely brilliant and one of the songs that made Priest my favorite metal band, what inspired the band to want to cover a Joan Baez folk tune?And when did you had you realize just how brilliant it would turn out to be?
Hang on. Then one of my best friends, Jim Norton, who’s a comedian, I called him today. I go, you’re a metal fan. You must have a question for Robbie. He goes,okay, I wanna know, did you ever get any feedback from Joan Baez on Diamonds And Rust, what was her opinion? And did you hear any feedback from them? So it was so weird that he had a similar question.
Rob: So I’m gonna now blow your mind and tell you something even weirder, because the day you and I met at Live Aid in Philadelphia was the day that Joan Baez is walking to the trailer that I’m doing interviews, finishing interviews with, and Joan Baez is walking towards me waving and I’m going, oh my God, she’s gonna come and kick my ass about the way we treated Diamonds and Rust. And she goes, Rob, give me a hug. We’re hugging each other. I’m so, so excited and thrilled.
God, you’re a legend, Joan, you the things that you’ve done. And she goes, blah, blah, thank you so much. I just wanted to let you know that when my son knew that I was gonna be playing on Live Aid and you were gonna be performing as well, he said, please tell Rob and the guys from Priest that I loved their version of Diamonds in Rust, better than my mom’s version, I just thought, how sweet is that?
How cool is that? So the quick story on that was the band was slowly making marks in United States, and our label had said, guys, if we can get a song that we can send to rock and roll radio, that’ll really give you a boost.
And we didn’t really have anything. So that’s when somebody at the label suggested this song. And the first time we heard the track we were in a very famous studio called Rock field Studios in Shire in the uk. And we knew this song was coming.
It was a 45, we all sit round a record player and put it on, and then Joan starts singing. And then we go, are they having a laugh in England? Are you having a laugh? What is this? And then we listened again, and then we got it. Oh yeah, now we got it. This is an incredible song. This song will take the Priest interpretation.So that’s what we did. And we also did that with the Fleetwood Mac song.
So you look for opportunities like that and still do it now, bands that are doing well will suddenly decide to do a cover, whether it’s David from Disturbed with Sounds of Silence, and the guys from Death Punch will do a Bad Company song. There’s millions of songs out there just screaming for a new interpretation. Elton John understood it.
But what I’m saying is all these great opportunities help you just open the door a little bit wider just to bring people in. It’s an homage to the original song, but it’s also, what else have you got? You know? And then people will go to the music that you are making.
Dot: Plus sometimes a cover can turn out to be better than the original. Like Tina Turner’s Proud Mary.
Rob: Absolutely. You know, endless, endless things like that.
Dot: A Little Help From my Friends. I mean, have you ever covered a Beatles song or a Frank Zappa song?
Rob: I love Zappa. For the longest time I was a Zappa head.
Dot: The Beatles and the Zappa are my favorite. I love Zappa. That’s how I got the Dr. Dot name. I went on his 88 tour massaging him, and I was just called Dot.And at the end of the tour, he would go Dot, where’s the doctor? Come here, Dr. Dot, do my hands. I’m busy. He, he, so I stole it. I mean, I took it from him. I was like, okay, I’m taking this, I’m gonna run with it.
Rob: I never knew that. And where’s the book? Because you must have a million stories. I know you, I know you are a respectful person because in our world,there’s a kind of an unwritten law about what you see and what you hear and how you take that in. But I know you, you must have a million stories. Like I have that a lot of people would love to check it out.
Dot: I did a people book in Germany in 99 in German. I’m not German by the way, but I talked the book and a German guy wrote it. And I write as if the star is reading over my shoulder, I would never bite the hands that feed me. I make it funny. He didn’t even know who Frank Zappa was. I was like, really? You’re gonna write my book? And you don’t know who Zappa is. That’s ridiculous. So I’m going, I talk my book on the podcast, Rob, I don’t have time to type cause I have an eight year old son who drives me crazy every day. He’s in the backyard screaming, hear him? Anyways, I talked the book on my podcast just in case I croak, there itis. Out on the internet.
Rob: I’m gonna check it out, that’s gonna be on my list of things to do. Yeah. Right now.
Dot: And then I’m going to do it chronically. I’ll do a book because I’m going to forget otherwise. I got question for you, Dennis from Richford, Vermont. What’s Rob’s go-to comfort food?
Rob: Oh, I’m obsessed with lemon slices at the moment. I don’t know where this comes from. I think it’s from my dad. Cuz we just have a rusty soul. I’m just obsessed with the taste of lemon sliced cake and Thomas went to the store to fill the fridge and the shelves. Cause he demolishes the food, the food’s gone in one week and in his stomach by the end of the week. Don’t forget the lemon. Don’t forget the lemon slices.
Dot: You don’t mean like actual lemons, sucking on them? You mean lemon cake?
Rob: It’s a cake. Yeah, it’s kinda a cake with a type of texture. It’s like a lemon texture and a short cake shortbread base. And it is absolutely delicious. So I mean that’s right now. I’ve always had a sweet tooth. When you quit drinking, you realize that because there’s so much sugar in alcohol, that’s what the booze comes from.So I’ll really have to watch myself. I love my sweet tooth cakes and stuff.
Dot: Your skin looks good And sugar is evil. Sugar is really evil.
Rob: It’s small measures. Small measures for everything. Yeah.
Dot: I was in a rabbit hole. I went to Google how to do a Zoom call and all this other stuff and I ended up, what does alcohol do to your liver? You know how it distracts you on the side and you get pulled in. I didn’t know sugar’s bad for the liver. Yeah, it is bad.
But I always ask everyone during every podcast, please pick two songs, one for the beginning of the podcast and one for the end. So what would you choose for your two favorite songs?
Rob: Ooh, wow. I’m gonna kind of go into two directions, let’s do something heavy. Let’s just do, Iron Man. Okay. Because I love that song. I love that song and is connecting me to Robert Downey Jr. again and Iron Man. And let’s just go out with Diamonds and Rust by Priest as we’ve talked about that. I could give you a list as long as the day, but those will work for now.
Dot: I also asked, let’s say you came to New York and you miraculously had a night off and I dragged you to a karaoke bar. What would you sing?
Rob: That’s a great question. We should do some karaoke together. You and I should do some karaoke. Something completely insane. Like anything from The Wizard of Ours, which I believe that’s one of the greatest movies ever made in terms of just the story. It is the most beautiful story about love that you can ever imagine. But the songs, Over the Rainbow, We’re Off to Meet to Wizard and all these different beautiful songs, I love a lot of it, it’s a gay thing.
Dot: I don’t know any show tunes. I could do Rocky Horror Picture Show, I’ve seen it 300 times. I used to play Janet in the movie theater when I was younger. But I love karaoke. It would be so fun to see if anyone recognized you and you’re belting out a show tune I would make a video that would go viral. Oh my God.
Rob: I tell you, this has just been so much fun. It’s been great to see your lovely face again. I can’t wait to see you and give you a real hug. I’ve been giving virtual hugs for a year. Give you a real hug. This has been really cool. I love these questions from the fans. I rarely get this opportunity for this type of format, we’ll have to do this again. We’ll have to do. Yeah, definitely. Chapter two, volume two.
Thank you. So love you Dr. Dot. Thank you so much as well. It’s been a blast.
“When we first met the beautiful Dot she looked and acted at least 19 or 20 and told us that’s how old she was. Dot started to hang out with Joey Ramone and started to come to all our shows in Connecticut. This one show at a well know club, I believe it was Toads Place in New Haven CT. on the way in the owner stops Dot and demands that Dot show him her ID. Well Dot didn’t have an ID on her. Little did we know at that time she was only 16 years old. Joey and I had a very intense conversation with the owner and Joey threatened not to play the show if Dot could not stay without an ID. Well we finally convinced the owner and the Ramones played the show. However later on we did find out how old Dot was and I told Joey he was walking on really thin ice” Monte A. Melnick
Dot and Joey 1984 at the first ever Mtv Awards in NYC ^
Monte A. Melnick Ramones Tour Manager : Author of ‘ON THE ROAD with the RAMONES’ BONUS EDITION
Yes, this time is Monte a Melnick. He was the tour manager and friend of the Ramones from the beginning to the very end. I’ve known him since I’m 15, so of course I consider him a friend as well. Before I play our conversation, which has many great stories in it, I want to play the audio of a video testimonial that Monte made for me a couple years ago. I love it so much. I wanna share it with you.
00:31 Dot ..
Also, if you have any feedback, please contact me in a private message on Facebook, Instagram, or whatever. I’d love to hear your feedback. I hope you enjoy.
00:40 Monte ..
Hello everybody. Monte a Mel here. I was the tour manager for the Ramones for over 22 years, and author of the book on the Road with Ramones.
00:. Dot ..
Hi Monte.
00:. Monte ..
Hey. Wow, you’re right there in my ears.
00:. Dot ..
<laugh>. Hopefully not too loud.
00:. Monte ..
So you, this is, you are recording this now and that’s gonna be put up, what, a week later or something like that?
01:01 Dot ..
Yeah, I, I always, I, cuz I have, I’m so blessed to have so many rock star clients already, you know, that I’m behind. I can’t just do a, you know, the thing is I can’t post one every day, then I’ll run out of rock stars, you know what I mean? Okay. So I’ve been spacing it out a week and, um, you know, I’m gonna do yours. Like, I usually try to do one every late Thursday night. So this coming Thursday will be Steve, I Uhhuh <affirmative>, and then the next week will be you. And then the next week after, that’ll be CJ and so on and so on.
01:. Dot ..
Did
01:. Monte ..
You get his number?
01:34 Dot ..
Yeah, well I have his email address. Duh. And I emailed him and he wrote right back. He’s awesome. And, um, okay, good.
01:40 Monte ..
I’m sorry to get back to you. I was a little tied up there.
01:43 Dot ..
Hey, it’s always good to be tied up. Some people pay for that.
01:46 Monte ..
Uh, you probably know that better than me. <laugh> <laugh>. Um, now as far as an image goes, what are you gonna put up, uh, for me and, you know,
01:. Dot ..
Well, I have a picture of me and you together, so of course I’m gonna use that one.
01:59 Monte ..
Oh, okay, good. Just, uh, have I, I must have seen that one, right? Was it an old picture?
02:05 Dot ..
I can, it’s a pic. Well, all pictures of us are
02:07 Monte ..
Old. I mean have, oh, very, very well
02:09 Dot ..
Actually. No, I have, I have lots of pictures of me and you. What am I talking about? I have one of me and you at Manitoba’s Bar and um, we’re just gonna roll with this cuz this is good chat. We can’t start over. And, and then I have one of me and you backstage, I think New Haven, Connecticut. I’m dressed, I’m wearing a prom dress for some reason I’m wearing like prom dresses and many of my pictures was the Ramones way back then. That’s right. I was trying to look older cuz you know,I wasn’t. And I had a, I have a girlfriend, Elaine with me, and we’re sitting next to you backstage and there’s a, a, you know, those big block black boxes that the Ramones carried their shit in.
02:48 Dot ..
What are those boxes
02:. Monte ..
Called? Anvil cases.
02:. Dot ..
Oh. All these years Backstage and I don’t know what they’re called. Okay. Anvil cases. And it says
02:. Monte ..
Called Road Cases, but Anvil is the main person that made it first. So everybody calls me Anvil cases, basically.
03:03 Dot ..
Okay, well there’s a picture of me and you and her back there. And you can see the Ramones written on the Anvil case. I’m so glad I learned that today. See, I’m doing this podcast so I can learn shit. How’s that
03:13 Monte ..
<laugh>? Sounds good. As far as the picture goes, maybe you can send this me first and I can look at it and say this one. That one maybe.
03:20 Dot ..
Absolutely. And I also need to know, I always ask people, what song do you want at the start of the podcast? And what song do you want at the end of the podcast?It’s your choice.
03:31 Monte ..
Well, I think I,
03:31 Dot ..
It doesn’t have to be a Ramones song.
03:. Monte ..
No, no, no. Actually the, you know, people come to me and say, what’s your favorite Ramone song? You know, and I like a lot of Ramon songs. I do have a favorite Ramone song. You have any idea what that might be? You probably don’t know, right?
03:46 Dot ..
Um,
03:48 Monte ..
I think I ate mailed, I texted you the what the song <laugh> you said. Um, but that time you said you couldn’t, uh, put a song up or something. Remember you
03:. Dot ..
Oh no. Because I was, I I, I’m learning the ropes and this bullshit with Spotify. They, they lure you in and they say, oh, click this button to add a song from a Spotify. I’m like, oh, that’s great. I, I love music. I wanna put a song in every podcast. But when you do that, they snag you and they lock you down. And then your podcast is only heard on Spotify. That sucks. That’s like being married, you know, when you, you don’t wanna be married. So I, yeah, I rebuilt every podcast new with the same guts.
04:30 Dot ..
And then I just, what I do is I lay my iPhone next to Alexa and I ch choose whatever song I want. And I, I play it in the background. It sounds good. The quality’s good. Cause I have a, a plugin microphone, so I forgot what song.
04:45 Monte ..
Uh, so, uh, it’s called All the Way From End of the Century, all the Way End of the Century album. Do you know why I like that? That my, my favorite song?
04:. Dot ..
No.
04:. Monte ..
Joey wrote me into the song. Oh, Monte’s driving me crazy. It’s like being in the Navy <laugh>. So I have the honor of being in a Ramones song.
05:06 Dot ..
Well, that’s the least they could do <laugh>. And I have to admit, um, well, I mean, I’ve been around a lot of rock stars and a lot of rock managers. It’s not easy<laugh>. You have to be the serious one when everyone else is having fun.
05:21 Monte ..
Oh yeah, yeah. You gotta hold it together. You can’t party as much. You can’t, uh, do a lot of things at the band’s doing that after the show and things like that. You gotta keep ’em together and gotta be like a herd. The cats, you know, it’s like herding cats, you know? <laugh>.
05:35 Dot ..
Yeah. That’s cute.
05:37 Monte ..
Not, not only the, the, the, the road manager, tour manager has to deal with a crazy band, but also a crazy crew. So it’s like doubly amount of nutty people you’re surrounded with, you know?
05:45 Dot ..
Um, of course all the Hangar honors.
05:48 Monte ..
Yeah, that too. And the record company and promoters and et cetera, et cetera.
05:. Dot ..
So, and you, you unfortunately were in the, the era where there was, like now for example, <laugh> Lady Gaga not only has a production manager, a tour manager, a production manager assistant, a tour manager assistant, but her crew has their own production manager and tour man. Hello. So you had to do all of that shit yourself?
06:14 Monte ..
Well, yeah. You know, cuz we didn’t have, they were not making that much money so they can only hire a certain amount of people. So I had to do a lot of extra work. You know,
06:24 Dot ..
You were wearing all the hats.
06:26 Monte ..
Yeah, I like wearing a lot of hats. <laugh> so far as the last song. So all the way for the first song and then you can play touring. I forget what album that’s off of.
06:34 Dot ..
Okay, so at the, at the close we’re gonna play this song. Touring.
06:37 Monte ..
Yeah, the touring. Touring. So never boring. I, I can say that for sure. Yeah.
06:41 Dot ..
<laugh>. Well, and speaking of that, you haven’t been able to tour well for, I mean, when was the, when was your last tour?
06:48 Monte ..
Wow. Well, they retired in 1.6, then I started, I managed Marky for about a year and a half, two years. And actually I sent somebody else on the road with, as a tour manager. I was, I was, I was kind of being like a, a manager. I was a manager at the time with George DEOs, the great photographer. He took a a lot of, uh, shot, uh,cover photos for the Ramones, George DEOs. So we had a little management company, search and Rescue. And, and, uh, we got Mark’s first two albums out. And Isent him on the road, another tour manager.
07:19 Monte ..
Oh. And then after that they, uh, we imported amicably. And, uh, I worked with like degeneration for a little bit and then, uh, a little bit with Ronnie Specter and afew things after that.
07:31 Dot ..
Didn’t Ronnie Specter, first of all, I think he just passed, right? No, that’s
07:35 Monte ..
Phil Specter. Oh,
07:36 Dot ..
Phil what?
07:37 Monte ..
God. Ronnie Specter from
07:. Dot ..
The, she was his wife. Yeah. Okay.
07:41 Monte ..
From the Ronettes. He went jail. Remember the Ronettes Syndrome? Yeah,
07:43 Dot ..
Yeah, of course. But I,
07:44 Monte ..
Oh yeah. He went to jail and died there. Oh
07:46 Dot ..
My gosh. That’s crazy. And we But you never, you met him, obviously. Well,
07:. Monte ..
Yeah, we, he did talking about all the way it’s on end of the century, which Phil Specter produced. So we, I was in the, with the, the band, uh, working the, with him in the studio. And it was quite an experience, a lot, a lot of little stories in my book about that.
08:03 Dot ..
Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, unfortunately, I wasn’t mentioning the book and I’m thinking it was because I was underage.
08:09 Monte ..
I think you mentioned that a few times to me already. <laugh>. Yeah. You know, because you were underage. I don’t wanna get Joey into trouble and all that, you
08:16 Dot ..
Know? Yeah. I mean, and, and I take full responsibility for that. I mean, look, women lie about their age when they’re, they’re young, they make themselves older.When they’re older, they make themselves younger. That’s just what we do. And, and back then men never said, oh, let me see your fucking id. You know? Yeah.
08:36 Monte ..
The, the good old days.
08:. Dot ..
Yeah, the good old days. It wasn’t, it wasn’t a thing. And, and so nobody can blame Joey or you or anyone. It was me. I was just, I was raised with no other little kids around. I was more mature for my age and I looked older. So there’s that.
08:. Monte ..
And also, I would have to have, write an, an extra book on, on girlfriends and stuff too. <laugh>. I basically kept it to wives and close girlfriends, you know, <laugh>.Yeah, of course. Of, of the age. <laugh>.
09:06 Dot ..
Yeah, of course. Um, well, you know, I, I enjoyed my time with you guys and, uh, I have nothing but nice things to say. It’s just, uh, it was an amazing part of my life.And, um, I’m, I’ve known you forever. I mean, I think I met you when I was almost 15.
09:24 Monte ..
Oh my goodness. <laugh>, was that like four or five years ago, right? Yeah.
09:28 Dot ..
Yeah. Right. <laugh>. But, but 15 didn’t look the same. Like when I meet girls at the playground. Cause I have an eight year old son now. Oh boy. When I see 15 yearold girls looking after their brother and sister, I’m thinking to myself, I was traveling sometimes on the weekends with the Ramones at that age. <laugh>.
09:44 Monte ..
Yeah.
* Dot ..
I, I just didn’t look the same. They all, I don’t know, fifteen’s different, but, hey,
*Monte ..
Well, you looked, uh, very spectacular at 15, I’ll tell you that.
09:. Dot ..
Yeah. I, I looked like Pam Anderson. <laugh> for sure. I mean, and Joey was, I’m gonna put this out there. I don’t care. Joey was not at all any kind of perv. He was sweetest, kindest, like innocent. That’s what I loved about him. He was not, he wasn’t a shark. He was so naive and innocent or something around women. I don’t know how to
10:15 Monte ..
Yeah. I, yeah. That, that’s, he came off that way with a lot of women like that. I mean, perv is not the word.
10:23 Dot ..
Hell no. He was not like, Hey, come here little girl. It was me. I was like, Hey, hey. I, I love your lips, <laugh>. So I have the funniest thing I ask fans in on Facebook.Hey, I’m gonna interview Monte. A Mel. There you go. What questions do you have for, for him? So, I have five, no, actually six now, if you don’t mind. Go ahead.Okay. Red. R e d d Tim Gallagher from Pacific Grove, California.
10:. Dot ..
How much, if any of the gear was recovered when the van was stolen? Twice. <laugh>. First time and second time. It’s
11:02 Monte ..
Funny, I think Matt replied that out on your, on your Facebook site there. Uh, first time they stole everything. It was a, it was a, um, in a, in a van. They stole the whole van. So that, that was gone. <laugh>.
Dot and Vera Ramone 1984 in Virginia
11:16 Dot ..
Wait, how does this happen? You park outside with the keys in it. Well, you
11:20 Monte ..
Know, this is 19 ., .. You don’t, you, you go on the road, you don’t, you park your car, you take, you know, you park it. You don’t expect somebody to steal it, you know, then, you know, so,
11:30 Dot ..
Where was it? Chicago.
11:31 Monte ..
Chicago.
11:32 Dot ..
Chicago. Geez.
11:34 Monte ..
So you, you’ll learn from that. Then you get like, uh, you know, like locks for the steering wheel. And, uh, so the second time was in la. We had a truck. And at that time we, we were very worried. We had a, a bar that went through the wheel axle. The axle of the wheels. Not the axle, I’m sorry, the wheels across. So you couldn’t drive the truck. Right. I
11:. Dot ..
See those a club.
11:. Monte ..
Well, no, that, that’s on a steering wheel. They called the club. But this one, we, we actually got had a club. We didn’t have a club where we had a bar that went through the back wheels, so you couldn’t drive it, you know, but the idiot crew didn’t put the bar in that night. And they took the whole truck. We lost everything. And we had a show like four days later, or two days later. So I had to go into, uh, guitar Center and buy everything. Luckily they took up from the experience of having some stuff stolen initially, uh, they, John said, take up the guitars. At least get them into the, so they took the guitars at the hotel with them.
12:30 Monte ..
So I had all the guitars and the bases, but everything else was stolen. And I had to go into a guitar center and replace everything. And it was like, you know, picks and sticks and drums and scams and cables. And luckily si records back, you know, banked the whole thing. Cuz they were, they were behind the group. But, uh, <laugh>it wasn’t good, you know, trying to think about what you need. Everything’s gone. They just recovered like some tops, the anvil cases. That was it.
12:59 Dot ..
So what about all their clothes? I mean, cuz I remember the
13:02 Monte ..
Clothes. All they had was leather, the jackets. And that. They replaced those in a, in a case. So, I mean, they, they didn’t have any stage clothes. They wore, you know,jeans, you know, and t-shirts. So they, they had that. It was just the leather jackets that we kept in a special road case. You know,
13:17 Dot ..
Those motherfuckers must have hawked them or if they knew who, who, who they belonged to. I mean, they must have showed up some day on eBay or something.I, I
13:24 Monte ..
Know. I don’t, at that time they, that they realized that they probably just threw a jacks out. They didn’t know what the hell was going on. It was like way in the beginning, you know. Well, <laugh>
13:31 Dot ..
Well, if they had a whiff of them, because this is, I have a special kind of nose, like the movie perfume where I can smell. Like if you, if you pass gas around me, I can tell you what you ate. I have a, a nose like that, like a hound dog. And I, when I was hanging out backstage all the time, I noticed they would come offstage, takeoff their jackets cuz they were so sweaty. Oh
13:. Monte ..
My God. They were probably slutty. They were soaked. They were soaked. They was, they
13:. Dot ..
Were soaked. Yeah. Guess what they would do? Put them right in the box. The box. And you’d close it up and pack it away. And, and guess how they fucking, I remember them because <laugh>, I, because, you know, I remember that the jacket smelled like piss because sweat eventually ends up smelling like peas somehow,or skunk, like a, you know, it’s a combination of, it doesn’t smell. It wasn’t
14:16 Monte ..
Pleasant jackets. It wasn’t pleasantly there. We hoped that they dry by the next show, you know? Mm.
14:23 Dot ..
Which, yeah, they, they were damn <laugh>.
14:26 Monte ..
It was horrible. And, and, and then, and overseas, like in England, when they first, uh, the punk scenes start out there, they were spitting, which is horrible. So there was rains of spit coming down on a band and then their jackets would have a little spit on them. It was horrible. Thank God they stopped that after a while. The worst thing I’ve ever seen. You know, I could, I stood up to the side of the stage, but poor band was like being rained on, you know?
14:. Dot ..
And that would not fly during a pandemic?
14:. Monte ..
No, no. I think Joe actually, Joe Strummer got some sickness cuz he’d swallowed some spit there a long time ago. You know.
15:05 Dot ..
Yeah. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve been around him when he wasn’t well. And that had to be a reason. It was like .. I was hanging the first time I met Joe Cameron. He was, he was ill then. Yeah.
15:14 Monte ..
Well, he got something from the spit, you know?
15:17 Dot ..
Yeah, definitely
15:18 Monte ..
Gross. I don’t understand how that picked up those a compliment this spit on a band, you know, in the punk days. It’s unbelievable, you know?
15:26 Dot ..
Yeah. Nowadays if you spit on someone, it means you don’t like them.
15:29 Monte ..
Right. Well, even before that, they, they spit on somebody. You don’t like ’em. All of a sudden the punk movement comes in and somebody started spitting. And then I guess some bands encourage it, Hey, come, come on, spit. You know? And then they started spitting and was bad and they stopped.
15:42 Dot ..
And not everybody, they
15:43 Monte ..
Stopped. Thank, thankfully, after a while,
15:44 Dot ..
Not, not everybody has good breath.
15:46 Monte ..
<laugh>, especially in England,
15:. Dot ..
<laugh>, you know, so, and
15:. Monte ..
Bad teeth, someone spits
15:. Dot ..
Bad teeth, bad breath. And if the, like, if this is a test to see, if you have bad breath, you lick the back of your hand and sniff it. So if you have bad breath, your saliva’s gonna smell nasty. So them spitting on the band and then having their jacket smell. I mean, but what do you expect for punk records? They can’t smell like roses. Right?
16:11 Monte ..
Yeah. I guess so. <laugh>,
16:15 Dot ..
Um, this other one, Gina Lewis. Laia. Gina. Gina, okay. Sorry. Gino Lewis Laia fancy name from Nashville. 10. I know. So
16:30 Monte ..
It’s like from
16:30 Dot ..
Slovak, Tennessee
16:31 Monte ..
Slovak Nation or something?
16:32 Dot ..
Well, I definitely think it’s Italian.
16:34 Monte ..
Tove LA Oh, okay. Italian.
16:36 Dot ..
Italian Lave
16:37 Monte ..
Italian. Yeah. Definitely
16:39 Dot ..
From Nashville. Monte, give us your best idea on Dee Dee’s impact on the band. And then he says, let’s dive into Joey and Dee Dee’s work together. But even better,what did Tommy do? Production in concept-wise with Didi’s singing and writing. And that’s a huge idea,
16:. Monte ..
Jack. I could write a couple of books about that. That’s ridiculous. I know. Well, first of all, DeeDee’s a packed on the band. He was number one. And his song writing was incredible, you know, and his stage pitch was great there for, until he flad out at the end. And, uh, actually started after he left. He kept on writing for the band,which was the best thing that happened. But I mean, Deedee Ram remote for got sick. Uh, he, he was responsible for naming the band. You know, that, you know thestory.
17:. Dot ..
I, I remember, I mean, this is what I, I’ve heard, of course I wanna hear your version, but I heard that they were such Beatles fans and they know that Paul McCartney used to check into hotel rooms with the name Paul Ram. Ram, right. Ramon, because he had an album called Ram, and a song called Ram on. So Paul used to check into hotel rooms and used to name Paul Ramon and obviously the Beatles with their haircuts. All four of them look the same with the haircut. And the Ramones kind of look the same, with the same haircut. So,
17:. Monte ..
Yeah, that’s it. That’s it. That’s, Deedee saw that he checked in under that name and said, Hey, hey, Ramone, Ramones, Ramones, let’s do it. Ramones. And they said, okay, great.
18:05 Monte ..
Brilliant. And then they all took the last name and, uh, they kind of changed around their first name. Joey was, I don’t think he liked Jeffrey Ramon. He kind of said,oh, let’s, I’ll, I’ll make it Joey instead of Jeffrey. You know, Johnny’s fine. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Dee Dee’s fine. Tommy’s fine. Mark. He’s fine. When Clem was in the band, uh, wait, they had to call him Elvis as a joke. You know, it couldn’t be Clem. It couldn’t be Clemmy. Ramon. Richie. Richie was okay. And CJ didn’t have the rhyme. He was, they just at the end, they’re just CJ’s fine. You know, <laugh>.
18:37 Dot ..
Mm-hmm. <affirmative> the, um, kind of had a hippie hair compared to the west. The rest of, I mean, he had long hair.
18:44 Monte ..
Well, you know, when he first started, he came outta the Marines. He didn’t have many hair. It was like, you know, oh yeah. Short, short hair in the beginning. It grew in, it grew in for, it took about a year or two, you know, grow the long hair. And then he liked the, the long hair. Look, he liked shaking at the, the hair on stage.
19:01 Dot ..
I met him after I was done, I mean, after I stopped dating Joey. So I met you guys, I met him when you guys came to Germany. Cuz remember I moved to Germany in . and raised my daughter over there.
19:14 Monte ..
D Uber. Oh, this
19:17 Dot ..
<laugh>. And that was your last tour, right? .. I mean, I saw
19:21 Monte ..
Last time. They were after there. ., I think. Uh, s Schmack. Did you know Schmack Saba, the promoter there? Oh no. He, he, I think he started managing, uh, Rammstein.
19:34 Dot ..
Oh, okay.
19:35 Monte ..
But he is a big promoter there. He know a lot of group.
19:. Dot ..
But How do you Schmack
19:40 Monte ..
Saka Schmack. S C U M A C k Sack. I think it’s great guy. Good. He had a good, uh, company and wanna work with him there.
19:. Dot ..
Um, I, I was in touch with LieberBerg -Marrick Lieber Berg a lot. Um, no, I, I massage a band sometimes without even promoted knowing, so I didn’t know all the promoters. Plus I was busy with a, a little screening daughter. So then we have, um, okay, this is for me. What does the “A” in Monte A. Melnick mean?
20:10 Monte ..
Nine letters. They, they can guess it.
20:15 Dot ..
Let’s see here. Monti. A
20:19 Monte ..
Nine, nine letters. Just nine letter word or name, I should say <laugh>
20:. Dot ..
3 4 5. I.
20:28 Monte ..
Oh, I’ll give you, he was great. He was, he was
20:36 Dot ..
Monte-A-Melnnick written
20:. Monte ..
Together. No, no. I’m giving you a hint. The, the, the name of this nine letters. He was Greek and he was great. Give you the big hint there.
20:48 Dot ..
Oh,
20:48 Monte ..
Alexander.
20:. Dot ..
Oh, Alexander the great’s.
20:. Monte ..
Greek <laugh>.
20:. Dot ..
I know, but so your, oh, okay. So your middle name is Alexander.
20:59 Monte ..
I like to use the, the middle initial now, but sounds nice. Monte Melnick. Yeah.
21:04 Dot ..
Are there other Monte Mel? Yeah. Yeah. There’s some of them there. There
21:07 Monte ..
A couple I think on Instagram. Some Monte Melnick got mine. Got that before I could get it, you know.
21:12 Dot ..
Oh yeah. She, I hate that. Yeah. Somebody else has Dr Dot on Instagram. So mine has to be Dr. Dot with an Yeah,
21:18 Monte ..
Mine is Monte a dot Melnick.
21:21 Dot ..
Okay, good. So that was just mine. And I got CJ to ask a question. Oh my goodness. <laugh>. Yeah. So this is from cj since you were there from the beginning, whatwas your favorite era with the band?
21:. Monte ..
Of course was CJ
21:36 Dot ..
<laugh>.
21:36 Monte ..
You like that? Cj I, I’m expecting to check in the mail soon for that one.
21:42 Dot ..
<laugh>.
21:42 Monte ..
You know, they all were great. I mean, for God’s sakes, you know, uh, you can’t compare them really. You know, the, the original band with Tommy, unfortunately,the four of them are dead. So it’s horrible, you know? Yes. And that was great. And, you know, each, each one was great for me. I, you know, I worked with all of ’em. So I work with eight Ramones. Wow. That’s, if you just look at my book cover, which is out now in a bonus edition where you gotta get the one with the red lettering on it. Ramones in Red. It’s called the bonus edition.
22:13 Monte ..
I put 40 more pages in it. If you look at, I’m in the van with eight Ramones.
22:18 Dot ..
Wow. And then no one else can say that. I mean, you, you must know they
22:23 Monte ..
Anyone else. Well, unfortunately, it was me and Arturo were the only ones there from the beginning to end. And poor Arturo’s gone. Now what’s a sad fact? I sawthat video you did with him. Right. It was interesting with that then in the, um, uh, Berlin, uh, Ramone’s museum with Flo there. That’s sad. Yeah. It’s
22:39 Dot ..
So sad. It’s so, it’s so hard. I I was crushed so bad.
22:44 Monte ..
He was, I I, we were there from beginning to end, you know? Now it’s just me. Yeah. There’s nobody else out there.
22:. Dot ..
Wasn’t bubbles there in the beginning? Oh no. Okay. <laugh>.
22:. Monte ..
He was there for a long time and then he was, it was out, you know, there was other drum roadies. I think in my book, I list all the roadies too.
23:03 Dot ..
Um, it boggles my mind if I post on Facebook something about Arturo in the Ramones group. And they’re like, who’s Arturo? Oh my God. I’m
23:10 Monte ..
Like, really? He was so dedicated that tattoo on the back, on his back. Cuz that’s dedication. He, he had the whole freaking logo tattooed on his back. Huge freaking logo. The funny story about that is, so he puts Artie, Tommy, Didi, Joey said, mark said, Martin Marky said, gets pissed off. Hey, fuck you. So totally. He didn’t put me on. He’s gonna put him on his back. You know? Yeah. Marky actually got upset about that. <laugh>.
23:. Dot ..
Well, he can’t fit on. Well, no.
23:40 Monte ..
He just put one, you know, you put, it’s only four at a time on this thing. You know what I mean? So, well Artie gets put in with the three originals.
23:. Dot ..
Yeah. Some people got pissed about that. I’m like, excuse me, Arturo did so much for Ramones. He can put whatever the fuck he wants on his tattoo. Yeah.
23:58 Monte ..
You know, and they have the whole thing on the back like that. That’s dedication. Boy.
24:03 Dot ..
Absolutely. I love educating people about who Arturo is and, you know,
24:09 Monte ..
You know, his lighting, uh, was great. You know, he was being an artist. He was, he brought that into the lighting direct. He was the lighting director. And, and the shows were terrific way he, he lit them, you know?
24:21 Dot ..
Yeah. And it was so sad when it was all over and his rights to the merchandise cuz he would earn a good,
24:28 Monte ..
Oh my God. I, I wish I got my thumb into that little bit there. Boy, that’s, that was amazing. Still doing very well. You know, there’s nice CBGBs in the remote. Yeah.T-shirts of one of the big sellers out there.
24:42 Dot ..
I know. And, and so the Ramones are richer now that they’re dead than they were when they’re all
24:46 Monte ..
Yeah, actually they’re bigger now than they were when they were round. I mean, a huge, now they so sad. Keep saying Ramone Stones. Beatles in one sentence.
24:. Dot ..
And my Absolutely. And their logo is Oh yeah. They,
24:58 Monte ..
A lot of people wear the shirt. They don’t know what, what, who the Ramones are too. You know, it’s just a, the style also, I mean it’s, the Ramones are so big. I, I tellthis idiotic joke a lot too much. That if the Ramones were this big when I was working for ’em, I would’ve gotten a big Rays. I mean, they’re huge now. Itsunbelievable.
.:16 Dot ..
Yes. It’s, it’s that people are obsessed. You know, they’re obsessed. I know Vera really well. I haven’t never, I haven’t really spoken to Linda, but I know I talked to Vera like, oh, every other week on the phone. We’re a really good friend. I love Vera. Yep. And I’ve met, um, Barbara cuz uh, Dee-Dee would come to Berlin and need a place to stay. So he and Barbara would crash at my house. And um, that was fun. <laugh>. Hey, ain’t done.
.:47 Dot ..
I need some weed. I’m like, so you
.:. Monte ..
Had very little experience of what dealing with him like, uh, all more than 20, like 24 hours a day, <laugh>.
.:. Dot ..
Oh yeah. They stayed for two weeks one time and he was on my balcony, you know, talking and smoking till four or five in the morning all the time. But you have to let them do what they do. You know, you can’t curb
26:06 Monte ..
It. So imagine what I had to go through with him kidding him. <laugh> all the years.
26:10 Dot ..
You must still be, you must be tired still. Yeah. <laugh>, I love it that he wrote his book and didn’t, couldn’t afford an editor. So he just said fuck it and put it out without editing. Oh,
26:24 Monte ..
There’s a funny story about that. So the book came out. I hadn’t seen the book at all. Then he decided to do a little book tour and a couple of shows in England. I said,I’m Monte, you know, come along and why don’t you to help me do it. So I went along with him to England. I hadn’t read the book, but I started reading the book<laugh>. And I, I’m the one that’s doing all the drugs and, and stumbling in the airplane drunk. You know, I’m, yeah. He invites me and they’re like, I’m in the airplane drunk and stumbling, you know? Yeah, yeah.
26:. Monte ..
And there’s a scene. He come, he knocks on my door and I open the door in my underwear with a bunny tail, you know, I said, I’ve got pissed on. I said, thank goodness he didn’t put like a guy in a room with him or something like that. You know, I was by myself. And I, I got pissed off at Dee Dee. I’m sorry I’m, you know, I didn’t read the book before I went with him. You know, he’s, he, he, he writes a lot of fiction in this stuff, you know much. Oh, oh yeah. So he was so apologetic and he was finding me dinners and breakfasts and the whole like couple of tour right there with him.
27:29 Monte ..
You know,
27:32 Dot ..
<laugh>. I did not know that. That’s hilarious. I’ve never seen you. Uh, of course
27:39 Monte ..
Maybe like
27:39 Dot ..
That You were always like,
27:41 Monte ..
I couldn’t be, I couldn’t be if someone dropped, you know?
27:44 Dot ..
No, you’re always very serious. I mean, it was hard for me to get you to laugh, but I did. I eventually, you know, because you were just like a watch.
27:. Monte ..
Oh yeah. That’s part of the job of a good tour manager, road manager. You gotta keep it an eye out and everything, you know? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>.
27:59 Dot ..
So then we have this, okay, this is Matthew Loy l
28:03 Monte ..
That’s, you know who that is, right?
28:04 Dot ..
Matt? Lola.
28:05 Monte ..
That’s little Matt. The Roadie. No, I don’t, that’s why he answered the questions with the Oh, okay. Was he the anvil?
28:11 Dot ..
I know I saw him, but I was like, okay. He knows a lot, but I don’t, I don’t know what he was the roadies, but, okay. Well I was hanging out with Joey from the . 4and . and then . came and I got out of high school and I was like, I wanna be a deadhead now and I don’t want to wear pink clothes and push up brass and all this shit. I wanna be scruffy deadhead. And so we peacefully, you know, just kept going, went our own ways. And um, so I, I was only really involved those three years,three and a half years.
28:46 Dot ..
I mean, we kept in touch up until the end. Wish I could get into my old Hotmail account cuz I have emails from Joey up to the end. He read my Ramon chapter cuz I’m still trying to get my book out in English. Jesus. I wrote a Ramon chapter and I emailed it to him. He’s so gracious. He said, “uh, I love it. He goes, could you be a little easier on Johnny?” Ah,
29:10 Monte ..
That’s interesting. Ah-huh. <affirmative>.
29:14 Dot ..
Yeah. I, I will get an i’ll, I’ll try to retrieve the emails. But that was, that was like 2000 when I first got a appeal computer and started to do emails and um, so you know, yeah. Two, it was the year 2000. Cause I remember what apartment I was in when we were emailing back and forth and I had him proofread the Ramones chapter. He said, please be nicer to Johnny cuz I mean, Johnny was kind to me, you know? Yeah. And, and it’s people who’ve never met him. They don’t understand that. They’re like, oh well punk, they’re supposed to be grumpy.
29:45 Dot ..
But he just didn’t like it when I was in the van. He, you know, he would
29:. Monte ..
Yeah. Yeah. I got a lot of that. I don’t know, did he bug me about that?
29:. Dot ..
Yeah, he just, um, yeah, of course he did it in Connecticut. He did it in New York. He did it in Virginia. He did it in Berlin. Even the last time, I think that was the last time I saw Johnny was in Berlin. And me and uh, Marion were standing on stage watching the show. And um, I could see Johnny making motions with his head, like to the roadie over there on the side of the, like to get me off the stage. Maybe me and Mary. Yeah. He didn’t
30:20 Monte ..
Like a lot of people
30:21 Dot ..
Standing around
30:22 Monte ..
Like that. Especially female. He had something against, uh, bringing girlfriends on the road, even wives.
30:28 Dot ..
Yes, yes, yes. Cuz she’s a wife and he was just making this motion, like get those bitches off the stage and we were hiding behind a, um, you know, the big speaker.So it’s not like the audience could see us. We weren’t there trying to get attention. We were
30:41 Monte ..
Just Johnny Ramon there. Grumpy. Yeah.
30:44 Dot ..
Right, right. And yeah. And then after Johnny, I mean, Joey asked me to come with him back to the hotel, nothing creepy, just to talk and stuff, you know, and he wanted a little massage on his hands and feet and stuff. And I was like, of course I’m wearing like a jean shirt and jeans. I was not dressed hot. Okay. People. So I’m not, and I get in the, in the front seat. You’re driving I think, and I’m in the, in the passenger seat and John was not having it. And I think it was turned into like a little fight. And I, me and John, me and Joey might have taken a text or something.
31:16 Dot ..
He was so bitchy about it and I, whatever, it’s his right to do that. But, so I was kind of not nasty about him in the chapter, but I told the truth. Joey
31:. Monte ..
Said, I’m surprised cause you know the thing with Linda and him and I’m,
31:30 Dot ..
I know, but isn’t that’s show is how gracious he, I swear to god Monte, he said that be a little light go a little lighter. Well, yeah,
31:36 Monte ..
I mean, I was talking to Linda and Linda said that, uh, he would send Johnny even Christmas cards every year. Even though they had, they worked her, the whole thing happened. You know?
31:46 Dot ..
So nice. I heard this one thing, I can’t remember what who told me it, but it was like some ode or somebody and was joking saying, uh, yeah, well you know, Johnny wanted Linda to have bigger boobs, so he made her get a boob job but only paid for half. So the crew would always joke that only one of those boobs belonged
32:05 Monte ..
To. I’ve heard that too. I think that really did happen. <laugh>.
32:13 Dot ..
But I hope I get to meet or talk to Linda someday. Cuz you know,
32:16 Monte ..
Well they have the, she’s, she is, she used to be called the Ramones Ranch, but they can’t, she can’t do that anymore. It’s, it’s a lit, the Ramone Ranch. But they, theRamon, her and uh, Mickey Lee had a bad thing going. They’re, they, they, they owned the Ramones Corporation. Mickey Lee, which is Joey’s brother, Mitch Hyman. Mitch Hyman.
32:36 Dot ..
I don’t like him at
32:36 Monte ..
All. And then, uh, Linda, they control . . and they’re always fighting. And, and then, uh, Linda changed her name to Linda Ramone and Mickey didn’t like that. Sothey, they sued each other. They sued, she sued her. She sued him. And then, so she can’t, she used to call her house the Ramone’s ranch, she can’t call it. That’s Johnny and Linda Ramone’s ranch. But the house she has up there in, uh, in LA is amazing. It’s like, you know, she was a collector of like posters and, uh, other things. It was like Elvis stuff and Disney stuff.
.:07 Monte ..
It’s, it’s an amazing place.
.:11 Dot ..
Maybe she could change the name to Ramone’s underscore Ranch or something. I mean, that’s not pathetic.
.:15 Monte ..
No, she can’t use Ramones at all. You know, and then she can, once a year, Mickey has this little thing here in New York, uh, birthday, birthday Bash or last year was a virtual and this year’s gonna be a virtual, unfortunately. And in La uh, Linda has a, a, a trip here to the Ramones and it used to be Ramones, but now she can’t call.Look list Ramones there. She’s got a Johnny Ramone tribute show Now. You know, cause of this lawsuit that they went through.
.:45 Dot ..
That is, that’s so nasty. Um, oh, okay. I’m gonna put this out there. When I was hanging out with Joey, he would call me almost every night. If we weren’t together. He would call me every night after a gig in Connecticut, my cell, my home, my landline. I lived with my granddad in Ellington. And I would take the phone down into the cellar cuz my grandfather would go, that’s goddamn
34:06 Monte ..
Joey Ram remote. <laugh>
34:07 Dot ..
The phone. Do I just stop calling
34:10 Monte ..
So
34:10 Dot ..
Freaking late. So I would creep into the kitchen, take the phone down the stairs, long line on the phone, hi, how you doing? And he would tell me what had been going on and this and that. He told me a lot of stuff. He did not get along with his brother. I mean, the whole time I was dating him, he never said anything nice about Mickey. Nothing. It’s magical that now that Joey’s dead. Suddenly they were best friends and Mickey wrote all these Ramone songs. Joey’s
34:36 Monte ..
In shape by the people that survive.
34:39 Dot ..
Exactly. I know you probably can’t say shit about it cuz you don’t want, you know, knives and arrows coming at you. But I can say whatever I, I, you know, you had your experience. I had mine. Joey never said anything nice about his brother. He left all, he left all of his money to his mom. And then unfortunately when his mom passed, then Mickey got it. And you know, they, they just destroyed Arturo. As soon as Joey died, like just destroyed him, they took away all of his livelihood. It was so sad because he needed the t-shirts.
35:11 Dot ..
Like if I would drop into the loft to say hi to Arturo when I was in the city, he wouldn’t give me a shirt. He, he’s like, he can have that one for $10 <laugh>. And I would bring friends over and he would make some money. You know, cuz that’s, that’s how, that was his whole livelihood. Just like you. What if you weren’t allowed to write about Right, exactly. Your
35:29 Monte ..
Experience. Well actually then when, uh, the Ramos first started out, they couldn’t afford to pay Arturo. So he printed the t-shirts and sold them on the road road. And that kind of paid for his expenses in the, in initially till we could make more money and get him on salary. That’s how he started actually making money off the T-shirts. Yeah.
35:48 Dot ..
Yeah. So it was horrific. When they took was a, uh, was it official? Ramon Yeah. Dot com. He had a website where he sold the merchandise. They ripped that away from him. Then he’d come up with a new name. They ripped that away from him. He wasn’t allowed to sell any merchandise and everything. And that was just the beginning of his unraveling. It really broke his heart so much.
One, part one was good. Uh, you did a good job there.
00:42 Dot ..
Well, I think we gotta have a moment of silence and say, thank God we are starting over with part two <laugh>.
00:. Monte ..
Okay.
00:. Dot ..
Um, I think I figured it out. The trick is to keep each segment around 35, 40 minutes and then there’s less problems. So you live and learn, you know?
01:07 Monte ..
That’s true.
01:08 Dot ..
Anyways, where we left off was with, there was one more question that you had to answer. Well, you don’t have to, but it’s from Matt l Lilia,
01:20 Monte ..
Little Matt, the guitar roadie for the Ramones. In the early years there was a big mat and there was a little Matt, there was two guys on the crew named Matt. So one was bigger and one was smaller, and little Matt was, uh, the guitar roadie and Big Matt was a drum roadie in the work with dee-dee and, uh, Joey.
01:. Dot ..
Well, what years were that? Because I don’t recall him.
01:41 Monte ..
Well, early, you know, the first party, you know, ., ., around there.
01:46 Dot ..
Oh, I was still in diapers. No, I’m just joking. <laugh>. But yeah, that’s why, I mean, I see him online and I’m, he knows he knows his shit. But he has a question foryou, which was, what’s your favorite brand of Honey
02:04 Monte ..
<laugh>? Okay, so, uh, this goes to, uh, the part where they, uh, they like to play practical jokes. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So ra rather than play it on each other,they, they played it on me. So one of the jokes they played with, they put honey on like door handles of the van and door handles and, and they put it on the handle of my Haliburton briefcase and stuff like that. That was funny. I pick it up and I get honey all over my hand. <laugh>. It would’ve been, it would’ve nicer with the story,with some sexual thing with putting honey over my girlfriend’s.
02:37 Monte ..
But no, it was a practical joke. <laugh>.
02:41 Dot ..
And there probably was no baby wipes handy or hand sanitizer back then. <laugh>?
02:47 Monte ..
No, just regular napkins. <laugh>.
02:. Dot ..
So you had to lick your fingers clean. Yeah.
02:. Monte ..
At least that was a pleasant lick of clean, you know, Clover Honey was good. <laugh>.
02:. Dot ..
Well, it would’ve been convenient to have groupies around at that time to say, okay, you want backstage, you need to lick my fingers. How’s that,
03:03 Monte ..
That one good. That <laugh> <laugh>.
03:07 Dot ..
So, um, what was this? I I keep hearing the No Mel Mix. Is that a band? The No, Mel Mix.
03:14 Monte ..
<laugh>. You know, it’s funny cuz Arturo had a, um, a website on Ramone’s website for a while and he had a contest named, uh, your band after something about the Ramones. And I had several bands named, there was one band called the Mel Nicks and, uh, Montezuma’s Revenge and Monte’s Revenge or something like that. A couple of bands named them after me, you know, <laugh>,
03:36 Dot ..
It was cute, but there was something about no melding.
03:40 Monte ..
Yeah. That, that’s
03:42 Dot ..
Advertising at Times Square or something.
03:44 Monte ..
Well, um, so one day, I’m, I’m going backstage and it went to the crew room and there’s On the Door was a, a sign No melding, you know, with a circle in the slashThere were no Mel Nicks. No Mel Nicks. I wasn’t allowed into the, the, the crew room. It was like some sort of funny joke, you know, <laugh>. So what happened,also, what happened was that the crew decided to, in each club, they, they’d write it on somewhere, like on the ceiling, on the wall. You know, all of a sudden peopleare call calling me up and saying, well, I just saw no melnick on the ceiling.
04:15 Monte ..
What, what’s going on? You know, what’s, what’s happening? And so it’s just a joke. <laugh> just the crew was playing and it, it, it, it took off. They started writing my “No Melnicks” all over the place and the band thought it was re really funny. So they, they put it in of a couple of videos. One video, I forget the name of this video.Uh, I dunno. And on, on the Times Square’s big sign, uh, um, sign, electric sign that, you know, on Times Square they put it up for, they paid money to put it up. “No Melnick” It flashes briefly in the, uh, video.
04:47 Dot ..
What an inside joke. <laugh>. Yeah. That’s funny. But maybe, was it Pet Cemetery?
04:. Monte ..
Oh, no, no. Pet Cemetery. That’s what the, they put a a, a Mel Nick Grahams gravestone in there. <laugh>. And as I said, uh, I don’t know if we talked about it, but one about, um, Joey’s, um, Joey’s, uh, grave, when you a approach Joey’s grave, it’s, it’s, it’s, it, it’s into the, um, it’s in, it’s in the, uh, couple of rows in and to theright. There’s a Melnick gravestone there, which freaks me out. But in the pet cemetery video as a joke, they put a Melnick gravestone in the back into the end of the video.
05:26 Monte ..
You can see it.
05:28 Dot ..
That’s, that’s bizarre. I’m going in a couple days to Joey’s grave, and I’m gonna check that out. I’m gonna make a video of it because it’s gonna be the 20th anniversary of his passing. And, um, oddly enough, I magically live in the same town where he was buried. I did not know that. When I moved here, my realtor helped me move from Jersey City out of there, cuz I’m raising a kid. Mm-hmm.
05:58 Dot ..
<affirmative>. And she’s like, oh, there’s this a cute little town called Lyndhurst. It’s a perfect place to raise a kid. So I moved here three years ago without power walking. Saw a sign that said karaoke next week. So I went there to meet people and I love to sing. I do some Ramon song, by the way. Oh, good. <laugh>. But, um,some of the locals were saying, who are you and what do you do for work?
06:23 Dot ..
Where do you work at ShopRite? Apparently everybody does <laugh>. And I said, no, I, I massage rock stars and punks and pop stars for a living. And they kind of didn’t believe me. Cuz that sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Yeah. So I had to whip out some pictures on my phone and show them. And I was scrolling through and I, and I said, that’s, is that one of the Ramones? I go, yeah, that’s Joey. I dated him for three years. He is the love of my life. And they go, you know, that he’s buried in this town. I’m like, what? Because when he passed, I lived in Berlin, Germany.
06:. Dot ..
I lived in Germany half my life, raised my daughter over there. No, I’m not German at all. And then I moved back to America and I’ve been bouncing around Jersey ever since. But, uh, they’re like, he’s, I thought he would be buried in Queens because, you know, when he died, that was just right when intranet was, you know,coming up and I was stuck over in Germany. I couldn’t come to the service or whatever. So I didn’t know where he was buried. Okay. So they’re like, he’s buried here.And I’m like, I have got to go investigate. My daughter was over visiting from Germany.
07:26 Dot ..
We walked up the street. He’s literally buried on the extension of my street. Wow. You walk up Third Ave crossover, orient way, boom. There’s the graveyard and you keep walking straight. And as you said, it’s a couple rows back. That’s where he is. Bird. It takes me two minutes to walk to his grave.
07:44 Monte ..
Amazing. Yeah, his family has a plaque. He, his father’s buried there. He guess his, so he is got a little family plot there. And it’s
07:. Dot ..
Very Jewish. Very Jewish grape.
07:. Monte ..
Yes. Yes. And you can see, uh, Manhattan, uh, the skyline from there.
07:. Dot ..
Amazing.
07:58 Monte ..
A nice view from up there.
08:00 Dot ..
It is. He he has his eye on his old stomping ground. Yeah. And the grave is covered in Ramon’s stuff.
08:07 Monte ..
Oh yes. A lot of people. Yeah. A lot of people put stuff over there. Like, same thing with DeeDee’s grave and Johnny’s, um, statue in, in la you know, Dee Dee’s buried near Johnny’s statue in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in LA. If you ever got out there, you should see that. It’s amazing. Cemetery Hollywood forevers.
08:. Dot ..
Not a fan of la but next time I go there, I will try to look up Linda and say hi. Our paths have never crossed. I mean, you mentioned a few times that um, Johnny didn’t really like it when wives girlfriends slash lovers were on tour. Um, but never saw her in my stomping ground. So, um Right. You know mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And I was wondering if my stomping ground, like I dated Joy from this show is my age, which I don’t like, but hey, you know what?
08:. Dot ..
Getting old is the better alternative than dying, isn’t it?
09:00 Monte ..
<laugh>? I’ll go along with that one. Yeah. <laugh>.
09:04 Dot ..
So,
09:06 Monte ..
But, but you know what they, the Pennsylvania, Dutch say they get too soon old and too late. Smart <laugh>
09:15 Dot ..
Too late. Smart. Yeah.
09:16 Monte ..
Smart. You know, Pennsylvania, Dutch, that’s a a back. Yeah. Too late. Smart. Too late. Smart. Smart. Too late. Smart. You know, get too soon old. Too late. Smart.
09:. Dot ..
Sometimes I feel like packing it all in and moving in with those people who have no internet must be very peaceful. But yeah, my, my stomping grounds were, I was bouncing up and down the East Coast as a child. Cause my dad was in the Navy, he was a hippie, but in the Navy, hard to imagine. Anyways, we, I got sick of moving, moved into my granddad’s house who had no control over me at age 14 and a half. And that was in Ellington, Connecticut. So I wanted to go to every single concert in my area.
09:. Dot ..
And I saw Rock and Roll High School, fell in love with Joey. Not the Ramones necessarily, cuz I was into Alice Cooper, the Rolling Stones and Jimmy Hendrix and stuff. I’m not a Ramones fan. I’m, I don’t hate them. I love their music. They’re cr they crack me up, but I’m not like into them, you know? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>.But I saw Joey in that movie and his lips turned me on so much. I, uh, riff Randall. I was like, I can dress like her. I can do this shit here. I wanted to meet him. So Iwent to the, um, Hartford a Agora Ballroom.
10:28 Monte ..
Yeah, that’s a great place.
10:29 Dot ..
And, and, and I was not dressed like all the other girls. They’re all wearing black Ramone’s fans love to wear black. Me. I was like pink white, mini skirt, bleach,blonde hair, giant tits. So I stood out in Arturo <laugh>, Arturo in Bubbles invited me to stand there on the soundboard and the lighting board. And so I hung out with them and that’s how I met the band. Do you remember that area? The Agora
10:. Monte ..
Ball? Oh sure. That was a great club.
10:58 Dot ..
Loved it. You know
10:59 Monte ..
That Connecticut had some great point Toads place in New Haven, Agora Ball, Hartford, some nice gloves in the, you know, it was always very convenient for us cuz we could drive up and back and, you know, after the show could drive up there and back, it was an easy drive. So they like playing Connecticut a lot.
11:16 Dot ..
Mm-hmm. And I like, I appreciated that. And I, after Dayton, Joey for a couple years, I was like, can you do me a favor? Come to my town and play for my highschool. And he’s like, high school. I’m like, yeah. Where I used to go <laugh>, because he didn’t know my age. <laugh>. So I don’t know if you remember, but it wasat a place called the, um, country Squire in literally in the middle of a corn feed.
11:44 Monte ..
I remember that place.
11:46 Dot ..
Huh. And my school didn’t believe me. Uhhuh <affirmative>. They were like, yeah, yeah, sure. Cuz remember no internet back then, no cell phones. Right. I’m like,yep. My, my boyfriend. I called him my boyfriend. I know he was juggling me and Angela at the time. I didn’t care. I loved to kiss him and everything. Nice guy.Very, very gentle. Not a shark, not a per very, he was very much a gentleman with a great sense of humor. Anyways,
12:12 Monte ..
I agree. Convinced
12:14 Dot ..
He was so polite anyhow. Convinced them to, to for you guys to come. But you were painfully late. I guess you were supposed to arrive at eight, 10 o’clock rolls around or something. And the heat was on. I was so embarrassed. They were like, you’re a fucking liar. Dot he, they’re not coming. Ha ha. And you finally pull in your van, pulls into the dusty parking lot of the country. Squire in Ellington, Connecticut, middle of fucking nowhere. And and you, you were I’m like, Monte, what?
12:47 Dot ..
Wow. You why you were so late. And you’re like, we got pulled over. The cops searched our van.
12:. Monte ..
Yeah. Luckily they didn’t find anything. So they just get, they hassled us for a while.
12:. Dot ..
And there was no g p s back then. Yeah.
12:59 Monte ..
It was hard to find a club in the first place. <laugh> middle of nowhere during the,
13:05 Dot ..
Literally and during the break Joey was complaining that his head kept hitting the roof. Cause he’s so freaking tall. Yeah. We,
13:12 Monte ..
We, a few clubs around the, around the place and there was, the stage is pretty close to the ceiling, which is problem fit. Poor Joey, you know,
13:22 Dot ..
That turned me on. That he was So he was like six foot six or something. And I’m five five <laugh> and I’m wearing heels in every single picture of me and Joey together. And he still towers over me. But during the break at the Ellington Club, Richie and Joey were both like, there’s cows right next. They, they were like, there’s cows right here. <laugh>. It’s the funniest. I wish I could have photographed the Ramones with cows. That was the funniest thing. Oh, the
13:48 Monte ..
Balloon dogs.
13:. Dot ..
Yes. And Joey slept over. I think Joey and Deedee both stayed behind. You were not, you were not down with that. But I remember my grandfather was like, who the hell, you know, he was really pissed. I had them sleep over and the next day I brought them go-kart riding at in Vernon, Connecticut, which is right down the street.And Joey barely fit on the go-kart. His knees were <laugh>. That was the funniest thing. That
14:15 Monte ..
Was the problem with Joey there really Airplane flights. We had to stick ’em, everybody’s in the back, you know. And there was not that much room in the back of planes in those days. Really? And he was, poor guy was crushed in there. His feet just like that, you know, with knees up in his, in his chin there.
14:32 Dot ..
That would be a great picture to see. Joey smashed into a, an airplane seat with his knees up. You know, he looked so cool. How did,
14:40 Monte ..
With their cat, how did they get back to New York? You drove ’em back then. Somebody drove ’em back to New York.
14:44 Dot ..
My Aunt Karen. Oh wow. Because I, I didn’t have my own car. I lived with my aunt Karen and my granddad. And my aunt was pretty hot. She was only six years older than me. And she brought us everywhere. She drove us everywhere around. We went to 7-Eleven and people were like looking at them like, who the fuck are these people? Cuz the way they dress and the way they look. And they weren’t that famous back then. I mean, I know that sounds crazy to say, but they weren’t exactly, you know, they could walk around in public in Connecticut and not get mobbed because people, you know, it was a cow town.
15:16 Monte ..
<laugh>. Well, that’s a funny story that’s been out there for a while about, uh, early years, you know, late seventies. Were driving around Texas, rural Texas. It was about four or five hour drive. And then I pull into a gas station convenience store and they pile out of the van, uh, like, uh, staggering out of the van, the way they look with their leather jackets and stuff in, into the convenience store. And they’re stumbling around, you know, cuz after four or five hour drive, you’re not really walking correctly. So I’m, I paid for the gas, and the woman says, uh, it’s, you’re, I see you taking care of those retarded boys.
15:. Monte ..
I said, yes. I said, yes ma’am. That’s my job. <laugh>.
15:. Dot ..
That was
15:. Monte ..
Texas. Yeah, Texas, rural Texas. Some thing back what town in Texas?
16:01 Dot ..
Yeah. But see, they don’t know who the Ramones are though. Well,
16:03 Monte ..
Back in 19, late seventies, early eighties. Nobody know their Ramones back then, even, you know, but especially in rural Texas, you know, there rednecks back there.
Joey’s Grave:
16:13 Dot ..
Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know what I do miss and you never see it anymore. One thing I’m so happy I got to be alive and see, and witness was, they didn’t givea flying fuck that People would jump on stage and dive into the crowd, jump on stage, and dive into the crowd. It happened over and over and over and
16:32 Monte ..
Over. Well if, to tell you the truth, that kind of bugged him. That’s why I, I eventually had to add, uh, very strong barriers and, and, and security guards inside the barrier. Johnny didn’t like that. He, he didn’t like anybody on stage. It was, he felt they were in interrupting the show. Hmm. So eventually, I, I, it’s on my rider. I have have to have a strong barrier with security guards so nobody gets on stage.
16:58 Dot ..
Well, .. .
16:59 Monte ..
In the early years they were doing it. And then they get pissed. They, Johnny got pissed off and, you know, said No more of that. You know?
17:07 Dot ..
Yeah. Kind of the same with the Stones. If you watch the movie Gimme Shelter, there’s like, how many freaking people on stage Hell’s Angels groupies? And on the stage, that would never happen. No,
17:19 Monte ..
No, no. <laugh>. Well Johnny’s kind of right. It kind of took away from the show since they started jumping on stage and walking around and, you know, it was, it was distracting, basically. That’s what he felt.
17:30 Dot ..
Well, I never saw anyone walking around. I just, I saw them jump up, run across stage, dive off, jump up. And it was, that was for me, part of the show. And then a little mosh pit going on and stuff. But I can see it’s definitely hazard. You never know. I mean, look what happened to Dime Bag Darrell. He got stabbed on stage. Oh boy. But, but I’m just happy that I got to witness it cuz it was the craziest thing ever.
17:. Monte ..
Yeah. The Mosh Pitts thing was crazy too. Uh, in the early years, the promoters would come up to me and say, what’s going on? It’s a riot in the audience there. I said,no, that’s just that they’re, they’re having fun. I didn’t think it was great that they were smashing into each other. You know, you get hurt, but a lot of club owners came in their early years. They didn’t know what the hell was going on <laugh>.
18:19 Dot ..
It’s literally still happens. Like, you know, there’s those metal festivals up in Denmark or whatever once a year. They, I would never do it. I’m petrified to get smashed.But, you know. And do you remember, uh, hold’s Place Connecticut?
18:37 Monte ..
Sure. Very well. As I said, that’s one of our favorite in Connecticut, one of our favorite clubs to play.
18:43 Dot ..
Yeah. Quick Inn out for you guys.
18:45 Monte ..
No. However, it was easy to get to from New York.
18:. Dot ..
I re remember one gig where, well Joey thought I was 19 with the bleach blonde hair and the boobs and the makeup. Who, who would doubt it? And the high heels and everything. So, uh, we, I came very close call that he almost found out my age at this Code Plate Toads Place gig, which is an hour from Ellington. So it was scary for me that I almost got sent home during sound check. They come out in the parking lot and Joey wanted me to come in and the owner, I think owner or manager was like, she’s not coming in unless I see an id.
19:21 Dot ..
And Joey’s like, do you have an your driver’s? I go, I don’t, I don’t. No, I don’t, I don’t have any id. Well then she’s with me anyways. He was trying to tell him and he’s like, no, literally she’s not coming in unless I see her ID. And there was a, a squabble and Joey won and I got to see the show and I was like, <laugh>. But I don’t know. Um, that was a close call. I didn’t realize that some clubs were not all ages. And uh, I almost got discovered there for being underage <laugh>. And the, and Providence, I remember a snowstorm blizzard.
19:. Dot ..
Everyone locked in to the hotel. That
19:59 Monte ..
Club called the living Room up there
20:02 Dot ..
After the gig. Yeah. And I remember the rooms were adjoined and Johnny was being quite social, but he, they had the door open in between both rooms so they could talk. And I was bored. So I was doing exercises. I was literally doing 300 jumping jacks a day at that time and jogging 12 miles a day. I was so fit. And I’m like, I have to exercise. So they’re like, okay, I’m, I’m not joking. I did like 300 jumping jacks in my bra and underwear and in front of the guys <laugh>, they were like,well they were watching tv but I was exercising right in front of him.
20:. Dot ..
And they’re like, this is better than tv. But, uh,
20:40 Monte ..
<laugh>
20:43 Dot ..
Johnny was like, he was not impressed. He was like, whatever. He was eating donuts and drinking YooHoo
20:48 Monte ..
That’s his favorite drink. We had that on our rider, by the way. YooHoo
20:. Dot ..
Milk.
20:. Monte ..
He, he made sure we, he loved that drink. It was, uh, Yogi be, he was a Yankee fan and he yogi be used to um, promoted drink for YooHoo. And, and it was pretty good actually. It was like a skim milk, uh, type of a chocolate drink. It’s fairly decent. Not as sugary as like regular chocolate milk. And it was good. We had that on the writer. And the funny thing about that is like, uh, overseas, I get this calls from the promoters overseas. They say, VA, what is this Yoohoo? Why?
21:. Monte ..
What is this? I said, don’t worry, just get some chocolate milk. It’ll be fine. <laugh>. I confused them.
21:32 Dot ..
It’s so cute. These tough punks, you know, sit sitting there drinking chocolate milk and eating donuts. So cute. <laugh>. So I was wondering, I was looking around on the internet, um, cause I have not read your book. Oh, I know you’re mad about that.
21:48 Monte ..
It’s only been out, uh, since 2004. <laugh>
21:. Dot ..
<laugh>. I’m busy writing stuff rather than
21:. Monte ..
Reading. But with the new, uh, bonus edition I just put out on Amazon, if you get it has to have the Red Ramon Ramones in red and said bonus edition on Amazon. I put 40 more pages in over the years. I kept on updating it cuz the, over the years things happened with the Ramones, even though they were, they retired in ., that things kept on happening. You know, street signs and rewards and this and that. So I put a lot of stuff, extra stuff in the book.
22:22 Dot ..
Someone pointed out to me on Facebook, he’s like, I really want to buy the new edition. But it’s not translated in Spanish
22:31 Monte ..
Now that the new one’s not. Uh, there, there are other editions. A book came out and was translated into seven different languages. Eventually. There’s a Spanish edition out there and, but an earlier edition, the new one hasn’t been translated yet.
22:45 Dot ..
Well, yeah, Spanish, you gotta get that going. Well, and what about audio? Um,
22:. Monte ..
I’m gonna have to work on that, you know, as it’s, it’s a oral history, so I don’t know about all the different voices in there. There’s different people. So I’ll, I’ll have to work on that one. People have asked me about that before.
23:03 Dot ..
What do you mean? Like you It’s
23:04 Monte ..
Interview. Yeah. Yeah. It’s an oral history. I interview a lot of people and there’s a lot of people other than myself talking in the book, you know, so, um hmm.Eventually I’ll have to work our way, work my way into that.
23:17 Dot ..
Yeah. That would be difficult to get to get everybody. Some people have passed, I’m sure
23:23 Monte ..
Not. Oh yeah. Yeah.
23:23 Dot ..
Hard to get everybody’s.
23:. Monte ..
But, uh, my book though is unlike a lot of books, it’s full of over 300 images, pictures, postcards, uh, tour posters, itineraries, uh, lots. Very colorful. Lots of I images.So, uh, you don’t know how, you don’t know how to have to read it, you know, just look at the pictures. That’s good for the punk rock audience.
23:. Dot ..
That’s a good point. I’ll get back to that Spanish speaking guy and say, there’s not much reading going on. It’s a lot of pictures. And bravo to you for getting colored pictures, cuz normally it’s only black and white.
24:00 Monte ..
Yeah, I was, I’m very happy. We had a great art director that, uh, really did a great job. And the background artwork behind the texts and images and stuff like that.It’s very nice. Nicely done. And they let me put in a lot of, uh, as I said, over 300 images and pictures and stuff.
24:17 Dot ..
That’s great. Um, how many pages? About
24:22 Monte ..
3..
24:. Dot ..
Geez. And it’s, everyone can get
24:27 Monte ..
Amazon.com. Yeah. It’s not worldwide by the way. It can get into any country. Okay. It’s a little expensive. I’m sorry. But they, the colored printing now is very expensive these days.
24:. Dot ..
Yeah. But it’s, I don’t think there’s any other Ramone’s books out there that could, you know, compare to yours. I haven’t read it yet. I’ve browsed through it. <laugh>.But, um, I don’t, tell me one other book that that comes close to documenting, you know, the Ramones like yours. I don’t, well
24:58 Monte ..
I haven’t heard of any. I’m the, you know, I’m the only person left alive that was there from beginning to end. It was uro, myself, poor Arturo’s gone, you know, so I’m the only one left alive that was there beginning to end. Yeah. I have to knock on wood now that that’s my head.
.:15 Monte ..
<laugh>.
.:18 Dot ..
I, I wish Arturo would’ve written a book, but, uh, Jane, Jane made a museum.
.:24 Monte ..
Uh, yeah. Hal, Hal Gallery downtown on six East First Street, uh, Arturo lived on six East second Street. It’s funny cuz right around the corner there’s an, a great gallery called the Hal Gallery and he has Arturo Vega Foundation there. And they, they, he’s had a couple of shows there of his stuff. It’s a really good gallery if you ever, that’s, if they ever open up, I then open, nothing’s open now down there, but when they open up again, they’re building a new, uh, museum. Not far from there Ina bow? No, a museum hall gallery type of place.
.:. Monte ..
Art, art museum type of place.
26:00 Dot ..
I was gonna say, I, I only know of one Ramone’s museum.
26:04 Monte ..
And where’s that museum?
26:07 Dot ..
Berlin <laugh>
26:10 Monte ..
Boy.
26:11 Dot ..
Ooh. I know.
26:13 Monte ..
Um, great. Yeah, it’s funny cuz and it should be in New York. It’s the only place in the world is in Berlin. Flo. Flo the great guy. He has a terrific collection. He decides to open up a museum there. It’s great. Have you ever, oh, you’ve been there. So I mean, anybody else goes to Berlin, go there. It’s great.
26:31 Dot ..
Yeah, I’m, he’s moved it a couple times, so they have to Google and find it. I’m not, not sure why he had to move it, but I was there with Arturo and there’s that video,YouTube, you know, flow
26:42 Monte ..
Flows in there. Yeah, I saw that. That was cool. Art, art Artur was doing some, uh, pushups in the beginning and <laugh> because it was freezing and, uh, it’s, yeah,the, the, the guy, it’s great. I, I actually know my note in the bonus edition. I, I put a picture of the, I talk about the Ramon’s Museum and put a picture of it in the book. So I give him a look.
27:02 Dot ..
Oh, when was the last time you were
27:04 Monte ..
There? A number of years ago actually. Uh, I did a, an event with Danny Fields and Arturo and myself. When my, actually, when my book came out in German a number of years ago, we did a little event there with Arturo, Danny Field, myself.
27:21 Dot ..
I, I must have been, I must have not been there. What year was it again? Uh, yeah cuz in 2002 I started to live half the time in We Hawk in New Jersey and half the time in Berlin. Cuz my daughter was, I.
13 or 14. I was like, you know what? I wanna move back to America. She’s like, no, I’m gonna stay in Germany. So pedaling back and forth in 2015, I officially left Germany for good, and I’m back in America, but I, I did not see that event. But, um, and, and Daniel, Danny. Fields,
00:17 Monte ..
Fields,
00:17 Monte ..
Still. He
00:18 Monte ..
Was, you know who he was, right? Andy
00:19 Monte ..
Fields. He, I saw him at Arturo’s
00:23 Monte ..
Time. He’s art manager with Linda Stein of the Ramones. And a great, uh, um, uh, music business is like a legend. He like, uh, was working with the, the Doors and,uh, Stooges, he signed and, and then even managed the Ramones with Linda Stein for, uh, the early their first years of the Ramones. And Linda Stein was married to SIMer Stein with Si records. With, with the Ramones signed to.
00:. Monte ..
Right. Another thing, you can maybe clarify this. Did Linda Stein get shot? She
00:. Monte ..
Got murdered in her apartment by our, A maid or something? Yeah. What? That’s another tragedy of the Ramones there. You know, <laugh>, what the fuck the fuck?
01:04 Dot ..
When, where?
01:05 Monte ..
Well, it was a, a housekeeper or maid or something that, I don’t know, just murder somehow. I don’t know. The tragic thing in her apartment. Uh, upper East Side or some the West Side apartment. Yeah.
01:18 Monte ..
Wondering why.
01:19 Monte ..
Oh yeah. She’d taken, arrested. She got arrested, went to jail, and probably, you know, for that. Definitely.
01:24 Monte ..
Was she still married to Danny?
01:26 Monte ..
No, Linda was married to Seymour Stein. Danny Filled, uh, okay. Never got married, if you know what I’m talking about. So yeah.
01:35 Monte ..
<laugh>. Oh, okay.
01:36 Monte ..
Danny’s great. Danny’s great. Well,
01:. Monte ..
Elton Elton. Elton
01:40 Monte ..
John. Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. The same. But not to Linda <laugh>. Actually, Elton John was a big fan, a friend of Linda. And in 1.7 when we played the Rainbow for that concert, it’s alive. That was Pa uh, on, on record. Now it’s great concert. Uh, he came backstage. We met him backstage. He was a fan.
01:59 Dot ..
Oh, I
02:00 Monte ..
Met, I love, love Elton John. And I love it that he met the Ramones. Yeah. That’s cool. No, there’s some fake pictures floating around. Like I know what Photoshop pictures look like, even though I don’t know how to Photoshop. There’s pictures of Dei Ramon hanging out with Keith Richards. I’m like, this looks so funny. Well,you
02:20 Monte ..
Know, there was, Keith Richards was a friend of Ronnie Specter and uh, Ronnie was playing a club downtown. And, uh, and, and, uh, Keith came by. I think Deedeemight have come by for that. It’s possible. It’s possible.
02:39 Monte ..
Hmm. Because the, the hair on Deedee looks like very, very much so. Towards the end of his life.
02:48 Monte ..
Yeah.
02:. Monte ..
I mean, that was very, very short. Yeah.
02:. Monte ..
You never know these days with Photoshop what’s going on, really, you know?
02:. Monte ..
Yeah. I mean, perhaps it did happen that they met, but the picture does, doesn’t look right. It looks like Keith is completely disconnected from the picture. And I don’t know what year the Ronnie Specter show was. Um, but
03:10 Monte ..
Yeah. Yeah.
03:11 Monte ..
That would help, you know,
03:14 Monte ..
<laugh> to know, because DeeDee’s, I can tell from the way he looks, that was at the end of his life. Cuz I mentioned before that he and Barbara would come to my house when I lived in Berlin and stay for a couple weeks at a time. And, um, I took pictures of him on my balcony and I had to find a bass for him to play when hecame to town and Weed and everything else. I was his, his, I was his wonder to go get stuff, you know, <laugh>. I brought him to see the Misfits cuz Arturo came.Yeah.
03:42 Monte ..
Work. You worked with us
03:43 Monte ..
For a little and call. Yeah. Yeah. Said, Hey, come to the show. And Massage Doyle and Jerry and, uh, Deedee and Barbara were staying with me. So we all went together to the show. Yeah. And I know what DeeDee’s hair looked like toward the end. So the picture of him and Keith just didn’t look right. I wanted to ask you.
04:00 Monte ..
Yeah, I I have to see the picture, so it, I can’t tell.
04:05 Monte ..
And Daniel Ray.
04:06 Monte ..
Yeah. Great producer. He worked with a band and wrote a bunch of songs with Joey and Deedee and, uh, produced a couple of albums. Really talented guy.
04:16 Monte ..
Can’t find a man.
04:17 Monte ..
Oh, you, yeah. You Google. Um, Google it.
04:22 Dot ..
Oh yeah. I mean, like,
04:23 Monte ..
No social media.
04:27 Dot ..
Oh.
04:27 Monte ..
Well, like when was the last time you saw him?
04:30 Dot ..
Yeah,
04:31 Monte ..
I’m like wondering he’s alive. I can’t find him anywhere.
04:. Monte ..
I’m sure he’s alive. He did a lot of producers, a lot of different people. So as far as I know, he’s still active. As I said, I haven’t heard from him in a while, but I’m sure, I’m sure he is still active.
04:44 Dot ..
Hmm. And
04:47 Monte ..
Um, was, uh, it crossed my mind that none of the Ramones have kids except cj. I
04:. Monte ..
Have a gra a goddaughter and uh mm-hmm. <affirmative>.
04:58 Monte ..
I was wondering if you guys all shoot blanks from so many shows, you know?
05:02 Monte ..
Well, CJ has <laugh>. He’s got a quite a little of Brood going there. He’s got three kids there, Jay. Yeah, that’s good. He made up for all of us.
05:11 Dot ..
<laugh>,
05:12 Monte ..
You’re gonna talk to him, uh, soon, right? I’m
05:14 Monte
So,
05:15 Dot ..
Yeah.
05:15 Monte ..
Yeah. I’m calling him tonight actually at, at nine o’clock my time. 6:00 PM his time. He seems to be the dotting dad cuz he’s like, oh, I got a baseball practice or soccer
05:. Monte ..
Practice with his daughter. Yeah, he’s, so that’s family man. You got the, the uh mm-hmm. <affirmative> question. Right. I texted here for him. Right.
05:. Dot 39.
Good.
05:34 Monte 43.
Yes.
05:34 Monte ..
Oh yeah. I have it written down. Yeah,
05:36 Monte ..
Definitely. Tell him I said it all and give him my best. I love him. He is great. Absolutely. We also, we used to call him Baby Ramon. He’s a sweetheart of the age difference, you know.
05:47 Dot ..
Aw,
05:48 Monte ..
That’s cute. Maybe he could have a, a band called The Baby Ramones
05:. Dot ..
<laugh>.
05:. Monte ..
And you said something about Linda, um, and her ranch. I mean, she, why? Well, she used
06:01 Monte ..
To call it the Ram Ramone’s ranch, her ranch, but, uh, the Ramone’s Corporation now, uh, there’s two people, uh, Nicki Lee and Joey’s brother, Jeff Hyman and, uh,Linda. And they, they, they’re . . and they don’t get along very well. And, uh, actually Linda changed your name to Linda Ramone. Mickey didn’t like that. And there’s a bunch of lawsuits going back and forth. And so they
06:27 Monte ..
Wouldn’t, wouldn’t it be funny to get permission from Paul McCartney since he started
06:30 Monte ..
It’s Ramone Ram, you know, I mean, it’s not Paul McCartney or anything, you know what I mean? Actually recall
06:. Monte ..
The Ramone Ranch rather than with an s
06:40 Monte ..
Well, no, no. They, so they, they legally battle each other. So she couldn’t call her house the Ramone’s Ranch. So it’s like the Linda Johnny and Linda Ramone’s ranch.She had to put that in. And then once a year, Mickey does a Joey Birthday bash here in New York. And actually last year was virtual. It’s gonna be virtual this year.And, uh, and Linda does one in LA at the Hollywood Fervor Cemetery, very big event there. And she used to call it the Ramone’s Tribute Show. And, but she can’t call it that now. It has to be a Johnny Ramon tribute show, which is crazy.
07:12 Monte ..
So they kind of like, uh, fight each other on stu. Stupid little things, you know.
07:20 Monte ..
Hmm. Life is very short and there’s no time for fussing in fighting my friends. I’m, I’m curious. I know it’s probably a stupid question, but the thing is, like I said, I’m not a Ramone’s fan. I don’t know everything about the Ramones. So people, when you’re listening, don’t assume that. I’m like, I loved Joey and hanging out with him and the music was fun, but I don’t know everything about them. So me asking questions will also help other people who don’t know. Did the Ramones ever cover a beautiful song?
07:47 Monte 71.
I don’t think so.
07:. Monte ..
Hmm. I would’ve loved to seen that. Maybe held her scale.
07:. Monte ..
Not, not that I know of that, that
07:. Monte ..
Something, something surprised. And speaking of x y
08:01 Monte ..
Just get back to The Beatles. Here’s a funny story. Um, the Beatles played Chase Stadium here back in early the old sixties, something. Johnny and Tommy went to the show and, and Johnny was a, a Stones fan and he hated the Beatles. And he brought a bunch of rocks and was throwing it at the Beatles. Of course he couldn’t hit them. They were wearing in the, in the field there. But he, he threw rocks at the Beatles. The Chase Stadium was called Chase Stadium. That’s city Field feel. So he,huh? He wasn’t. And back then he wasn’t a Beatles.
08:30 Monte ..
That’s crazy.
08:31 Monte ..
Cause he liked the Stones better.
08:35 Monte ..
That kind of sounds like me. I, I, um, was raised by hippie parents. My dad crammed Frank Zappa down my throat every day of my life. And my mom was into the Beatles. But I wanted to rebel and listen to the Stones. I was a huge Stones fan. And some of the pictures of me and Joey, if you look closely, there’s a little Rolling Stones tongue on my, I wore a stones pin everywhere. Had to stop listening to them in . cuz one of my best friends died. And she was also into the stones. And then I dove into the Beatles. Do you think maybe Johnny had a grumpy look on his face all the time?
09:06 Monte ..
Because he didn’t like looking like one of the Beatles
09:09 Monte ..
<laugh>. He was very, uh, always like, uh, conscious of his hair all the time. You know, actually the Linda was a hairdresser, he gorgeous
09:19 Monte ..
Hair.
09:20 Monte ..
She worked in the house salons and met a lot of people. And that, that way. So Johnny was always like, uh, very conscious of his hair. And in fact, that time when he,uh, got kicked in the head, he almost died. You heard about that? You know what, uh, yeah, it was a
09:37 Monte ..
No. Oh.
09:. Monte ..
Oh my God. Oh my what year? . something. I can’t remember the exact, it was, it made the paper. Cause he was going out with Oh shit. Roxy was a Whitney, you know, the, one of the Whitney’s. And so it made the front page of the post, you know, rock-star with the girlfriend of Whitney got kicked in the head. He almost died and they had to shave his head. He was like, he was like, you know, he almost died. But, uh, luckily he pulled out and, and then a couple of shows, it took him a while to grow the hat, his hair back. He was wearing like a calf for a while.
10:09 Monte ..
Wow. Wow. Yeah, I’ve seen pictures of They sure they they dead.
10:12 Monte ..
Didn’t nobody took the pictures.
10:16 Monte ..
Damn. That’s it. That’s before he was Joey.
10:18 Monte ..
Yeah. Well, well before that Linda.
10:22 Monte ..
So, I mean, I having dated Joey, I did hear that he used to date Linda. So Joey dated Linda first and Johnny’s stole
10:30 Monte ..
Her from him. Yeah. Well that, that was, yeah. I mean, Linda was part of it too, you know. Right. So, uh, yeah, it
10:. Monte ..
Takes two to Tango
10:39 Monte ..
And they were married for 20 years.
10:43 Monte ..
Yeah. So it was a good, a logical move. He needed a hairdresser.
10:47 Monte ..
And then, then, you know, and
10:48 Monte ..
Girlfriend
10:. Monte ..
Joey didn’t wanna marry her or something came about and she got fed up and then, uh, Johnny made his move, you know, but you know, it happened a lot in Rock.This other, in Dan, one girlfriend jumps to the other, you know, I think, uh, Sarah Clapton or somebody else. Absolutely. Somebody. Jenn.
11:06 Monte ..
Well, well, um, Patty Boyd was married to George Harrison.
11:10 Monte ..
Yeah, right. Exactly. And she left
11:11 Monte ..
George for Eric Clapton. Yeah. And then he cheated on her with a 24 year old Italian model. They had a kid. And that kid fell out the window. Yeah. Yeah. That’s what happened. I but it, it does happen. Or, um, Carla Bruni was dating Eric Clapton and Mike stolen. Yeah. That
11:30 Monte ..
Sense from happening thing. So, uh, you know, that’s just
11:36 Monte ..
What about you? Have you had any bitches stolen from you?
11:40 Monte ..
<laugh>? No, it hasn’t nothing like that happened.
11:45 Monte ..
How come? No, you know what? You never got married.
11:48 Monte ..
I’m, I’m hoping to anybody out there, I’m not going <laugh>.
11:. Monte ..
Do you think
11:. Monte ..
Now you wanna get married?
11:. Monte ..
<laugh>? I I come with an eight year old devil. So he is the cock blocking extraordinaire Monte. I, I’m a virgin. I haven’t, I don’t get laid at all. I have no time to date any man who takes me on has to come in here and wrestle.
12:11 Monte ..
You must a custody. You, you look fab. Fabulous. Many pictures. You must get a lot of email, a lot of whatever. I get elections, I your stuff you post up there too.Kind of provocative on Instagram.
12:27 Monte ..
Yes. Concentrated. Yeah. Yeah. Well that’s because I do only fans Uhhuh <affirmative> to make money on the side, you know, um, because during the pandemic, my wings have been clipped. You know, my business, I don’t know if you know it when you say, you know, that’s kind of ignorant. I have a worldwide company. Yeah,yeah. I think you know that part. Wow. And it’s .8 dot bots all around the world wearing the doctor shirt. So that when rock stars go on tour, like The Misfits or, um,who else? Joe, Joe Jackson, Steve Miller Band, kit Rock, Rihanna, Sheena O’Connor.
13:04 Monte ..
They, wow. Even comedians, you know, they, they call me and they say, Hey, we’re in Norway. We need a massage in two hours. I have to drop everything, start texting all my dot bots in Norway. Can you go massage so-and-so? Or you know, or London or Australia, wherever it is. And the dot bots are all pissed cuz they haven’t had work in a year. Yeah. It’s a But there’s no a horrible thing’s, no bands touring. I think it’s gonna, it’s really bad. So I started to do OnlyFans, you know,only fans is a website where people have to pay to see whatever you post.
13:36 Monte ..
So I post sexy pictures like I showed my boobs. I, by the way, I have a picture I want to send to you. I think I sent it to you yesterday, um, 15.
13:47 Monte ..
Yeah.
13:47 Monte ..
I, the first time I met Joey, I would never have done it before. I, I didn’t know if I was ever seeing him again. I, I had a Sharpie and I said, can you sign my, sign me an autograph? He signed my tit <laugh>. He wrote, he wrote “To ‘ol Dot” And he put the O in Dot all around my areola; my nipple. And then he wrote “Love Joey Ramone”. And so I had a girlfriend take a picture of me in my Rolling Stones room Wow. Of that, of my tit. So that’s,that’s the only other time I’ve ever showed pictures of my boobs.
14:22 Monte ..
But now on only fans, it’s a parade of boobs. Who cares? We only live one time. I have a kid to feed. I’m not using any other people in my content. It’s just me. And I get yes dick pics and stuff. I’m not interested in meeting people online that I don’t Oh yeah,
14:35 Monte ..
Sure.
14:36 Monte ..
That’s scary. And I’m not desperate; I like being alone. I’m not like, I’ve never been lonely and I’ve never been bored. Those are two things I can’t relate with. I don’t understand people who are lonely or, or bored. I, I wish I had time to be lonely or bored even before I had a kid. Never lonely, never bored. When I go to ShopRite, people hit on me. I have these hot pink Ramone shorts that I bought from Arturo. He never gave me anything I paid ’em for it. Hot pink Ramone shorts that I still have.
15:09 Monte ..
I wear them over leggings sometimes. I’m telling you, those are men magnets. They want the fucking hot pink Ramone shorts
15:17 Dot ..
<laugh>.
15:19 Monte ..
If ladies are listening and you need a boyfriend, get some hot pink Ramone shorts because apparently Right. That’s how you get guys. So yeah, if you, I’m speaking of, um, dating and stuff. The last time I actually saw Joey in person, unfortunately was . in Berlin at the, you know, the Audio Amigos tour. And he asked me to come back to his hotel, not for anything creepy, cuz he’s not creepy. He asked me to massage his hands and his feet, they were bothering him.
15:. Monte ..
So I had to fight with Johnny to get a lift in the van. And, um, anyways, he was telling me that he had a cat named Mouse, which I thought was very cute. I think he lived at one 15 East ninth Street. Yeah, that’s, they, that’s day’s. I’m sure it’s Mickey Lee’s house now. Um, anyhow, he was dating a Japanese girl at the time and he told me, she gave him a list of things that he has to do. She, she was very strict in ordering him around all the time. <laugh>. I was like, that’s weird.
16:21 Monte ..
Yeah, that’s what she was, uh, did you meet her Crazy Nut job? Something like that. Another Yoko quite, you know, Yoko was better easy compared to this one. She was really out, out, out of it, you know.
16:37 Dot ..
Yeah.
16:. Monte ..
I’m glad Joey didn’t marry her. <laugh>. That would’ve been,
16:42 Monte ..
Absolutely. Yeah.
16:45 Monte ..
Um, another thing, like I said, I don’t know everything Monte, I wanna know, how did you get involved with the Ramones to begin with?
16:. Monte ..
Well, obviously you haven’t read my book. So, uh, uh, I was, I grew up with, uh, Tommy. I went to junior high school with Tommy. I went to high school with Tommy. I played in bands with Tommy. Well before the Ramones. I was a bass player. I played in two bands with him, different bands and, uh, a little band called Triad in a band. What bands we’re talking about? 1.8. I was with a band with him in 1.0 something. A band called Butch, actually with Jeff Salem from The Tough Darts. Remember the Tuft Darts?
17:26 Monte ..
No. Okay.
17:28 Monte ..
No. And
17:29 Monte ..
I, I was a bass player. I mean, I listened
17:31 Monte ..
To hippie music
17:31 Monte ..
And uh, I grew up with him in Far Hills. You know, we went to shows together. I saw Jimmy Hendrix at Hunter College with him and we, and then we went to the Fillmore East, which is a great place back then, cuz so many bands played there. A terrific venue. The Fillmore East. And Wow. You know, so, uh, I have a big history with him. And then, uh, later on, uh,
17:. Monte ..
My cousin was installing locks, a cousin Ivan do, uh, in a, a loft on 20th Street in Manhattan. And this woman said, we have a loft here. Do you know anybody in that could make this into a rehearsal recording studio? And my cousin said him and my cousin. So I, he brought, I came in with, I brought Tommy into the venture. We designed the place and built the place. And then we got to manage the place. So we had our own time in the performance studios. I had other bands at the time actually, 19 71, .. I have two albums on Warner Brothers Reprise. I was touring with the Beach Boys with the, that’s country rock band.
18:29 Monte ..
But get back to the performance studios. That’s, so we managed a place and got time to do our own projects. And one of Tommy’s projects was the Ramones as a three-piece group.
18:39 Monte ..
He just wanted to bring them in and produced them and managed them. At that time, Joey was on dramas and did he singing, playing bass. And Johnny was on guitar.So, uh, I saw them there. And, uh, at that time Deedee was having trouble singing and playing bass. So Tommy pulled Joey off the drums and, uh, they, they were so raw in the beginning there, nobody knew what was going on. So drummers couldn’t understand what was going on. But Tommy was a great musician as he was a guitar player really. But he played all sorts of instruments. He would sit down and try to show drummers what to do and nobody could understand.
19:10 Monte ..
So he joined the group. And so at that time, they were doing show, they started to do some showcases in the studio there, which you, they put flyers out and tried to get friends and record companies and managers down to the performance studios to see them. And I ran sound for them. That’s how I started with working with the Ramones. And eventually the place closed down, but they started getting jobs outside, like CBGBs and stuff. And they said, why don’t you come and, uh, work with us? So I started doing sound for them in the beginning.
19:45 Monte ..
Well, yeah. Worked my way up. So many different things. The beginning when they, when they, uh, started going out and playing, I had a, I was schlepping the equipment and doing the roadie work and Nick Lee and myself were roadies at the time. And then, uh, the more, the bigger they got, the more people we could hire.So I hired sound men, monitor men and drum roadie, guitar roadies. So they, you know, I worked my way up in there. It took a couple of years. So I learned the whole business that way.
20:14 Monte ..
I can, I’m trying to visualize Joey fitting behind it Drum.
20:18 Monte ..
It was something
20:20 Dot ..
<laugh>.
20:22 Monte
There’s man called
20:24 Monte ..
Sniper’s That’s hilarious.
20:26 Monte ..
Before the Ramones. But initially they, there was three piece group, the Ramones.
20:. Monte ..
Oh, that would’ve been, that would’ve saved a lot of money in
20:37 Monte ..
No, it’s a better idea. Him coming up and singing and being a front man. You know,
20:44 Monte ..
He seemed like he, he’s not one of those arrogant singers that’s like, here I am, I’m in your face. Take a picture of me. Uh, he’s, he’s,
20:. Monte ..
Well, you know, he didn’t work his way up too humble coming off the drums and coming into the, the limelight of being the lead singer. So it took a while. You know,so he wasn’t just like, I’m the singer right away mm-hmm. <affirmative> to start off at least they pulled him off the drums and they, he had to, he was shoved out front, you know, so it worked his way up. You know,
21:13 Monte ..
He was never, he just was the opposite of arrogant. The opposite of ego. The opposite. I think that’s why so many people loved him so much. Cause he wasn’t arrogant. I mean, I’m not saying Mick is <laugh> Jaggers. Well yeah, I think Jagger’s arrogant <laugh> like, but he, Joey was the same on tour as he was off tour. And that’s what’s so endearing about him when he was around. I, cuz I know some rock stars who were absolutely arrogant assholes on tour.
21:44 Monte ..
And you know what, sometimes you ha Jerry Hall said, Mick puts on his asshole suit when he goes on tour. Cuz it makes you more believable on stage in front of all those people. However, the Ramones were just real. There was no, there was no onstage persona versus offstage. There were just, that’s how they were.
22:02 Monte ..
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
22:04 Monte ..
You think, I mean Joey was done, you’re right, he
22:06 Monte ..
Was
22:07 Monte ..
Definitely, she’s the same person on stage as he was.
22:09 Monte ..
Also, he’s walking around the streets. He does actually can come and get in outta clubs and sometimes there’s a problem. He just stop and talk to anybody. I said,come on Joey, we gotta go, you know, and maybe go to a restaurant walking up the street. He would just stop and talk to somebody over like, Hey, hey, 20 minutes,come on John, let’s go. We’re gonna go to the restaurant. We’re gonna go to get in the van, go to get outta the hotel, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You know?
22:. Monte ..
And he was still drink at the Niagara bar. Yeah, sure. Even though he was already famous, right?
22:40 Dot ..
Hmm.
22:41 Monte ..
That’s, that’s something. Um, all these tours they did though. Do you think it took a toll on their health and
22:. Monte ..
So early three of ’em died of cancer. Deedee died the rock and Roll’s life. He died. Oh, deep. But uh, the other one was with cancer. I mean, Johnny Prostate cancerJoey. Yeah. As anybody ask Zapp listening, go to the doctor once a year and get it. Cuz if you get catch it early, it’s okay. Unfortunately he didn’t catch it early. It’ssame, same with Zap or Frank Zappa. Uh, and uh, Joey had lymphoma. Tommy died of bio duct cancer. So I don’t know how much gone on the road really affectedthat.
23:21 Monte ..
I’m still around so,
23:26 Monte ..
Well, I’m thinking so many shows. Yeah, but you didn’t party as much as them and Oh yeah. That’s another thing. I defend Joey a lot from the time I was with him. I have never seen Joey do drugs. He had a occasional light beer. That’s it. Cuz he was, he wanted to stay slim. I have never seen Joey do any drugs. But I think pouring leads to not eating fresh fruit and vegetables, not getting enough sleep and all that takes a toll on the immune system.
23:. Monte ..
So maybe it contributed to, oh, possibly the cancer developing so aggressively.
24:02 Monte ..
Yeah, it took a lot of vitamins. That’s, you care of yours. Carry a lot of vitamins with me, you know, and I try to watch what I ate and stuff like that. <laugh>, no.
24:12 Monte ..
You ever get
24:12 Monte ..
Massages, uh, Swedish massages, uh, with happy endings? Maybe? I don’t know. You Um, no.
24:19 Monte ..
You’ve never had a, a therapeutic massage. Okay. <laugh>. I don’t give happy endings. I give unhappy endings. Oh. People find that hard to believe cuz I have, I I do have sexy pictures, but I do not give happy endings. Um, however, I’ll make a deal. You come to Lyndhurst and visit me. Um, I’ll give you a massage and we’ll walk up to Joey Crave and we’ll off respect. We’ll, yeah, Uhhuh. And you’ve gotta tell me before you, I let you go.
24:. Monte ..
I need two more songs for this episode. One in the beginning and one in the, in the end. What’s it gonna be?
24:. Monte ..
Actually? Well, you have to play blitz. Speak Bob. Cuz that’s a funny story because now all of a sudden you go to like, what used to go to ball games or sports events and they play, Hey ho, let’s go. And they’re, they’re on Jock Rock album Now. Did you believe that? And then, you know, all these fans and thousands of fans in the stadium and going, Hey ho, let’s go. Hey ho let’s you know that song. You can play that song and I guess for the pandemic play, uh, sedated because everybody in there during this pandemic wants to be sedated.
.:. Dot ..
Sedated.
.:28 Monte ..
That’s a tough true. Actually went through
.:31 Monte ..
That
.:. Monte ..
After like 40 years. After 40 years, they’re
.:35 Monte ..
Making so much money now that they’re
.:37 Monte ..
Gold for 40 years for, for one album to turn to gold. Crazy.
.:43 Monte ..
You know, there’s no kids for Linda and Mickey Lee to leave their money too when they die. I heard Linda got married again, just saying. But they’re all really wealthy now. The Ramones are dead and they’re wealthier than they ever have
.:. Monte ..
Been. Crazy. Yeah, they’re crazy now. They, when they were alive, I mean people called Stones, Ramones
26:04 Monte ..
And as far as
26:05 Monte ..
Beatles
26:07 Dot ..
Yeah.
26:09 Monte ..
ACDC right up there with the top logos. I think Arturo should have at least gotten money. Like, like some kind. Yeah, we,
26:18 Monte ..
We made a lot off the t-shirt. Unfortunately, I should have gotten my finger into that project, but he really did. Did well of course they took it away from him later.And I mean there’s Ramos is so much bigger now. My, I I tell this joke a thousand billion times. Uh, if the Ramones were this big when I was working for them, I would’ve gotten a big raise. I mean, they’re so big now. I mean everybody you say Ramones, most of the people know them. You know, I’ve heard, I’ve heard of them.You know or know this shirt. Everybody.
26:47 Monte ..
The
26:47 Monte ..
Logo. Yeah, the logos got a lot of people around. They all know the logo. They don’t know what the band, but they like the logo.
26:. Monte ..
I know you see these Disney queens wearing, you know, people, the young girls who used to work for Disney or wearing Ramone’s shirts. I’m like, come on. But at least they’re exposing young kids. My kid is eight and he has seen the Ramone’s movie and wears Ramone’s stuff. And one more thing, do you, speaking of royalties and stuff, you said you were in some bands. Oh, way back
27:16 Monte ..
In a big band. Do you ever get royalties for
27:18 Monte ..
Your,
27:19 Monte ..
I mean, you gotta be a big band to get. Well, and this is 19 71, .. So <laugh>. Yeah, it’s a long time ago.
27:28 Monte ..
It’s almost impossible for all the musicians that I know, by the way. I know really big musicians and I know cover bands from bars around here. I know musicians of every walk of life. And I know for a fact the only way to make money as a musician nowadays is a,
27:46 Monte ..
That’s the Ramones, were they touring merchandise bed merchants? But they never sold a lot of records till now. When then four, the originals are gone,unfortunately.
27:. Monte ..
So they would’ve been screwed. Royalty. Yeah, you’re right. Royally. If this pandemic happened because they
28:03 Monte ..
Were a touring band, they, that’s how they made their meat. No. If
28:06 Monte ..
They had to take
28:07 Monte ..
Touring and selling merchandising. Cause they’ve toured some 2,2. shows, by the way, A list of ’em all in the back of my book. Every single show. So if you say1.2 or somewhere in June. Oh look, there it is. I played, they played Toad’s Place and they could look it up. Yeah, yeah. It’s, that’s Oh,
28:26 Monte ..
So you the country choir game that must be in there. My high, my high school friends never forgot. They’re like, they’re like, oh my God. At the time I was dot Jagger instead of Dr. Dot dot Jagger got the Ramones to play for us, you know. Wow. They, they never stop talking about it now. Like completely into the Ramones because of that. The whole town still talks about it. It’s crazy. So you’ll have to bring me a copy of the book. I’ll pay for it, but I want it hand delivered, signed, and you know,or I can trade.
28:58 Monte ..
I’ll give you a massage. <laugh> and exchange for what book?
29:02 Monte ..
We’ll
29:02 Monte ..
Work on that one. You wanna barter?
29:04 Monte ..
Okay. It was great talking to Dr. Do
29:06 Monte ..
All right Monte? It was, uh, yeah,
29:08 Monte ..
We’ll work on that. Definitely. Definitely.
29:09 Monte ..
I wanna see you.
29:10 Monte ..
Take care. I love you too.
Monte does a shout out for Dot:
Monte and Dot go together to Joey’s Grave:
Arturo Vega’s memorial ^
Transcription of Monte and I at Joey’s grave:
so
here we are at um the Lyndhurst graveyard Monte A. Melnick was here and He went home I went home & picked up Desmond
because i needed some peace and quiet to film with Monte so monty went home and we’re back i wanted Desmond to come and say Happy Birthday to Joey and it’s funny um well not funny strange, ironic & creepy that MELNICK is buried here Monty A. Melnick the tour manager of the Ramones he gets freaked out because when he comes to vist Joey’s grave he sees a MELNICK grave and there’s Joey’s grave so if you want to know how to find Joey Ramone’s resting place you pull up on this road next to this gravestone the MELNICK one and then in the background is Joey’s grave
and this is Desmond’s first time here but as I said, Monte was here earlier and we filmed together and i’ll post that video- well i posted it in the FB Ramone’s group anyways here we go Happy Birthday Joey! We miss you so much um I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet you because I’m too young but I’m still allowed to love your music that’s right you still are allowed to to love the Ramones music and you’re wearing mama’s old Ramones shirt you lucky thing
yeah yeah so look it
wow within the short time that i said goodbye to Monte oh there’s like a little Ramones furry fan what is that is that a beaver wait don’t rush at him Desmond don’t rush at him is it a beaver or is it a groundhog
don’t move too fast because you’ll scare him so look even furry ramone’s fans came to say happy birthday
hey little guy i’m not sure if that’s a groundhog
or beaver all right desmond don’t don’t bother him too much huh you know he probably lives in the graveyard because he wants peace and quiet
who’s oh hang on now i’m stuck on zoom
jeez maybe he’s like maybe he’s got her own family there they are i’m trying to zoom out people bear with me ah there we go yes no Desmond look at me yeah that that’s Joey’s grave his real name was Jeff okay
that’s why it says JEFF Hyman he was born may 19th which is today 1951 which means he’s one year younger than grandpa looks like glasses yeah and someone put a happy birthday in the father’s house (grave) yeah they must be coming when we’re not here because we were here earlier and there was none of that there’s my rock is still there is that a jolly rancher um a peach one well that probably was his favorite
it’s amazing we were just here and now there’s all this new stuff
rock on Joey
and that’s my stone up there when you were dating him
uh i really don’t remember him eating jolly ranchers no so there could be a hidden story with the jolly ranchers and there’s the jeans the jeans were on the bush like an hour ago and someone took the jeans off those jeans were on the bush
Happy Birthday Joey
hey hey Joey you will always inspire me today and every day that’s nice i never heard of the peach jolly rancher i never heard of it i see where this conversation is going Joey I mean DESMOND sorry yeah that means you want jolly ranchers let’s not make it about jolly ranchers please just because there’s a you know Happy Birthday
so i don’t we missed the other Ramones fans huh and that’s his father Noel Hyman
this looks so beautiful but i don’t know where Nancy his Mom is buried she must be was either cremated or buried in the city i know that’s my name i know my name’s over there you know what there’s quite enough space well i’m guessing his brother i’m guessing his brother Mickey’s going to be laid to rest here eventually but there’s plenty of room for me to hang out here and uh be rested when i pass
we all go that’s one thing that’s certain about life is everybody’s born and everybody dies that’s what’s going so you got to be nice to the people that you love while they’re alive so he’s right here somewhere well he’s probably you know the coffin is here and he’s very tall so you’re probably standing on his feet right now
this is is this your first time at the graveyard a graveyard? yeah yeah well i have a habit of filming in graveyard so
you’re kind of obsessed with it No it’s just it’s a peaceful place and they’re beautiful and you never know what you’re going to see i mean we saw that groundhog and there’s a biker over there probably wondering why we’re filming or maybe that was the ramones fan who just left the um
sign but yeah you realize you you must realize Desmond that shirt you’re wearing that glittery ramone shirt that’s never it’s never been in the dryer i got that from arturo Arturo Vega who designed the ramones logo and he made that shirt i got it from his loft the loft i think i got it in 2003 but it looks really good on you
so anyone who wanted to visit Joey’s grave but couldn’t make it here this video is for you and now we’re going to go to the playground so Desmond can burn off some energy
oh geez um
a ferret a ferret a shirt a shirt oh right there oh there’s a random shirt yeah it’s buried in move the um leaves so i can see it please
oh a little bit okay well spread it out now so we can see what it says and then we’ll put it back
comfort i can’t read what it says comfort scare something it’s really dirty anyways you should put it right back where we found it carefully maybe we should just keep it right here no put it back where you found it come on see that’s why Desmond stayed home when i was filming with Monte that’s exactly why because it would have been um a different vibe
jolly rancher thing alone please see Monte explained in our other video that this is the Jewish cemetery and it’s a tradition to put stones on top of the grave of course because of Joey being the punk star that he is we’re not going to say was; IS there’s a lot more stones on his grave and they all have
okay they all have different meanings and stuff and yeah people wanted to bring their love to him i think it’s better to visit his grave on his Birthday rather than on the day he passed in April because that’s too sad for me no they’re not his glasses but those are the kind of glasses that he wore Joey’s glasses had like a purple tint to them
i got to see him without glasses all the time and it’s so weird that we live in Lyndhurst see that was not on purpose
we okay i’ve lived up and down the East coast growing up and then in 1989 I moved to Germany to raise my daughter unfortunately when Joey passed in 2001 i was still living in Berlin and I couldn’t fly back
for the service or anything it was horrible because we were still keeping in Desmond what is this it’s the buddha put it right back it’s not just put but put it back where you found it please Desmond see that’s why i didn’t bring dozen he will not zip it so i wasn’t in America when Joey passed I didn’t know where he was buried i was knee-deep in raising my daughter and Joey and I had been keeping in contact up until the end per email because i had written a Ramone’s chapter and he reviewed it and said “oh i like it but you know be a little be a little nicer on Johnny” because I was I mean, my chapter is very honest and it was kind of cheeky and sarcastic and that’s how sweet Joey was he even said be a little nicer on johnny so I edited you know the chapter but Joey wasn’t complaining much about his disease and he wasn’t complaining about pain to me he was sweet and strong up to the end anyhow I moved back to America part time in 2002 and i was going back and forth Berlin New Jersey Berlin New Jersey eight weeks there eight weeks there back and forth back & forth and I was staying in Weehawken New Jersey then in 2010 June of 2010 I got my own apartment in Jersey City Heights and that was awesome view and everything but then I had Desmond in 2012 and once he started getting older i thought Jersey City Heights is not a safe place to raise Desmond I mean even though we were in Hoboken 99.9% of the time so I asked a realtor named olivia to help me find
uh an apartment or a house to rent in Lyndhurst no i didn’t say lyndhurst what am i saying see Desmond is distracting me i asked her to find me a place to live in Rutherford and i know i say it wrong most people say Rutherford or whatever Rutherford because i’ve been there many times over the year and i over the years and i thought Rutherford is very clean and safe and it’s a good place to raise Desmond however we looked at a couple places in Rutherford and it’s extremely expensive and the the realtor said would you consider Lyndhurst and i said where’s that and she said it’s the next the next town over and um i was like okay so we looked at a couple of places in Lyndhurst and it is literally next door and i was like okay and she goes you’ll get a bigger bang for your buck if you just live half a mile away in Lyndhurst and she said it’s a blue collar um town and you know people are hard working and it’s safe and clean what are you holding Desmond cinnamon whiskey it’s whiskey oh don’t litter though i mean who would be drinking whiskey near a graveyard well people drink whiskey at graveyard because they’re sad because they lost their loved one anyhow so she found us a house to rent in lyndhurst and we’ve been here since October 2017. and i still did not know that joey was buried here
however a couple months later after moving in i was out strolling around my new neighborhood and i saw a sign on a veteran’s building that said karaoke next friday or something so i was like oh i’m definitely going to be in i want to sing karaoke in my new town and meet some people so i went there and that’s where i met my friend Ralph Carey the elvis impersonator he showed up in full gear and sang elvis and i was like holy [ __ ] this guy’s amazing and we became friends and we’re still friends it’s awesome and i also asked a whole table full of ladies do you mind if i join you and they were like no come go ahead sit down next to us because i was alone and we started talking in between karaoke songs and they asked me what do i do for a living and i said massage plus i run a worldwide massage company we cater to touring rock stars and pop stars and they looked at me like they didn’t really believe me and they go so you massage rockstars and i’m yeah and they were like so i showed them my little rockstar photo album on my iPhone and i was scrolling past a little too fast i guess and they said wait is that that’s a Ramone i said “yeah that’s Me and Joey i used to date him when i was younger we dated for three years” and they were like “no way he’s buried here” I go “what!?” they go “yeah he’s buried here in our town” I’m like “no way they it’s embarrassing that I didn’t know as I was in Berlin when He passed”
So yeah me and my my daughter came back from Germany to visit me and we went to visit Joey’s grave and there’s another video of that my first encounter to we didn’t know how to find his grave we went to the um little building at the start of the graveyard and i said this is gonna sound crazy but i used to date joey here’s some pictures to prove it can you please tell us where the grave is and she said yeah yeah lots of people come here from around the world to see his grave so this this is now the third time i’ve been here and i just wanted to share this with you a live facebook video or you know so the other one’s not live um that’s that’s already up on youtube just posted it what’s really weird yes
not me i didn’t put it there i put the stone there that i painted for joey do you like the buddha yes yes
all buddhas are fat by the way there’s never been a skinny buddha
well because everybody has their own idea of what they want to leave as a keepsake for joey it can’t all be the same it can’t just be a stone some people want to leave a little trinket so that it’s personalized you know
Desmond: “there might be a story behind the peach jolly rancher” oh my god will you stop with the candy come on see he he’s reeling me in i know where this conversation’s going he just wants candy i want candy and my voice is extremely deep right now from having to reprimand Desmond because he’s doesn’t very he doesn’t listen very well he’s not what you would call well-behaved yeah so that’s um that’s our little trip
Rob Halford Podcast with Dr. Dot, June 21, 2021 (pardon any typo-errors please)
Dot: Oh, this is my first video-podcast Rob. wow. You look great.
Rob: Well, that’s a thrill to me because where would we be without these Zooms and podcasts to stay in touch as we are getting through the back end of this, uh,drama that we’ve all been dealing with over the last year or so? It’s been nuts, you know, so I’m just so happy to see your face again and, uh, can’t wait to see you in person. When we kick off the priest touring in September with Sabaton,
Dot: I would love to go to that one concert. I think it’s in Sweden, where they have a gazillion bands.. Wow.
Rob: Yeah. It’s what, it’s what keeps us motivated to know that we’ve got all these exciting things to get back into again. You know, it’s been such a challenge for all of us.
Dot: I was wondering, what have you been doing through this whole, I mean, apart from podcasts, because I heard you’ve done a lot of podcasts, but what have you been working out?
Rob: It’s Hollywood lighting. That’s what I call it. It’s the Hollywood lighting. I’ve been doing what I needed to do, like all of us, to get through this, business and staying in shape. For singers especially, our work involves all the physical parts of projecting your voice. So you’ve gotta keep the lungs, your heavy metal leather-lungs are gonna be kept in shape. So practically every night, including the current 120 Fahrenheit heat in Phoenix, we go out every night and we do like an hour’s walk in the hills, and then I do my swim for 20 minutes. You’ve gotta, for us in the music business especially, well for everybody really having the smallest amount of exercise is just so therapeutic physically and mentally. So yeah, I’ve been doing my walks and then coming home and having a big slice of cake and some chocolate.
Dot: Wait a second…
Rob: That’s my balance. Everything’s balanced. The only extreme thing I’ve got in my life is metal always will be.
Dot: Swimming is the best exercise ever because it tones up everything at the same time. And it’s good for your respiratory. So that’s why you look so, I mean, you weren’t unfit before, but most people during the pandemic spread out a bit and you’ve shrunk. How much does the leather jacket weigh that you wear on stage?
Rob: Lord. Oh, I just did a project, which I can’t really talk that much about it, but I just did a little project recently for Netflix. And I wore that big spiky jacket that Ray Brown made for me a few years ago. And I hadn’t worn that jacket for the longest time. And when I put that on my back, I thought, my God, I must have been crazy walking around the stage in this thing. Cuz it weighs about 50 pounds. You know, it’s a work of art. Ray Brown is a genius, and he’s been making Priest clothes and many other, many other artists clothes for decades. But when I initially went to him with this idea, he goes, I know what we’ll do. We’ll do like a heavy metal version of Tina Turner from Tina Turner’s acid Queen Tommy Opera, where she wears this red leather coat. I can see in my mind, okay. Right. Just go off and do it, you know. But, I tell you, my new clothes for the 50th anniversary tour are a little less, how can I say? intrusive on my back, because if I didn’t have my Doctor Dot massages a couple of times a week, when I’m on the road, I wouldn’t get through it. You know, it’s tough. Yeah. Big time.
Dot: Yeah. I miss getting your calls saying, Hey, I need a I need a massage. You know? And that’s so, so flattering that we can help you get out there and tour,because I missed the live shows. I missed seeing your concerts, you know?
Rob: And we miss seeing you guys as well. I couldn’t do my tours in Arizona. I know it’s being incredibly difficult for your business. Yeah. What you do is such a beautiful thing, but it maintains obviously touching and healing the body. And as I said to Thomas, when this thing kicked up, I said, God, I wonder what Dr. Dot’s gonna do because it’s just gonna crush all the hard work that she put into building this business. But I’m so happy for you that at least now you can get reestablished and back on your feet again.
Dot: Yeah. Slowly but surely, you know? Yeah. There’s a lot of restrictions. Dot Bots are wearing masks and thoroughly cleaning in between massage clients;in LA there are loads of bookings, Bruno Mars and lots of other artists are calling us for video shoots and Anthrax, like every day in a row they were recording something. So if you need a therapist in Arizona, of course we deliver like Ubereats, you know?
Rob: Sure. Yeah. Absolutely. I got your number. I’ve got it in my phone. Always.
Dot You’re so cute. I remember we met, I don’t know if you remember, I remember the first time I met you was backstage at Live Aid in 85 and you were the nicest one. I was there as a guest of Mick Jagger and his entourage there, his manager, everyone was in a hurry, uptight and kind of snobby. You took the time to talk tome and pose with me. And you look so cute in the picture, you’re smiling. How long we’ve known each other? 37 years so far.
Rob: I know exactly what you’re saying. That was an incredible day, wasn’t it? It was just unbelievable. Unbelievable. In many ways. There’s an episode in my book ‘Confess’ that began right after Live Aid when I went back to the Four Seasons and I met someone, which we talk about in Confess, but I know what you’re saying. The thing about shows is it’s such a privilege and it’s such a great opportunity to get out on stage anywhere in the world.
And I’ve always felt that that’s a grateful place to be in, you know? And I know it’s hectic and we’ve got a job to do. And I know we’re all kind of jumping from one pedestal to another, but it doesn’t take anything to just try and stay balanced and calm and just enjoy it, enjoy it, you know, have a good time. Most of us were already on stage for like 10, 15 minutes, so there wasn’t a lot of pressure. It was a big party. I loved it. It was a great, great thing to recall.
Dot: And you were, you were giving an interview to someone else on a little micro-cassette recorder, and I was patiently waiting to talk to you, you were so kind and polite. And I hope your fans understand that you’re not just a metal God, you’re also a really kind person. And I love that about you. I mean, I’m sure everyone knows by now on Instagram with all your cat pictures. You have a lot of cats?
Rob: I got a picture of Mr. Smokey up behind me. Mr. Smokey passed some time ago. And because Thomas and I are so busy on the road, actually, I guess I’m making excuses because we could have taken in some foster kitties, you know, but we get so attached we wouldn’t want to give them back. You know, have another house full of cats. But we do support the great work that cat shelters and animal shelters do. And we have some connections with a couple of places in California and up on the Upper East Coast and around Seattle. So we do what we do, what we can do. You know, animals are people too.
Dot: I know. I have a little cat. I love her. That’s my fur baby. Like we have a rhythm. She gets me. I get her. I don’t even wanna think about what’s gonna happen when she’s gone. I will be crushed.
Rob: Well, it’s unconditional love with, with animals, you know.
Dot: Well, cats are not so unconditional. They’re nice after they get their food.
Rob: Yeah, I know what you’re saying. Cats can go, what’s this expensive vase over here? I just push it up this ledge. You know, they have that tendency to be so,I’m in control. You know it’s a privilege to have me in your life. That’s kinda the deal.
Dot: They crack me up. So I have some questions. So you’re in Kentucky?
Rob: Outta the blue. Yeah. It’s a great organization in Kentucky. I’ve only just recently found out about it, but they like to make these wonderful gestures to people that have had involvement in the state of Kentucky. And Priest have played in Kentucky a bunch of times. We’ve got a massive show coming up with our good friends, Metallica. If you can try and get to that show, please do. Because Metallica and Priest in one show, it’s just who opening. It’s a great festival. As soon as it was confirmed, Lars was texting me going, “oh my God, I’ve just found out that we’re gonna be on the same stage together.” Cause you know, he’s like the biggest heavy metal maniac in the world. So I think as a result of all of this, they send out these little recognitions, and it’s a little bit like the Shriners as well. They do tremendous work for all varieties of charities and organizations. So it was a blast.
They sent me this thing in the mail. They sent one to Thomas as well, because he’s a highly decorated veteran. We are both Kentucky Colonels, you know, and that’s really sweet.
Yeah. There’s a bunch of stuff they’re going to send me in the mail. I’ll be striking a pose with that stuff at some point on Instagram, on Facebook.
Dot: That’s funny. Ok. I have a personal question. I know it’s probably stupid and the fans are gonna say, she’s so stupid. But I saw that film ‘Rockstar’ a long time
ago, which I think is the Best Rock documentary. I thought Almost Famous was cute, but Rockstar really nailed it about what it’s like on the road and what happens when you’re famous and there’s drugs and alcohol around and how you get in this bubble and someone has to wake you up. Was that based on you at all? Cause some people say it was, and some people say it wasn’t.
Rob: I think the issue of the guy going in the band was a close reference. But it’s a shame really, because if you take away all the critique, if just watch the film,firstly, Mark, he’s a tremendous actor. And everybody did a wonderful job, but for some unknown reason it just got attacked by the music industry, which I thought was really unnecessary. But the core of the story, that’s what it is. There are so many elements where as a musician watching this movie, I’m like, yeah, that’s me.Yeah. Been there, yeah. Had that experience. So it was quite almost like a real life documentary to a certain extent.
Dot: Because then they took somebody from the audience and he became the singer. Was that realistic? I don’t even know.
Rob: I think that there was some references there that you could kind of put on a parallel with Priest. Not entirely true life, but as we know, you get these instances where, like Dave will pull somebody outta the crowd . Well, I pull somebody out on the stage and your mind is blown by these incredibly talented fans. Yeah. So I can understand the possibility of that.
Dot: But I mean, but that never happened in your band. Some people are like, oh, that’s totally based on Judas Priest. And I’m like, I don’t recall Rob Halford being plucked out of the audience and becoming the singer.
Rob: No, it’s just the way things kind of get. Urban myths, it’s rock and roll, full of urban myths, that’s the way it is.
Dot: But that movie is so realistic as far as what happens backstage.
Rob: Yeah, it is.
Dot: And you were sober when I met you at Live Aid, you’ve been sober for so many years, right?
Rob: It was just before you saw me. You saw me at probably just after that. I began the downward spiral. This is the great, it’s not great, but this is the way that addiction can play a kind of fake card. What I mean by that is when you see a person and you interact with the person, as you and I were interacted, you give the impression that everything is under control.
And it’s not, you know, I’m sure you and I had a great conversation because even though, I was probably blitzed at the time cause it was an early show, I was about to take the big deep dive down. And so I look back at that and I used that as a reference that when you have..
Dot: A great smile on your face in our pictures, you’re like, Hey.
Rob: Yeah, yeah. It was a great day. It was a great day. And I loved my booze and drugs. I loved them. I loved them. It made me feel great, but it took control over my life. It took control over my decisions. It took control over my ability as a musician. It was stunting part of my creativity. And I didn’t realize that Dot until I began sober journey, because suddenly I had this great clarity. I have this great clarity as a musician, my lyrics, I feel got better.
My singing got better. Just everything about me as a person with a job to do in Priest improved. And that was just making that life changing decision. You know,my friend Gary Hall from Slayer Exodus has just announced the same journey. He’s realized, that it creeps up on you.
It it’s very insidious, if that’s the right word, in the context, the way that booze and drugs or any addiction creeps up into you, into your life. You have no intention,but these things happen. Yeah. And this is a great, you I could talk for hours about our mental health, our mental well being. That it’s so important in our lives.You’ve constantly gotta take almost a daily check daily, a daily mental thermometer, check about how you feel, don’t suppress anything.
Dot: Right. You’re isolated and everyone’s offering you drinks, especially when you’re young. Hey, they want to be indispensable. So they’re like, I’ll get him hooked on this and then you have to keep me around. And so they offer drugs and alcohol and the artist is like, oh, wow. Free stuff. I’m partying. And what they don’t realize is they’re hurting the artist when they do that.
Rob: And I’m sure some of it’s unintentional and there’s a lot of peer pressure in our work cuz you’re trying to catch up with somebody else that’s getting success and they’re there with a bottle with champagne or whatever, and you go, oh, I’ve gotta do that. And you don’t really, it’s all about finding your own path and journey to get to the best place that you wanna be at without hurting yourself and hurting other people. And so we’ve lost so many people in music, for lots of different reasons. One of them is you need somebody in your life to go stop doing that.
I’m telling you now, stop.
Dot: Who told you?
Rob: To stop? I didn’t really have any kind of intervention in my life at all. As I recall. I talk about it in the book, it got to a really desperate, desperate place …a plea to help. I tried to take my own life. And I think that is the most expressive way of being at a place that is so lonely and desolate. I’m in this great band and I’m successful, blah, blah, blah. And yet I’m the lostest person that I know. So I had to make the choice myself in recovery. We tell each other that really all of our beautiful family, friends, relatives with our fans can keep telling you this, this, do this, do this.
But until you say, okay, I’m gonna make this choice now today, I’m gonna quit this, I’m gonna quit that. So you are responsible. It’s your responsibility. This is your life. You know, everything that happens in life to a great extent is your responsibility. Don’t attack me by saying, well, this happens or that happens that if you control, it’s like this is outta your control. You know what, from the moment you wake up to the moment you gotta sleep. Anything can happen in the day. But what I mean by that, as far as accepting your responsibilities as a person, it’s important.
You’ve gotta, you’ve got to really find that place. You know, it’s not about handouts, it’s just being able to discover that all of us have this incredible resource of strength and in the power that’s just waiting to be untapped. And when you get to a sober place, it’s just endless. It’s just an unbelievable stream of whatever you need. You can take it from what’s already inside of you.
Dot: Yeah. You can’t control the world, but you can control your reaction to the world.
Rob: Exactly. That’s the thing. You are in control of your emotions. If somebody makes you mad, it’s not their fault. You are taking what they’re projecting to you and you are making the madness and issue out of it. You know? And so that’s another thing I’ll learn in my sobriety. Sobriety is just accepting responsibilities for reactions. Every action has a reaction. So when somebody yells at you or somebody’s angry about something before you lash back, process the information.
That’s a thing about Twitter. People are twittering. They’re not thinking, you know? Yeah. You’ve really gotta think about the choice that you make in the reaction that you give back. And some of us, including myself, have made bad choices and bad reactions. But that’s life. Life is about learning.
Dot: So are you actively tweeting?
Rob: Oh, no, I can’t tweet. I wouldn’t tweet because I am opinionated. I’m like the next person and I try to practice what I preach. I love my Instagram, I love my Facebook. Where all my beautiful fans around the world that love to stay in touch through that process.
Dot: Angry place anyways. Twitter’s angry. Right?
Rob: I think it can be, I think it’s a great tool for instant kind of addiction itself. You can get just as addicted to social media as you can to anything.
Dot: However, social media can act as some kind of work. You know, a lot of people, use social media for work.
ROB: Yeah. It’s important. I use it as well. Now the the amount of influence that you have as a public person, some people kind of wait to see what you have to say about something, and so you really have to make sure that the information that you’re sending out is good and strong and positive, you know?
Rob: Can’t stand negativity. It has no place in life. It just brings pain and suffering and heartache. Negativity is just like a black hole in space. It’ll just suck everything in. Just watch the news. If you want negativity, just watch the news. You know?
Dot: Speaking of negative things, I have a really cool question from a fan. I just recently joined a Facebook Judas Priest group so that I could get some questions for you. Right. And there’s, there’s 15,000 people in this group and I was like, Hey, I’m gonna call Rob. Do you guys have any unique questions? Cuz I wanna hear what they have to say. Lots of cat questions, but I had to narrow it down. One of ’em I like is from Eric Sabahi from McKinney, Texas.
I don’t believe there are any curse words in Rob’s or Judas Priest lyrics. Curious if that was by, by design. And if so, I would like to know the background on that decision. And he says, kudos, by the way.
Rob: Thank you. That’s a good question. I love to swear, but I use it in an expressive way, getting your emotions out. I don’t really think that it has much of a place in our world in Priest. I mean, I see it, I see and hear it a lot in certain types of music. That’s your thing. It’s your choice that the great thing about music and all art should not be censored in any one shape, form or whatever. Everything, when they start censoring art, it multiplies and it becomes a very dangerous thing to do.Again, it’s all about choice. If you don’t like something, don’t listen to it. If it’s something on the TV, it’s making you angry, change the channel. Something that makes you angry on the social media. Go somewhere else. For me to use explicit language in a Priest song, I don’t think I’ve found the moment yet. I have a lot of friends in metal that utilize that the power of those words. If that’s the word that really emphasizes the part of your message, then by all means you, you should use it. Maybe on the next Priest album, I might effing blind, as we say in England.
Dot: I know that the Brits love to swear in a different way than we do. Cause I lived in Germany half my life, and I would be in an Irish pub and Irish or British guys would say to each other “hold my beer cunt, I’m going to have a slash” They just call each other cunt all the time.
Rob: Right. Yeah that’s a beautiful – people in town (in Arizona) get so freaked out over the C word, but British say, oh, come here cunt. Gimme a hug. And it’s just a word and it’s used in a really, again, it can be used in a great context. It’s that to say something like that to a person, is like affection as crazy as it sounds.
Dot: I have a question from Phil Collen of Def Leppard, I met him before you, he was my first rock star client in 1983. Aging myself here. Anyways, he says “in the early nineties, Def Lepp were playing in Phoenix and Rob lived there. He volunteered to drive me around Phoenix and then drive to the airport and pick up my then girlfriend who was flying in from France. But I noticed what an insightful and knowledgeable host he was and wondered if he’d ever secretly craved being a documentary host, having had a similar travel experience that I’ve had based on being in a traveling rock band. The reason I ask is I’ve definitely fantasized about doing a kind of Sir David Attenborough meets Bear Grills type thing. It just never came up. John Leks did something like that”.
Rob: Wow. That what a great story. That’s beautiful. Love you Phil. We have such a great friendship, of love and mutual respect for each other in Def Leppard. I think Leppard went out with Priest when some of the guys were still in their teens. I think it was a European tour we did together. So, that’s a great question.
The thing about the thing about life is it’s never too late to do anything. You know, I’m about to turn 70, but that doesn’t mean I should stop putting the blocks on things. You know, you fulfill, fulfill your dreams and, and your ambitions wherever you may be. And so, who knows, maybe Phil and I’ll do it together, who knows? Or maybe Phil can do it Phil can do his documentary.
Dot: In between his workouts. Have you seen him without his shirt off? I mean, he looks phenomenal. He’s in great shape and such an inspirational person for staying fit and healthy and sober. Like you.
Rob: Yes, exactly. So, yeah, I think again, just because of who we are and and the place that we have to talk out about these types of things, he’s a really great inspiring person for that.
Dot: It’s great that there’s so many metal people like you and Phil that are sober and you get massage and take care of your health and everything. I always say “your health is your wealth”. And it’s true, isn’t it?
Rob: It’s very, very true. And I tell you, I’ve seen it because, I’ve been doing this for 50 years, and now when two buses pull up, the guys will jump up the bus and open the bay doors and they’ll pull out weights, and they’ll pull out ropes and whatever it is, they’ll work out when they can. You sit on a bus for six hours, you get out and you wanna run out on the stage, but you get your cardio going, you get limber, you get ready for work. And that’s what they do.
Dot: So it’s great to see that, particularly in younger bands. Younger bands are very knowledgeable, and they know that, you really have to get an understanding that being healthy on the road, pay dividends. If you’re not healthy, you’re not gonna be on the road. You’re gonna, end up dead in the backseat of a car or something.You have to take care of your health.
A fan named Matt Miller from Ottawa, Ontario asks “who is the best new band you’ve heard in the past 10 years? And do you think Priests might take out any younger openers as part of your 50 anniversary tour?”
Rob: That’s a cool question. It seems impossible to catch up now. I check my three or four social media sites that I go to every day, part of my ritual and the amount of bands. It, it’s just great. It’s just an endless supply of talent all around the world. Everybody’s really going forward and wants to be successful. And we wish all of them well. There’s a local band, in my hometown called Wolf Jaw Wolf, and then Jaw Wolf Jaw. They’re a three piece, they’ve got a great vibe about him and I think that they put an enormous amount of time and effort already into making a good band. And maybe they’ll be ready to go to that next level soon. Its endless opportunities to be there for each other. So, you know, the door is always open.
Dot: Have you ever heard of a band from Belfast called ‘The Answer’? Because I thought they were pretty good as far as new bands.
Rob: No, but I’m gonna check ’em out now. What kind are they, Metal?
Dot: They opened for AC/DC on one whole tour, I was massaging both bands and I was like, wow. I mean, they kind of strike me as, I don’t wanna compare them too much to Led Zeppelin, but they’re like a groovy, harder Zeppelin. It’s hard to explain. The singers sound like Robert Plant and his youth, somehow.
Rob: That’s what I love about Greta Van Fleet. When Greta van Fleet, burst out on the scene, said that they love Zeppelin. And I thought what was great about that,here’s the thing about a lot of these newer bands, they’re referencing bands from the past, like we all do. When we started as Priests, we didn’t have a reference. We didn’t have a metal reference, we were there at the beginning, but a lot of bands will say, oh yeah, it was Priest, or it was Sabbath, or it was Maiden, or it was Mal Head, or it was Scorpions, or it was this band from 30, 40 years ago that we listened to as young musicians.
Rob: It’s a great compliment. Yeah. Some of the greatest music, in my opinion, came through the back end of the sixties. The seventies was a great turbulent type of decade, but by the time we got into the eighties and the nineties, some of the greatest things were happening in music. And they still live with us today.
Dot: I see so many people slagging them off. They hate Greta, you know? Oh, wait, why are they bad? Because they all play instruments. They all sing. They write their own stuff. Give them a freaking break. At least they’re playing instruments and they’re not just rapping to some beat or something. Like there you gotta give them a chance. You know what I mean?
Rob: Here’s the thing about that Dot. Once people start attacking you, you’re doing something good <laugh>. It’s always the bands that are really gaining traction and becoming successful. It’s just a bizarre thing. Instead of lifting people up, there’s a portion of people that just start trying to bang them down, you know? And it can affect you in a bad way, it can really affect you mentally and psychologically. Psychologically. You’ve gotta push that away.
Rob: Push it away. He has no merit. Yeah. He has no merit. He has no value. If anybody’s attacking you, hey, that’s their choice. That doesn’t mean you’re not doing good things. You’re not making great things happen, everything has its context. My witnessing over the decades I’ve been in music that some of the greatest bands will tell stories of people said we sucked and we’re never gonna make it. We’re never one of the first ever reviews of Judas Priest was Don’t give up your day jobs.
Dot: Yeah, exactly, when I lived in Germany, I brought out a book in 99 and I was upset at some of the reviews. They were all from women mostly saying, talking about my tits rather than the book. And I was crying. And my German friends, some of them came to me and they said, listen to me. There’s an expression in German, which means everybody can get sympathy or praise, but envy must be earned.
Rob: Yes, exactly. Envy must be earned. So when you got the haters coming at you and they’re envious of you, you earned that. That’s it. That’s a great way of looking at that kind of situation online. It’s pushing back, turn it back into a log, because that’s the best thing you can do.
Dot: You gotta take it and use it as fuel. I got a question from Earnest Herrera from Houston, Texas: “When you retire, would you consider being an actor? Since you do have a little theater experience from your teenage years, you would want to, you would make one hell of a villain in a James Bond movie“.
Rob: This is so cool. This questions so cool, because Thomas and I have just finished watching this amazing new production that Robert Downey Jr. and his wife put together on the graphic novel Sweet Tooth. You have to watch Sweet Tooth on Netflix. It’s absolutely beautiful. It’s a beautiful story about love and reconnecting, but there’s a guy, there’s a villain. There’s a villain in Sweet Tooth called Abbott General Abbott, and he’s got this full on beard and he’s got the ears and everything, and Thomas goes, that could’ve been you!
We’ve all dipped our toes in the water. I did a thing ages ago for the movie Spawn, a Netflix project that comes out later this year. Just a little, little something. It’s little bit like when you’re making a music video, if you look at some of those early music videos Priest made. And we worked with directors like Julian Temple, he would put an outside story context within the music. So you do a little bit of acting per se.
He wasn’t really acting as such, but you know, the physical gestures of getting outta the gold Cadillac in Soho, were getting out the car and going into a bank, and after midnight where I pull up outside of City Hall on the bike and I’m high, it’s all that kind expression. I have nothing but praise for actors because to see them work and I’ve been able to see them work, to go from a conversation like you and I are having then to go into a really dark place for a scene or to be angry or to be crying the way they act, they’re able to switch this on. It’s just, an extraordinary talent, you know?
Rob: And I have a few friends in the business that are able to do that. And I’m just amazed by what they can do. I’m nowhere near that league, it interests me. I love it. I love it because all music is fantasy. All music is escapism. Even if it’s got a strong real life message. We go to shows to escape, we go to shows to escape what’s happening in our lives. We’re together as metal maniacs for that show for that night.
It’s just the most incredible thing that we can unite with. And that’s escapism. That’s where we go to the movies, that’s where we go to see a play. That’s why we go to see a show. It’s escapism.
Rob: This new Priest tour, all of that. We worked hard to maintain that type of balance with Priest. You’re going to see something that gives you a memory. And we’ve always worked hard in Priest leaving with a really strong, heavy mental memory. And the last thing you ever see the Priest show is the Priest will be back, on the big screen, that’s what we’ll be doing soon.
Dot: It’s an experience. I have a two-part question. So before you answer it, you gotta hear the both parts. Bill Shaw from Pennsylvania – “Diamonds in Rust as a Metal ballad was absolutely brilliant and one of the songs that made Priest my favorite metal band, what inspired the band to want to cover a Joan Baez folk tune?And when did you had you realize just how brilliant it would turn out to be?”
Hang on. Then one of my best friends, Jim Norton, who’s a comedian, I called him today. I go, “you’re a metal fan. You must have a question for Rob”. He goes,okay, “I wanna know, did you ever get any feedback from Joan Baez on Diamonds And Rust, what was her opinion? And did you hear any feedback from them?” So it was so weird that he had a similar question.
Rob: So I’m gonna now blow your mind and tell you something even weirder, because the day you and I met at Live Aid in Philadelphia was the day that Joan Baez is walking to the trailer that I’m doing interviews, finishing interviews with, and Joan Baez is walking towards me waving and I’m going, oh my God, she’s gonna come and kick my ass about the way we treated Diamonds and Rust. And she goes, Rob, give me a hug. We’re hugging each other. I’m so, so excited and thrilled.
Rob: God, you’re a legend, Joan, you the things that you’ve done. And she goes, blah, blah, thank you so much. I just wanted to let you know that when my son knew that I was gonna be playing on Live Aid and you were gonna be performing as well, he said, please tell Rob and the guys from Priest that I loved their version of Diamonds in Rust, better than my mom’s version, I just thought, how sweet is that?
How cool is that? So the quick story on that was the band was slowly making marks in United States, and our label had said, guys, if we can get a song that we can send to rock and roll radio, that’ll really give you a boost.
And we didn’t really have anything. So that’s when somebody at the label suggested this song. And the first time we heard the track we were in a very famous studio called Rockfield Studios in Shire in the UK. And we knew this song was coming.
It was a 45, we all sit round a record player and put it on, and then Joan starts singing. And then we go, are they having a laugh in England? Are you having a laugh? What is this? And then we listened again, and then we got it. Oh yeah, now we got it. This is an incredible song. This song will take the Priest interpretation.So that’s what we did. And we also did that with the Fleetwood Macsong.
So you look for opportunities like that and still do it now, bands that are doing well will suddenly decide to do a cover, whether it’s David from Disturbed with Sounds of Silence, and the guys from Death Punch will do a Bad Company song. There’s millions of songs out there just screaming for a new interpretation. Elton John understood it.
But what I’m saying is all these great opportunities help you just open the door a little bit wider just to bring people in. It’s an homage to the original song, but it’s also, what else have you got? You know? And then people will go to the music that you are making.
Dot: Plus sometimes a cover can turn out to be better than the original. Like Tina Turner’s Proud Mary.
Rob: Absolutely. You know, endless, endless things like that.
Dot: A Little Help From my Friends. I mean, have you ever covered a Beatles song or a Frank Zappa song?
Rob: I love Zappa. For the longest time I was a Zappa head.
Dot: The Beatles and the Zappa are my favorite. I love Zappa. That’s how I got the Dr. Dot name. I went on his 88 tour massaging him, and I was just called Dot.And at the end of the tour, he would go Dot, where’s the doctor? Come here, Dr. Dot, do my hands. I’m busy. He, he, so I stole it. I mean, I took it from him. I was like, okay, I’m taking this, I’m gonna run with it.
Rob: I never knew that. And where’s the book? Because you must have a million stories. I know you, I know you are a respectful person because in our world,there’s a kind of an unwritten law about what you see and what you hear and how you take that in. But I know you, you must have a million stories. Like I have that a lot of people would love to check it out.
Dot: I did a people book in Germany in 99 in German. I’m not German by the way, but I talked the book and a German guy wrote it. And I write as if the star is reading over my shoulder, I would never bite the hands that feed me. I make it funny. The writer didn’t even know who Frank Zappa was. I was like, really? You’re gonna write my book? And you don’t know who Zappa is. That’s ridiculous. So I’m going, I talk my book on the podcast, Rob, I don’t have time to type cause I have an eight year old son who drives me crazy every day. He’s in the backyard screaming, hear him? Anyways, I talked the book on my podcast just in case I croak, there it is. Out on the internet.
Rob: I’m gonna check it out, that’s gonna be on my list of things to do. Yeah. Right now.
Dot: And then I’m going to do it chronically. I’ll do a book because I’m going to forget otherwise. I got question for you, Dennis from Richford, Vermont: “What’s Rob’s go-to comfort food?”
Rob: Oh, I’m obsessed with lemon slices at the moment. I don’t know where this comes from. I think it’s from my dad. Cuz we just have a rusty soul. I’m just obsessed with the taste of lemon sliced cake and Thomas went to the store to fill the fridge and the shelves. Cause he demolishes the food, the food’s gone in one week and in his stomach by the end of the week. Don’t forget the lemon. Don’t forget the lemon slices.
Dot: You don’t mean like actual lemons, sucking on them? You mean lemon cake?
Rob: It’s a cake. Yeah, it’s kinda a cake with a type of texture. It’s like a lemon texture and a short cake shortbread base. And it is absolutely delicious. So I mean that’s right now. I’ve always had a sweet tooth. When you quit drinking, you realize that because there’s so much sugar in alcohol, that’s what the booze comes from.So I’ll really have to watch myself. I love my sweet tooth cakes and stuff.
Dot: Your skin looks good.. And sugar is evil. Sugar is really evil.
Rob: It’s small measures. Small measures for everything. Yeah.
Dot: I was in a rabbit hole. I went to Google how to do a Zoom call and all this other stuff and I ended up, what does alcohol do to your liver? You know how it distracts you on the side and you get pulled in. I didn’t know sugar’s bad for the liver. Yeah, it is bad. Anyways, I always ask everyone during every podcast, please pick two songs, one for the beginning of the podcast and one for the end. So what would you choose for your two favorite songs?
Rob: Ooh, wow. I’m gonna kind of go into two directions, let’s do something heavy. Let’s just do, Iron Man. Okay. Because I love that song. I love that song and is connecting me to Robert Downey Jr. again and Iron Man. And let’s just go out with Diamonds and Rust by Priest as we’ve talked about that. I could give you a list as long as the day, but those will work for now.
Dot: I also asked, let’s say you came to New York and you miraculously had a night off and I dragged you to a karaoke bar. What would you sing?
Rob: That’s a great question. We should do some karaoke together. You and I should do some karaoke. Something completely insane. Like anything from The Wizard of Ours, which I believe that’s one of the greatest movies ever made in terms of just the story. It is the most beautiful story about love that you can everimagine. But the songs, Over the Rainbow, We’re Off to Meet to Wizard and all these different beautiful songs, I love a lot of it, it’s a gay thing.
Dot: <LAUGHS!> I don’t know any show tunes. I could do Rocky Horror Picture Show, I’ve seen it 300 times. I used to play Janet in the movie theater when I was younger. But I love karaoke. It would be so fun to see if anyone recognized you and you’re belting out a show tune I would make a video that would go viral. Oh my God.
Rob: I tell you, this has just been so much fun. It’s been great to see your lovely face again. I can’t wait to see you and give you a real hug. I’ve been giving virtual hugs for a year. Give you a real hug, in person. This has been really cool. I love these questions from the fans. I rarely get this opportunity for this type of format,we’ll have to do this again. We’ll have to do. Yeah, definitely. Chapter two, volume two.
Thank you. So love you Dr. Dot. Thank you so much as well. It’s been a blast.
When I was out in Arizona for THAT convention I went to, a friends of mine told me a local AZ magazine wanted to interview me. So on my last night there, WHILE I was out at karaoke with dot bots Sonora and Rachel, a reporter showed up. I thought he was friends with my local pals, so I gave him my time. It was totally unannounced. I told my local pals where I would be and presto- a guy named Corrin showed up. At first I thought he was their friend and they were on their way, but after a bit of conversation I found out he was a reporter/writer for Java Magazine. Well, normally during an interview you sit down in a quiet area and talk but it was my last night there and we had planned this karaoke night ages ago.
Once he started asking me questions I was showing him some of the pictures in my camera and blackberry. I am not happy with the tone in the interview but you can not change things once they are printed. No wonder celebrities get pissed off at the press, being misquoted SUCKS.
I have to clear up these misquotes as I am PISSED OFF about them.
Once he started asking me questions I was showing him some of the pictures in my camera and blackberry (above he makes it sound like I was dying to show him pictures to brag).
Also, the NO CLAPPING part. He told me his editor cut some parts out to save space, as he failed to explain here that NO ONE clapped for any singers. I found that rather odd. No matter how good the singer was, no one clapped. He makes it sound (above) that I was shocked that no one clapped for me. You give people your time, and they stab you in the back in their little interviews.
I am not happy with the tone in the interview but you can not change things once they are printed. No wonder celebrities get pissed off at the press, being misquoted SUCKS.Big stars like Madonna, or so I have heard, insist on having their management proof read the interview before it is printed. I told/asked Corrin I wanted to see it but he ignored that and used my pictures from my myspace page without asking, without permission.
He also failed to mention I DO have help answering some of the emails, I am not a micro-manager. SOME of the emails must be answered by me personally (about 800 of them a day). But facts are obviously not that important to some magazines.
He quotes me above as saying "American guys are horrible". Hello? I never said that and do not think that. I said it is horrible how American guys are all circumcised without their permission. This misquote really really irks me. I found him on facebook and told him so. He humbly apologized and said he would correct it for the online version. And as far as me inviting him to the hotel, it was to continue the interview if he wanted, but he makes it sound like I wanted to get my leg over (or under). Whatever. So easy to hide behind your desk and have YOUR story put into print, even if it is not accurate. That's what I get for being kind and generous. Makes you want to think twice about doing so again.
'm on the radio tomorrow- interview and guest DJ. The show will air on Wednesday, Sept. 2nd at 10 pm Germany time (1pm Los Angeles time, 4pm NYC time).
Go to: www.motorfm.de and click the "Play Motor FM" banner to hear online. interview + my choice of songs in first hour, whooooo haaaaaa
