I remember being turned on to The Beach Boys, hearing 'Surfin' U.S.A.,' I guess, in 1960. But The Beatles really did it to me.

When Dee Dee would start singing, he would stop playing the guitar, because he couldn't sing and play at the same time.

It was the glitter days, and the New York Dolls and Kiss would come play at the Coventry, all those bands would come in from Manhattan.

They asked me to sing - actually, it was Dee Dee, because he had seen me in Sniper and thought I wasn't like anybody else. Everybody else was doing an Iggy or a Mick Jagger.

One day I got a phone call, and Johnny and Dee Dee asked me if I wanted to join their band. I said, 'Yeah.'

The first record I bought may have been Del Shannon's 'Runaway.'

There's nobody as good as the Ramones, never will be.

I'd just sit with Dee Dee on the corner off of Queens Boulevard and drink and insult people and stuff. That's when I got kicked out of my house. My mother told me it was for my own good.

Forest Hills was a middle-class neighborhood filled with snobby rich people and their screaming brats.

Nobody picked up guns in those days. You put on music, and it made you feel great.