I Slept with Joey Ramone by Mickey Leigh and Legs McNeil (Touchstone Publishing)
'I Slept with Joey Ramone' is the story of Joey Ramone's brother
Mickey Leigh, a talented but financially struggling musician himself, who is also the roadie and stage manager for the first five years of the Ramones. Leigh also contributed to their music by singing backup and writing small parts to their songs when they hit songwriting road blocks, but is never given any songwriting credit. This leads to many battles in their future, especially when the band earns royalties from television commercials, while Leigh cannot afford to eat. Over the course of 400 pages, it is revealed that everyone in the Ramones camp, including the author himself, has personal flaws that contributes to nearly the entire band's professional and personal destruction. Much of the book is focused on Joey's pre-Ramones life, details about his childhood and teenage years and his post-Ramones life, including the health issues that led to his eventual passing. Close when the band was together, Leigh and Joey pass in and out of each others lives once the band splinters. The lack of trajectory in the Ramones career is also examined. Aside from having their studio time paid for, no type of mainstream success or significant financial security ever happened. The Ramones made a living by playing live and touring without speaking to each other very much. It becomes obvious as you read that being in the Ramones was a wretched experience for everyone, fated to stay together due to needing each others contributions to complete an album's worth of material each year or so. This arrangement becomes a thirty year battle with deep bitterness, bullying and jealousy that outlasts the participants own lives. Sadly, the slow downward slide of Joey's health is the focus for the last quarter of the book, with very personal accounts of how the family reacted to the good and bad news as it came. However, Leigh recalls how through it all, the Ramones infighting outlasted Joey's lifetime and negatively impacted memorial shows in his honor, as well as their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. Ironically enough, while Leigh never got credit for his contributions to the Ramones music in their lifetime, he is now, along with Johnny's widow Linda, one of two lone survivors to their royalties. This is an epic read, very well written and broken into 41 short chapters for brief reading sessions.
Co-author of the book is Legs McNeil surprisingly, as it purposely avoids the 'only in their own words' approach of 'Please Kill Me'. This is a detailed account, separating myth of the Ramones from the actual lives of the Ramones, written by one of the only people who experienced these things from start to finish.
'I Slept with Joey Ramone' is currently available at Amazon for affordable prices.
