Lobotomy is the most lurid and unlikely temperance tract yet from the underbelly of rock ‘n’ roll. On a wild roller-coaster ride from his fucked-up childhood in Berlin and Munich to his lonely, methadone-quaffing stay at a cheap hotel in Earl’s Court and newfound peace on the straight and narrow, Dee Dee Ramone catapults us into the raw world of sex, addiction, and two-minute songs. It isn’t pretty. With the velocity of a Ramones song, Lobotomy rockets through headlining days at CBGB’s to the breakup of the Ramones’ happy family with an unrelenting backbeat of hate and squalor. His girlfriend ODs; running buddy Johnny Thunders steals his ode to heroin, “Chinese Rocks;” Sid Vicious shoots up using toilet water; a pistol-weilding Phil Spector holds the band hostage in Beverly Hills. Hey! Ho! Let’s Go!

Praise for LOBOTOMY

“This memoir by the bassist for the Ramones would please Nietzsche, who remarked, ‘I love only what a man has written with his blood.’ His self-deprecating guide to the early, fervent days of punk rock closes with what could serve as its epitaph: ‘It gave everybody a chance to say something. That’s revolution.”

—The New Yorker

“Kerouac he ain’t, but Dee Dee’s style has a certain rough-hewn charm, and his story—knee deep in sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll—is too incident-packed to be anything less than gripping.”

—James McNair, Mojo Filter

Dee Dee Ramone doesn’t quite know what he’s getting himself into when he and his wife Barbara move into the Chelsea Hotel with their dog Banfield. The room he’s staying in might be the very room where his old friend Sid stabbed Nancy. Dee Dee spends most of his time trying to score drugs and walking Banfield, with whom he can magically communicate. Meanwhile, he can’t stand his neighbors and though he shies away from violence, he wishes everyone were six feet under. Dee Dee gets involved with the transvestite lover of one of his gay fellow addicts. When Barbara finds out, things get out of hand. All the while Dee Dee is tormented by the living and the dead demons that plague the hotel, along with the ghosts of his old dead punk rock friends Sid Vicious, Johnny Thunders, and Stiv Batos. And that’s when the devil himself decides to join the party…..