Vera Ramone King's book Poisoned Heart: I Married Dee Dee Ramone documents her 17-year marriage to the bassist and lead songwriter of seminal punk rockers the Ramones. In vivid and loving detail, she recounts the rise and demise of her lover and best friend, who succumbed to a heroin overdose in 2002. She offers the untold story of how she continually kept him alive even amidst bouts of terrifying abuse from her husband, illuminating a vital link in the band's masterful and enduring legacy.
In a revealing interview from her home in South Florida, King spoke with SG about her book, the "Ramones curse," and her extraordinary life as a strong woman standing in the supportive shadows of a music icon. Without her, the history of the Ramones - so often portrayed as a staunchly masculine narrative - might have been forever altered.
Tamara Palmer: Your book is a total page-turner. I had a really hard time putting it down!
Vera Ramone King: Thank you! I wanted it to be straight and truthful and from the heart and honest, and I hope that that comes across. I really wanted the fans of Dee Dee especially, and all the Ramones fans, to know that there were so many other different sides to him besides leaving the legacy that he was this crazed, drug-addicted rock and roll punk person, you know? I wanted them to know that he had a lot of different, good qualities to him and that there was more to the man than just what people wrote about or want to remember him with.
TP: It must have been very therapeutic and healthy for you to tell your story as well?
VRK: It was. In the beginning, when I started writing it, I had some moments where I didn't know that I could continue because there were a lot of painful memories that were put out of my head, that I chose not to remember for so many years. But in the end, you know what? It was extremely therapeutic and I felt alleviated of all this stuff that I've kept inside me for so long, 'cause we parted on not the greatest of terms and we both left a lot of things unsaid to one another and unresolved.
I am remarried for a long time now and I discussed this with my present husband Kenny. I wanted to know how he felt about it, and he was extremely supportive. He said to me, "This will probably help you heal and just put this to rest, put this behind you." Without his support, I couldn't have done this. There's no way you can, 'cause you don't want to hurt someone else. But being that he gave me all the support and he told me just to do what I needed to do, he's a secure enough person within himself that he didn't feel threatened in any way as far as our relationship. There's no insecurity there. We've been together almost 19 years, for cryin' out loud!
TP: That's a long time.
VRK: I met him in 1990, a year after Dee Dee and I split, and we lived together for five years until my divorce was finalized in 1995. I just wanted to make sure that I knew the person that I was going to spend the rest of my life with, which is what it was with Dee Dee; I would be spending the rest of my life with him. And I don't take my vows lightly. It's a commitment to me. I don't think, well, if in a couple years it don't work out, so be it, we'll get a divorce. It's not like that for me. I take it very seriously. Divorce is not a thing that people want to go through. It's horrible.
TP: Sure, all the disentangling of emotions . . .
VRK: And finances. So I was hoping that my message was that there was more to this man than just what people know about. There have been other books written about the Ramones, but they've been by third parties, I should say, like Monte Melnick, the road manager, or Jim Bessman, who just wanted to do a book on the Ramones for the fans. But there's never been a book written by a woman or someone who actually lived with a Ramone on a day-to-day basis. I don't really write about the whole band. I'm basically talking about my experience with one man. I do mention the different guys in the band, of course, but I try not to get into that too deep.
TP: You're right that the written history of the Ramones outside of this is a very masculine history. You show that there were women behind the scenes, you in particular, and without you the band might not have ever . . .
VRK: Well, Dee Dee wrote the majority of the Ramones songs, and I strongly believe that - and I'm not flattering myself or anything like that, 'cause I'm not an ego person - he had a lot of issues and I don't think that he would have been alive past 1980 had I not been around. I think that I was really put into his life for a reason. He wouldn't have left behind these wonderful songs that they have, or the legacy that they have now that has continued for three generations. 'Cause I see little Maddox Jolie-Pitt wearing a Ramones T-shirt, I see Tom Cruise's daughter Bella, who's like 15 or 14, wearing a Ramones shirt, and I see 50-year-old people wearing 'em too, you know? It's just amazing that the Ramones legend has spanned generations.
TP: This was something I was going to bring up, because little kids love them some Ramones!
VRK: Where would you think that they would be familiar with this music? They weren't this popular when they were touring and making albums in the early '80s. Nobody would play them.
TP: There are only a few bands and artists who have had that kind of career after the fact. Tupac Shakur is a possible parallel.
VRK: Right, and that's what I wrote about. When they all started to approach that 50-year mark, they all just passed away within a year of each other and I thought it was somewhat uncanny that that had happened. I talk about the curse in the book obviously, and it makes you wonder if there is such a thing.
TP: There's never a definitive answer on something like that, but when you recall being spooked by someone putting down a curse on the band, and then everyone starts to die so close to each other so many years later, it has to make you wonder. The evidence is overwhelming, from what happened to all the guys, to your battle with brain tumors, to the murder of their former manager Linda Stein.
VRK: And just recently, in mid-January, Gary Kurfirst, their long-time manager, was on vacation - totally healthy, never had a heart problem, dropped dead. Just like that, and this happened just a few months ago and left everybody in shock. He was having such a good time, extended his vacation by a week and he died on his vacation. Yeah, with no history of medical problems.
TP: You were there when the curse was uttered.
VRK: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
TP: Did you not really think about it or believe it or give it any weight until later?
VRK: After that night it really freaked us all out. You know the kids from the Columbine, with those long leather coats, that kind of look? I mean, this is what this guy looked like, and he was clutching a Bible and rolling a cross around in his hand. This was like something out of a movie. And usually backstage at the back door where the band has to go through to get in their tour bus or van or whatever it is, there are usually fans that are waiting to have pictures signed or pictures taken with the band and this was like a totally different thing. It was pouring rain and there was this bizarre group of people standing there.
He had a whole little entourage of people behind him and they started denouncing [the band members], going up to each one of them individually and saying, "You must repent for your sins" and trying to denounce them and have them give in to God and give up this horrible way and their music. It was just so bizarre. We all were left so speechless after this when we got into the car. It left us with chills. After nobody responded to him, he just started cursing each and every one of them. I tried not to look, but he was cursing everybody that was there. We piled into the van and we were all dead quiet. I mean, you could hear a pin drop. And then finally, Dee Dee was like, "That guy gave me the creeps!" We were all really taken aback, we had never experienced anything like that before. People would always tell the band, "You're great, we loved the show," stuff like that. And this was in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was just so creepy. Creepy.
TP: It's not like the band was doing anything overtly sacrilegious.
VRK: Yeah, they weren't Satan worshippers or worshipping the devil in their music in any way, or writing their lyrics backwards to say, "Satan, you are" whatever. I could see if this was happening to some of the heavy metal, Satanic . . . I mean, look at Ozzy Osbourne!
TP: Exactly: Save it for Black Sabbath!
VRK: Yeah, even the name Black Sabbath! So we didn't really give much thought to [the curse] until they all reached that age and it was all like the magic number: 50. Dee Dee was two months short of his 50th birthday, Joey died on Easter morning, barely a month before his 50th birthday; and John was diagnosed with prostate cancer on his 50th birthday. And, naturally, I got sick on my 50th birthday.
TP: You did? Oh, wow!
VRK: Yeah, and it was like a magic number, your time is up kind of thing.
TP: How is your health now?
VRK: I still have issues. When something like that happens to you, you don't just get off scot-free. I could get into it in depth, but I'm not going to bore you with that kind of stuff. Looking at me, my doctor calls me his miracle patient every time he sees me . . . I wasn't afraid of dying, it was just so damn painful. I lost my hearing, they told me I'd never get my hearing back, and I couldn't even just stand up to brush my teeth with an electric toothbrush. I was totally shot.
TP: This is something you bring up late in the book, and really give very little space to - almost shockingly so, like, "Oh, by the way, I had tumors in my brain, no biggie . . ."
VRK: I wanted to just mention it and that I had been through a lot. When I got diagnosed, they actually told me I had had it for at least 15-20 years. And I remember having headaches as far back as 1989 and going to all these doctors in New York and then giving me pills for headaches. Nothing helped me, painkillers, but nobody gave me a brain MRI and it must have been when [the tumors] started. So finally, down here, after three months of looking for cancer in different parts of my body, seven neurologists later, nobody wanted to touch it because of the delicate area it was in, I finally found a doctor/professor in Miami who was willing to do the surgery. I saw him at 4 o'clock on a Friday afternoon, I was his first patient Monday morning at 5 o'clock. It was a few days before Christmas and I told him that a doctor in Gainesville could do [surgery] just after Christmas, and he said, "Vera, you don't have a week." It was that bad. So that I even came out of it as good as I did, I feel like my life has a purpose and I didn't finish doing what I was supposed to do. I hope that this was a part of it, and that Dee Dee is proud of me.
TP: How could he not be? You're very fair and loving to him in this book.
VRK: It's a punk love story! We didn't break up because we no longer loved each other, there were other issues.
TP: Like fearing for your life?
VRK: I believe that, being that he went off his medications and wouldn't go back on them, if I would have stayed with him, I would have just ended up as another statistic and I would not be sitting here talking to you right now. So I had to make a choice and I didn't just lose a husband, I lost my best friend. When we broke up, it was really painful for both of us. He would still call me every day and we would talk and we'd cry. But he didn't want to go back on his medications and that was just my one requirement that I wanted, because otherwise he would have been too violent. I didn't want to end up like Nancy [Spungen] or anybody, you know?
TP: Why didn't he want to go back on his meds?
VRK: He had this in his head - if you ever saw him, he wasn't fat. There wasn't a fat inch on his body. He was convinced that it was making him fat, the medication. I didn't write about it in the book, but he ended up being bulimic and he just developed all these different issues. He wanted to go off the medicine, then he wanted to quit the band. Like I said, it wasn't that we stopped loving each other. But he just went off on a tangent and I was not feeling well and I couldn't cope with everything that was going on. I had to start letting go and taking care of myself. I wondered, is his illness rubbing off on me? Could it be catching? I really started to think that his illness was becoming my illness.
TP: How could it not get ingrained into you, when it's happening to your partner?
VRK: Maybe after all these years, it started to affect me. I was not feeling well and I had these headaches 24/7 and I would have to lay down, and he'd be like, "Are you laying down again? What are you laying there for?" When he wasn't feeling good, I had to deal with it, but the minute I didn't feel good, I was on my own. I wrote about it in the book, but whenever I got sick, he went ahead and had a good time. He would take advantage of me coming down with the flu because he knew I'd be bedridden and that gave him total rein to run wild. I knew that there was something wrong, but I didn't know what. Finally, they told me that I had to go to a psychiatrist, that they could find nothing wrong with me, but they never gave me a brain MRI. I went to a shrink and she put me on Prozac but I still had the headaches. It alleviated some of the depression of my divorce and trying to put the pieces back together. It was all I knew, and when you're trying to start over in your late 30s, it's tough. Especially doing it on your own. He just turned around and quit the band and left me with the finances up in the air. I had houses and cars and apartments and no job for the last 13 years. What was I going to put down on my resume, rock wife? Full-time rock wife for 13 years? That's not gonna cut it! I went through a really hard time and I had to do what I had to do, but I knew that for once I had to put myself first. And that's what I did.
TP: It saved your life in a couple of ways, because if he hadn't have done something to you, your tumors might have still gone undiagnosed and that could have got you.
VRK: If there were reality shows in the '80s like there are now, he would have given Ozzy a run for his money. What can I tell you? We lived a rock and roll soap opera every day. Every day! And when his addictions would subside, as far as taking drugs for any length of time, there would surface other addictions, whether it was tattoos or shopping. Everything was in excess. He could never just do things in moderation, and that's when things become a problem.
TP: That sounds like it would have been so hard on you, not leaving any time to decompress.
VRK: Well, I'm not portraying myself as a saint in any way, you know? We partied together.
TP: But you were still his lifeline, his support system.
VRK: I was, I had to be. I was his chauffeur, his personal manager, his everything.
TP: I don't think you try to portray yourself as saintly in the book. You're obviously not Mother Theresa.
VRK: No, and nor do I claim to be. Like I said, we partied and we did everything but I knew where to draw the line. I knew when to say, "Okay, let's go home now." Or, "I think that's enough now." You know, you don't party 'til you frickin' overdose, or you're foaming at the mouth. I don't know how old you are, but in the late '70s and all throughout the '80s, people did drugs recreationally. That didn't necessarily mean that you were a drug addict, but some people were. It's okay if you can keep it at that. I'm too old to be doing that kind of stuff, especially now. I try to live a pretty clean life. That's in my past. My favorite pastime was smoking weed, period. If I did a line here and there, big deal, to stay up and hang out or go to a new club or something, but it wasn't to constantly be looking for it and wanting it and needing it. That's a whole different thing.
TP: It sounds like Dee Dee's financial habit with drugs was at a rock star level before he became famous.
VRK: Well, absolutely. No one can possibly say that I married him for his money, okay? There was no money. I will swear to this on a Bible: We lived on $10 a day per diem and $175 a week for his paycheck, and he spent most of it. I'd eat a fruit salad a day and what was left over went for cigarettes or maybe a Quaalude or whatever, some weed. We weren't rich by any means, and then when we did start to have a little bit of money and could afford a better life, he had to have the best weed around. He had to have the best of everything. He put out a solo album, Standing in the Spotlight, and the very last song at the end is called "I Want What I Want When I Want It." And he lived by that. That was his motto, it should have been on his tombstone. But he had a lot of great qualities as well and I hope that comes through in the book. He had a big heart, he was very giving, he loved to make people happy. When Stiv Bators came and wanted to borrow one of his knives, because he collected them and had about 200 at one point, he was like, "Give it to him," even though it was one of his favorites. And when Sid [Vicious] saw Stiv's [knife], he had to go to 42nd Street and buy the same knife. And that was the same knife that was used to kill Nancy. I don't know that he actually committed that crime; I heard that it was a drug deal gone bad, and that somebody else used the knife to stab Nancy while Sid was passed out. Because Sid was really a very sweet soul; he didn't have a mean bone in his body. Just because he called himself Sid Vicious, he wasn't vicious.
TP: The legend of how somebody like that is portrayed is often so far from the reality.
VRK: You only know what you read, but when you know the people that were actually involved - we were invited there that night and my intuition told me, don't go. Something just told me, don't go. First of all, I knew that going to the Chelsea meant that Dee Dee would end up shooting heroin with Sid at some point, and I didn't need to get into a shouting, screaming match with Nancy either, because she could be a handful. Dee Dee was disappointed but he listened to me and thank God he did because I'm glad we had no part of that. When we heard about it from people in New York calling us up, Dee Dee and I just looked at ourselves and I said, "I told you so." Something just told me, do not go.
In a revealing interview from her home in South Florida, King spoke with SG about her book, the "Ramones curse," and her extraordinary life as a strong woman standing in the supportive shadows of a music icon. Without her, the history of the Ramones - so often portrayed as a staunchly masculine narrative - might have been forever altered.
Tamara Palmer: Your book is a total page-turner. I had a really hard time putting it down!
Vera Ramone King: Thank you! I wanted it to be straight and truthful and from the heart and honest, and I hope that that comes across. I really wanted the fans of Dee Dee especially, and all the Ramones fans, to know that there were so many other different sides to him besides leaving the legacy that he was this crazed, drug-addicted rock and roll punk person, you know? I wanted them to know that he had a lot of different, good qualities to him and that there was more to the man than just what people wrote about or want to remember him with.
TP: It must have been very therapeutic and healthy for you to tell your story as well?
VRK: It was. In the beginning, when I started writing it, I had some moments where I didn't know that I could continue because there were a lot of painful memories that were put out of my head, that I chose not to remember for so many years. But in the end, you know what? It was extremely therapeutic and I felt alleviated of all this stuff that I've kept inside me for so long, 'cause we parted on not the greatest of terms and we both left a lot of things unsaid to one another and unresolved.
I am remarried for a long time now and I discussed this with my present husband Kenny. I wanted to know how he felt about it, and he was extremely supportive. He said to me, "This will probably help you heal and just put this to rest, put this behind you." Without his support, I couldn't have done this. There's no way you can, 'cause you don't want to hurt someone else. But being that he gave me all the support and he told me just to do what I needed to do, he's a secure enough person within himself that he didn't feel threatened in any way as far as our relationship. There's no insecurity there. We've been together almost 19 years, for cryin' out loud!
TP: That's a long time.
VRK: I met him in 1990, a year after Dee Dee and I split, and we lived together for five years until my divorce was finalized in 1995. I just wanted to make sure that I knew the person that I was going to spend the rest of my life with, which is what it was with Dee Dee; I would be spending the rest of my life with him. And I don't take my vows lightly. It's a commitment to me. I don't think, well, if in a couple years it don't work out, so be it, we'll get a divorce. It's not like that for me. I take it very seriously. Divorce is not a thing that people want to go through. It's horrible.
TP: Sure, all the disentangling of emotions . . .
VRK: And finances. So I was hoping that my message was that there was more to this man than just what people know about. There have been other books written about the Ramones, but they've been by third parties, I should say, like Monte Melnick, the road manager, or Jim Bessman, who just wanted to do a book on the Ramones for the fans. But there's never been a book written by a woman or someone who actually lived with a Ramone on a day-to-day basis. I don't really write about the whole band. I'm basically talking about my experience with one man. I do mention the different guys in the band, of course, but I try not to get into that too deep.
TP: You're right that the written history of the Ramones outside of this is a very masculine history. You show that there were women behind the scenes, you in particular, and without you the band might not have ever . . .
VRK: Well, Dee Dee wrote the majority of the Ramones songs, and I strongly believe that - and I'm not flattering myself or anything like that, 'cause I'm not an ego person - he had a lot of issues and I don't think that he would have been alive past 1980 had I not been around. I think that I was really put into his life for a reason. He wouldn't have left behind these wonderful songs that they have, or the legacy that they have now that has continued for three generations. 'Cause I see little Maddox Jolie-Pitt wearing a Ramones T-shirt, I see Tom Cruise's daughter Bella, who's like 15 or 14, wearing a Ramones shirt, and I see 50-year-old people wearing 'em too, you know? It's just amazing that the Ramones legend has spanned generations.
TP: This was something I was going to bring up, because little kids love them some Ramones!
VRK: Where would you think that they would be familiar with this music? They weren't this popular when they were touring and making albums in the early '80s. Nobody would play them.
TP: There are only a few bands and artists who have had that kind of career after the fact. Tupac Shakur is a possible parallel.
VRK: Right, and that's what I wrote about. When they all started to approach that 50-year mark, they all just passed away within a year of each other and I thought it was somewhat uncanny that that had happened. I talk about the curse in the book obviously, and it makes you wonder if there is such a thing.
TP: There's never a definitive answer on something like that, but when you recall being spooked by someone putting down a curse on the band, and then everyone starts to die so close to each other so many years later, it has to make you wonder. The evidence is overwhelming, from what happened to all the guys, to your battle with brain tumors, to the murder of their former manager Linda Stein.
VRK: And just recently, in mid-January, Gary Kurfirst, their long-time manager, was on vacation - totally healthy, never had a heart problem, dropped dead. Just like that, and this happened just a few months ago and left everybody in shock. He was having such a good time, extended his vacation by a week and he died on his vacation. Yeah, with no history of medical problems.
TP: You were there when the curse was uttered.
VRK: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
TP: Did you not really think about it or believe it or give it any weight until later?
VRK: After that night it really freaked us all out. You know the kids from the Columbine, with those long leather coats, that kind of look? I mean, this is what this guy looked like, and he was clutching a Bible and rolling a cross around in his hand. This was like something out of a movie. And usually backstage at the back door where the band has to go through to get in their tour bus or van or whatever it is, there are usually fans that are waiting to have pictures signed or pictures taken with the band and this was like a totally different thing. It was pouring rain and there was this bizarre group of people standing there.
He had a whole little entourage of people behind him and they started denouncing [the band members], going up to each one of them individually and saying, "You must repent for your sins" and trying to denounce them and have them give in to God and give up this horrible way and their music. It was just so bizarre. We all were left so speechless after this when we got into the car. It left us with chills. After nobody responded to him, he just started cursing each and every one of them. I tried not to look, but he was cursing everybody that was there. We piled into the van and we were all dead quiet. I mean, you could hear a pin drop. And then finally, Dee Dee was like, "That guy gave me the creeps!" We were all really taken aback, we had never experienced anything like that before. People would always tell the band, "You're great, we loved the show," stuff like that. And this was in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was just so creepy. Creepy.
TP: It's not like the band was doing anything overtly sacrilegious.
VRK: Yeah, they weren't Satan worshippers or worshipping the devil in their music in any way, or writing their lyrics backwards to say, "Satan, you are" whatever. I could see if this was happening to some of the heavy metal, Satanic . . . I mean, look at Ozzy Osbourne!
TP: Exactly: Save it for Black Sabbath!
VRK: Yeah, even the name Black Sabbath! So we didn't really give much thought to [the curse] until they all reached that age and it was all like the magic number: 50. Dee Dee was two months short of his 50th birthday, Joey died on Easter morning, barely a month before his 50th birthday; and John was diagnosed with prostate cancer on his 50th birthday. And, naturally, I got sick on my 50th birthday.
TP: You did? Oh, wow!
VRK: Yeah, and it was like a magic number, your time is up kind of thing.
TP: How is your health now?
VRK: I still have issues. When something like that happens to you, you don't just get off scot-free. I could get into it in depth, but I'm not going to bore you with that kind of stuff. Looking at me, my doctor calls me his miracle patient every time he sees me . . . I wasn't afraid of dying, it was just so damn painful. I lost my hearing, they told me I'd never get my hearing back, and I couldn't even just stand up to brush my teeth with an electric toothbrush. I was totally shot.
TP: This is something you bring up late in the book, and really give very little space to - almost shockingly so, like, "Oh, by the way, I had tumors in my brain, no biggie . . ."
VRK: I wanted to just mention it and that I had been through a lot. When I got diagnosed, they actually told me I had had it for at least 15-20 years. And I remember having headaches as far back as 1989 and going to all these doctors in New York and then giving me pills for headaches. Nothing helped me, painkillers, but nobody gave me a brain MRI and it must have been when [the tumors] started. So finally, down here, after three months of looking for cancer in different parts of my body, seven neurologists later, nobody wanted to touch it because of the delicate area it was in, I finally found a doctor/professor in Miami who was willing to do the surgery. I saw him at 4 o'clock on a Friday afternoon, I was his first patient Monday morning at 5 o'clock. It was a few days before Christmas and I told him that a doctor in Gainesville could do [surgery] just after Christmas, and he said, "Vera, you don't have a week." It was that bad. So that I even came out of it as good as I did, I feel like my life has a purpose and I didn't finish doing what I was supposed to do. I hope that this was a part of it, and that Dee Dee is proud of me.
TP: How could he not be? You're very fair and loving to him in this book.
VRK: It's a punk love story! We didn't break up because we no longer loved each other, there were other issues.
TP: Like fearing for your life?
VRK: I believe that, being that he went off his medications and wouldn't go back on them, if I would have stayed with him, I would have just ended up as another statistic and I would not be sitting here talking to you right now. So I had to make a choice and I didn't just lose a husband, I lost my best friend. When we broke up, it was really painful for both of us. He would still call me every day and we would talk and we'd cry. But he didn't want to go back on his medications and that was just my one requirement that I wanted, because otherwise he would have been too violent. I didn't want to end up like Nancy [Spungen] or anybody, you know?
TP: Why didn't he want to go back on his meds?
VRK: He had this in his head - if you ever saw him, he wasn't fat. There wasn't a fat inch on his body. He was convinced that it was making him fat, the medication. I didn't write about it in the book, but he ended up being bulimic and he just developed all these different issues. He wanted to go off the medicine, then he wanted to quit the band. Like I said, it wasn't that we stopped loving each other. But he just went off on a tangent and I was not feeling well and I couldn't cope with everything that was going on. I had to start letting go and taking care of myself. I wondered, is his illness rubbing off on me? Could it be catching? I really started to think that his illness was becoming my illness.
TP: How could it not get ingrained into you, when it's happening to your partner?
VRK: Maybe after all these years, it started to affect me. I was not feeling well and I had these headaches 24/7 and I would have to lay down, and he'd be like, "Are you laying down again? What are you laying there for?" When he wasn't feeling good, I had to deal with it, but the minute I didn't feel good, I was on my own. I wrote about it in the book, but whenever I got sick, he went ahead and had a good time. He would take advantage of me coming down with the flu because he knew I'd be bedridden and that gave him total rein to run wild. I knew that there was something wrong, but I didn't know what. Finally, they told me that I had to go to a psychiatrist, that they could find nothing wrong with me, but they never gave me a brain MRI. I went to a shrink and she put me on Prozac but I still had the headaches. It alleviated some of the depression of my divorce and trying to put the pieces back together. It was all I knew, and when you're trying to start over in your late 30s, it's tough. Especially doing it on your own. He just turned around and quit the band and left me with the finances up in the air. I had houses and cars and apartments and no job for the last 13 years. What was I going to put down on my resume, rock wife? Full-time rock wife for 13 years? That's not gonna cut it! I went through a really hard time and I had to do what I had to do, but I knew that for once I had to put myself first. And that's what I did.
TP: It saved your life in a couple of ways, because if he hadn't have done something to you, your tumors might have still gone undiagnosed and that could have got you.
VRK: If there were reality shows in the '80s like there are now, he would have given Ozzy a run for his money. What can I tell you? We lived a rock and roll soap opera every day. Every day! And when his addictions would subside, as far as taking drugs for any length of time, there would surface other addictions, whether it was tattoos or shopping. Everything was in excess. He could never just do things in moderation, and that's when things become a problem.
TP: That sounds like it would have been so hard on you, not leaving any time to decompress.
VRK: Well, I'm not portraying myself as a saint in any way, you know? We partied together.
TP: But you were still his lifeline, his support system.
VRK: I was, I had to be. I was his chauffeur, his personal manager, his everything.
TP: I don't think you try to portray yourself as saintly in the book. You're obviously not Mother Theresa.
VRK: No, and nor do I claim to be. Like I said, we partied and we did everything but I knew where to draw the line. I knew when to say, "Okay, let's go home now." Or, "I think that's enough now." You know, you don't party 'til you frickin' overdose, or you're foaming at the mouth. I don't know how old you are, but in the late '70s and all throughout the '80s, people did drugs recreationally. That didn't necessarily mean that you were a drug addict, but some people were. It's okay if you can keep it at that. I'm too old to be doing that kind of stuff, especially now. I try to live a pretty clean life. That's in my past. My favorite pastime was smoking weed, period. If I did a line here and there, big deal, to stay up and hang out or go to a new club or something, but it wasn't to constantly be looking for it and wanting it and needing it. That's a whole different thing.
TP: It sounds like Dee Dee's financial habit with drugs was at a rock star level before he became famous.
VRK: Well, absolutely. No one can possibly say that I married him for his money, okay? There was no money. I will swear to this on a Bible: We lived on $10 a day per diem and $175 a week for his paycheck, and he spent most of it. I'd eat a fruit salad a day and what was left over went for cigarettes or maybe a Quaalude or whatever, some weed. We weren't rich by any means, and then when we did start to have a little bit of money and could afford a better life, he had to have the best weed around. He had to have the best of everything. He put out a solo album, Standing in the Spotlight, and the very last song at the end is called "I Want What I Want When I Want It." And he lived by that. That was his motto, it should have been on his tombstone. But he had a lot of great qualities as well and I hope that comes through in the book. He had a big heart, he was very giving, he loved to make people happy. When Stiv Bators came and wanted to borrow one of his knives, because he collected them and had about 200 at one point, he was like, "Give it to him," even though it was one of his favorites. And when Sid [Vicious] saw Stiv's [knife], he had to go to 42nd Street and buy the same knife. And that was the same knife that was used to kill Nancy. I don't know that he actually committed that crime; I heard that it was a drug deal gone bad, and that somebody else used the knife to stab Nancy while Sid was passed out. Because Sid was really a very sweet soul; he didn't have a mean bone in his body. Just because he called himself Sid Vicious, he wasn't vicious.
TP: The legend of how somebody like that is portrayed is often so far from the reality.
VRK: You only know what you read, but when you know the people that were actually involved - we were invited there that night and my intuition told me, don't go. Something just told me, don't go. First of all, I knew that going to the Chelsea meant that Dee Dee would end up shooting heroin with Sid at some point, and I didn't need to get into a shouting, screaming match with Nancy either, because she could be a handful. Dee Dee was disappointed but he listened to me and thank God he did because I'm glad we had no part of that. When we heard about it from people in New York calling us up, Dee Dee and I just looked at ourselves and I said, "I told you so." Something just told me, do not go.
VIEW 4 of 4 COMMENTS
fitzsimmons:
Sounds like an interesting book.
spectre_:
I've been dying to get this book. Dee Dee was a big influence on me musically.