"Sometimes, there was just drums on one track, a guitar on one track. ![]() "We just basically had vocals," Stasium says. Then, he and producer Ed Stasium went through a time-consuming process of stripping those demo recordings down and building them back up around Joey Ramone's vocals. Leigh also negotiated for the rights to other unreleased recordings, some of them dating to the 1980s. He says the idea for the album started with the two demos he recorded in Ramone's East Village apartment in 2001. Ya Know? after one of Joey Ramone's favorite expressions. Leigh is the executive producer of his brother's new album, which he named. "And I never thought these were going to be used for this purpose." He’s invested in the early stages, which points to his desire to hit this performance out of the park."The ones I had were recorded on a $38 microphone that I had gotten from Lester Bangs," Leigh says. “And I can’t think of a time where there was a lead actor who could break a story like this with a writer/director, that’s not usually the rhythm of how it goes… Pete is looking at this project in a whole different way than a lot of actors approach these things. “Pete and Jason are adamant that they want to build this together,” he says. Brown says that the team is prepping now for an as-yet-unspecified future start date, which he hopes will be sooner rather than later, but that the combination of Davidson’s love of music, physicality and “rock and roll” attitude - not to mention Pete’s close working relationship with Orley - have combined for a dream project so far. Leigh’s memoir is filled with touching, tragic and hilarious stories from the siblings’ years living together at home, and of the Ramones’ rise to punk primacy - though Brown notes that the film will not be a Ramones biopic, per se, but rather a true adaptation of Leigh’s 2010 book, co-written with legendary punk scribe Legs McNeil.Īs of early June, Brown says the work to adapt the book was ramping up and he was excited about the “rare” opportunity to tap into a primary source like Leigh to help shape the narrative all the original members of the Ramones - Joey (born Jeffrey Hyman), guitarist Johnny (born John Cummings), bassist Dee Dee (Douglas Colvin) and drummer Tommy (Thomas Erdelyi) are deceased. It’s that high esteem that Brown says has made it a priority to tell an entertaining tale, but also one that is an authentic origin story of how the band came together and operated during their tumultuous 20-plus-year career. With 'It's Alive,' A Legendary Ramones Live Album Finally Gets Its Due ![]() The Ramones were voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002 and received a lifetime achievement award from the Recording Academy in 2011 (despite never having been nominated for a competitive Grammy). It’s gonna be really interesting and I’m excited,” says Davidson, who will re-team with his Big Time Adolescence director and friend Jason Orley, with whom he’s co-writing the script. “Because Joey did a bit of everything and we’re following his life, so you’re going to see a bit of that.” In addition to the music lessons, Davidson says he’s been hanging out with Leigh, and talking to everybody he can find from the old days - as well as “the whole Queens crew” from the neighborhood where Joey and Mickey grew up and where the Ramones were formed in 1974. ![]() ![]() “I’m definitely taking it very serious and I’m doing my research,” he explains, describing his current regimen of singing, drum and guitar lessons. “I’m about to start music lessons and voice lessons and all this other s–t and it’s honestly a dream come true that they’re giving Pete a shot,” he says, referring to himself in the third person.”Hopefully I do it justice and I hope I don’t let anybody down.”ĭavidson says he’s definitely “really f-ing nervous” about the gig - but also just as excited. It sounds like things will be very different on the set of I Slept With Joey Ramone, though, as the biopic - based on the memoir of the same name by the late Ramones singer’s brother, Mickey Leigh - has Davidson digging in deeper than he ever has in order to do justice to the towering punk progenitor. The lanky comedian notes how little prep he did for such musical bits as “ NFT” and “ Stu” on the most recent season of SNL, while praising co-star Redd for doing the work by reading up and committing to elaborate make-up and costuming.
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