Dee Dee Ramone
You can thank Paul McCartney for creating the Ramones. At least, you can thank him for helping them come up with the name. After reading about McCartney's habit of checking into hotels under the name Paul Ramon, Dee Dee took the idea further, convincing his bandmates to join him in adopting the name Ramone.
Born September 18, 1951, Douglas Glenn Colvin was a founding member of The Ramones, and a punk rock star. Though he spent much of his early life in Germany and Virginia, when he was 15, he moved with his mother and his sister to Queens, New York. There, he met John Cummings, who would later be known as Johnny Ramone.
Dee Dee was the Ramones' primary songwriter, writing songs like "53rd and 3rd" and "Glad to See You Go". He continued to write songs for the Ramones even after he left the band, until they retired in 1996.
After leaving the Ramones in 1989, Dee Dee Ramone embarked on a brief, dismal career as a rapper under the name Dee Dee King, but the album failed critically and commercially, and he wisely returned to his punk rock roots. He continued to dabble in music, going through a series of unsuccessful projects before he finally found his next big thing: Dee Dee Ramone I.C.L.C. Inter Celestial Light Commune.
Dee Dee formed I.C.L.C. with John Carco, a New York City bassist who he met while attending AA meetings in New York. After creating the group, they moved to Amsterdam and recorded I Hate Freaks Like You, an album made up of work that Dee Dee originally wrote for an upcoming Ramones album.
Following the record's release, they spent the next ten months touring 22 countries. It was during this time that Dee Dee would meet and marry his wife, Barbara Zampini. The couple met in the streets outside Dee Dee's hotel in Argentina. He met and fell in love with the 16 year old Zampini, and they would remain together until his death.
The tour ended in January of 1995, and I.C.L.C. returned to Amsterdam to start recording their next album, which was never released. In a strange reversal, though, many of the songs written for I.C.L.C.'s second album ended up on the Ramones' final album, Adios Amigos.
In 2000, he formed the Dee Dee Ramone Band, his last touring band, before moving to Hollywood to pursue an acting career. This move marked the beginning of the last chapter of Dee Dee's life, and on June 5, 2002, he was found dead of a heroin overdose. Dee Dee was buried in Hollywood, near a monument honoring fellow band member, Johnny Ramone.
Our Dee Dee Ramone T-shirts are fully licensed, endorsed and made from the softest, prewashed and shrunk cotton jesery. They faithfully reproduce the original article as tracked down by Worn Free from archive images.
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