did you make a tell all book about some of their incestuous ways?
Oh, hell no.
It was just my adventure stories over about an eight year period, documented with photographs and editorialized with my brilliant and witty commentary. The Ramones were only a very small portion of the whole, representing only a two week tour, but their lawyers were very pro-active at not allowing anyone to mention them outside their control.
Part of the process of publishing legally required the publisher to acquire a number of releases.
I only had a few proper releases and, in my naiveté, I thought I could publish anyway, since it was mostly a work of fiction, like a joke book, but based on real life and about real people.
Next thing I knew I had "Cease and Desist" orders from twenty two different bands, several I thought were my friends, and two more law suits, preventing any mention of
anything. The publisher got even more suits and all they had done was make scans of my layouts and send specific portions to the legal staff at certain recording companies who held absolutely ridiculous and restrictive copyright documents on the bands they owned as slaves.
I was done with the project at that point.
Meh. I was devastated at the time, but it's old news.
My kids will enjoy the manuscript. It's actually six three-ring binders worth of photos and my typed out comments, captions and stories of life on the road with pop-rock bands of the eighties. Think of a giant scrapbook in six volumes, typed on a word processor, instead of calligraphied. Actually there are some handwritten parts, but they are scans from bar napkins and notes people had given me, like a threat of death if the light hits "Ed" (Van Halen) in the eyes and he falls down again and funny shit like that. I did not have anything do with lights, though.
