John Pays Tribute to His Late Friend Johnny Ramone in a Short Instagram Video
John loved Pinups and Johnny Ramone did not agree on a certain record. That is what the maestro shared in a short instagram video posted by the Johnny Ramone foundation on instagram. In a two-minute clip serving to pay tribute to the late guitarist in the times of Covid-19 pandemic instead of the usual night at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, he shares an anecdote about his late friend. They did not appreciate David Bowie’s cover album equally.
This is John Frusciante, I wanted to wish happy birthday to Johnny Ramone. Happy birthday – wherever he is and to his memory.
We were great friends, we had a lot of fun time sitting around, listening to music and talking about it in a critical way. He was very concerned about which guitar is that I like better, which other guitar and stuff like that.
And there was one particular memory that comes to mind right now. Linda Ramone and I were very big fans of David Bowie’s record, Pinups – which was his last album as the Ziggy Stardust character, and it’s full of cover songs from the mid-sixties in England, that were hits in America.
Linda and I felt very strongly about this album and Johnny believed that this was mainly because of the cover. He was a big fan of Ziggy Stardust and Alladin Sane, but he didn’t think very highly of Pinups. And so he believed that we only really thought it was a great record because the front cover is great – the front cover, the visible part of it. He proceeded to take us through every single song on the record – we’d listen to the original and then we’d listen to the version on Pinups. And he really did prove his point: every single song on the record, the original version, was superior to the David Bowie version.
Nevertheless, I don’t think it changed the way Linda and I feel about that album. Whether it’s because of the cover of the music, we have kno way of knowing it. But Johnny certainly was right: the original versions of those songs are better than the versions on Pinups.
Thank you, Johnny, for spreading the wisdom to me.
Check out the official Johnny Ramone instagram account for short tribute videos from Seymour Stein, Gaston Sanchez, David Bagus, Vincent Gallo, Billy Idol, Pete Yorn, John Travolta and more – as well as throwbacks to other tribute events from 2005 on. If you would like to pay homage to the late artist, use the hashtag #JohnnyRamoneArmy.
