RAMONE'S A RIGHT-THINKING ROCKER
RIGHT-wing rocker Johnny Ramone scolded his friend Eddie Vedder after the Pearl Jam singer impaled a mask of President Bush and slammed it to the stage at a Denver concert last April. "I got serious with him and told him that he was alienating people," Johnny tells the Washington Times. "And I got him to see the point." The guitarist for the legendary Ramones has always been an ideological outcast in the left-leaning world of rock. The NRA-supporting Johnny calls Ronald Reagan "the greatest president of my lifetime," listens to Rush Limbaugh and Michael Medved on the radio, and watches "The O'Reilly Factor" every night. Johnny, 55, says his conservative views rankled his fellow Ramones. When the band wanted to record "Chinese Rock," a song co-written by late bassist Dee Dee Ramone, Johnny disapproved of the reference to a strain of dope that was prevalent at the time. Ditto when the other guys in the band came up with "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg," a tune dissing Johnny's beloved Reagan. Both times, he lost. After all, a band is a democracy. "But I really enjoyed upsetting them," Johnny says of his former bandmates. "They called me the Rush Limbaugh of rock 'n' roll one time in a Village Voice interview. But, hey, they were just old hippies."