Dee Dee Ramone's guitar and leather jacket
Photo: Hard Rock

The worldwide Hard Rock Cafe chain is opening its vault of music memorabilia to offer the public a glimpse at its treasures, trinkets and trophies. And while ogling such items as Jim Morrison's leather pants and the over-the-top capes worn by Elvis and Elton John, music fans can also brush up on their rock history.

The Hard Rock Vault in Orlando, Florida, will give patrons a peek at its collection, spread out over 17,000 square feet, at a "soft launch" on Monday (December 23), though music fans must wait until January 16 for the official ribbon-cutting, according to a Hard Rock spokesperson. Among the items on display are B.B. King's "Lucille" guitar, Dee Dee Ramone's guitar and black leather jacket, Buddy Holly's signature horn-rimmed glasses, the motorcycle jacket and boots Bruce Springsteen wore on the cover of his Born to Run album, and the two items that started it all for the Hard Rock franchise — the guitars of Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend that hung above the bar in the original Hard Rock Cafe in London (click for photos).

Besides the expected bric-a-brac that is similar to what hangs in Hard Rock Cafes around the world, the Vault offers a virtual time machine called the Total Immersion Tour that allows folks to journey through influential eras like the late '70s punk explosion ("The Back Alley"), the mind-bending '60s ("The Psychedelic Meltdown") and the British Invasion ("The Light and the Dark"), so named for two bands, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, that were almost diametrically opposed in their approach, but together wound up changing the face of music forever.

And what nest of nostalgia would be complete without an homage to Elvis? "The King's Chamber" is the place to go to find items from Presley's early days as a wide-eyed, blues-loving kid from Tupelo, Mississippi, on through his bejeweled reign over the Las Vegas strip.

• The Doors
• Buddy Holly
• B.B. King
• Dee Dee Ramone
• The Ramones

Dee Dee Ramone
Photo: MTV News

Former Ramones bassist Dee Dee Ramone (born Douglas Colvin) died on June 5 as a result of an accidental heroin overdose, according to a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Coroner's office.

"He had an abrasion on the left side of his forehead and a needle puncture wound on his left arm," said spokesperson David Campbell, reading from the report.

The body, which showed no other trauma, was found face down on the arm of a couch in Dee Dee's Hollywood home by his wife (see "Dee Dee Ramone Found Dead In Los Angeles"). A syringe was left on the kitchen counter and a spoon with possible drug residue, five balloons with possible drug contents and one broken balloon were also found near the body. Arriving officers were told that Dee Dee, 50, had a history of intravenous drug use, according to the report.

Dee Dee, who wrote such beloved Ramones tunes as "Psycho Therapy," "53rd and 3rd" and "Poison Heart," was considered to be one of the most influential punk bass players of all time. "I believe he has influenced every kid playing bass that saw him perform. ... He was my friend and I will always miss him," guitarist Johnny Ramone said in a statement at the time of Dee Dee's death (see "'Dee Dee Ramone Was Punk Rock' To Friends, Fans"). His overdose came 14 months after the passing of frontman Joey Ramone from lymphatic cancer (see "Punk Pioneer Joey Ramone Dead At 49").

• Dee Dee Ramone
• The Ramones

Dee Dee Ramone
Photo: MTV News

When friends, fans and associates heard the news of Dee Dee Ramone's death Thursday, the expected reaction of surprised sorrow was compounded by the fact that now two of the original members of the group that lit the fuse for the punk explosion no longer walk among us.

Although Wednesday evening marked a tremendous loss to the world of punk rock (see "UPDATE: Dee Dee Ramone Found Dead In Los Angeles"), Dee Dee and the Ramones as a whole are forever ingrained into music's legacy.

"Dee and I started the Ramones in 1974; I have been his friend since 1969," said guitarist Johnny in a statement. "For 33 years, we have been through a lot. This is very shocking to me.

"He was a star and the most influential punk rock bassist. I believe he has influenced every kid playing bass that saw him perform ... He was my friend and I will always miss him."

Coming a mere 14 months after Joey Ramone succumbed to lymphatic cancer (see "Punk Pioneer Joey Ramone Dead At 49"), Dee Dee's passing brings even more grief for those in the Ramones' inner circle.

"I was still working out the final details on Joey's headstone when I got the shocking word that another brother in our extended family was gone," said Mickey Leigh, Joey Ramone's brother. "For me, he was one of the greatest rock and roll songwriters alive. Today, sadly, another life becomes legend. My heartfelt sympathies go out to his wife, family and friends."

"On top of Joey's [passing], it's not very good news," said Hilly Krystal, owner of New York's punk launching pad, CBGB, who last saw the late bassist at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in March. "I was shocked and it came as quite a surprise. I haven't seen him in a while, but he was always very friendly, aside from [his] obvious problems. I guess he was troubled, which is why he quit the band in the first place. He was always a good songwriter, and I think was just starting to get serious about it again."

"I learned the news Thursday and it broke my heart," wrote 14-year-old Brendan, from Braintree, Massachusetts (see "You Tell Us: Remembering Dee Dee Ramone"). "Dee Dee Ramone was one of the greatest songwriters of punk rock music, practically its inventor. His death is a tragic loss to the music world. I think I can speak for many when I say music will never be the same without him. At least we can all hope and pray that Dee Dee and Joey are together again, smiling down."

"Playing [the Ramones collection] All the Stuff (and More) Volume II, and drinking Wild Turkey still doesn't ease the pain," mourned Arp, 40, from Phillipsburg, New Jersey. "I was catatonic when Joey died, now I've gone mental. So long Dee Dee, and thanks."

Dee Dee Ramone left behind fond impressions of him as an immature but likable workhorse — even after parting company with the band in the late '80s — who lived fast to the punk ideals.

"Dee Dee Ramone was punk rock," said longtime Ramones manager Gary Kurfirst in a statement. "I'm really going to miss him. He was truly a unique individual and there will never be anyone like him. I'll never forget Dee Dee's classic acceptance speech at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, when he walked up to the microphone and said, 'I would like to thank myself, and congratulate myself, and if I could, I would pat myself on the back.' That was Dee Dee, direct and to the point."

Ramones anecdotes from their early club days were too numerous to count, but one good-natured memory stands above the others for Hilly Krystal. "He had this girlfriend at that time, Connie," he recounted. "She was tough, and prone, after a couple of drinks, to haul off and whack him. He wouldn't hit her back, so we'd pretty regularly have to pull her off him. He was a big kid then, and I guess he always was."

"He was sort of a wacky guy who wrote great songs," said Deborah Harry, whose band Blondie, like the Ramones, Talking Heads and Television emerged from Krystal's club. "He was a really good songwriter, though a little self-destructive. He was always nice to me, and we always had a good time together. He was a lot of fun.

"He had this sort of manic energy," she added. "I always thought that the Ramones were this tactical force, like the Marines jumping out of a plane or something. They had this focus and energy that I really admired."

Music journalist Gil Kaufman remembered his conversations with Ramone as "all over the place" — customary of almost any chat — but "really up." Kaufman conducted one of the last interviews with Dee Dee in March, for the revised liner notes of a Rhino reissue of 1983's Subterranean Jungle, set for release along with three other Ramones LPs in August.

"I spoke to the two producers of the album, Johnny, their manager, Marky ... and of all the people I spoke to, he had the clearest memories of the [Ramones' heyday]. He remembered everything about the old days, especially the Malibu Diner Deli, where they used to eat regularly. They would always order shrimp cocktails — even for breakfast — just because they could."

"Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and have a nice dinner with the band," Ramone told Kaufman, who noted that Dee Dee was probably the most well-liked among the bandmembers. Johnny and Joey couldn't stand each other, Kaufman said, and Marky could be distant, but everyone (almost) always loved Dee Dee and he always loved them, to the end.

"There's nothing wrong with anybody in the Ramones, I like them better than anyone else," Ramone said.

The Ramones had made a little bit of money from their previous releases by the time of Subterranean Jungle's release. While the other three guys moved to Manhattan, Dee Dee remained in Queens, becoming the "richest teenager in the neighborhood." Still buying pot from the same guy in the schoolyard, but making the scene in a shiny, new Camaro.

While Dee Dee's friends and fans sought solace from the fond memories, others equated the loss of half the original Ramones as more sand sifting through punk's hourglass.

"I'm too sad to even write straight right now," Daniel, 23, from Brazil wrote to MTV News. "Joey and Dee Dee made a greater contribution to Western culture than most people, even fans, believe. Their work will never fade away like they did."

"To lose Dee Dee so soon after Joey is unbearable," noted 42-year-old Lynette from Detroit. "Punk's not dead yet, but its pulse is getting weaker."

Dee Dee was more than the Ramones' bassist. After leaving the Ramones, he continued to write songs for them, formed another band (the Chinese Dragons) and launched a solo career that spawned two albums and a best-of set.

When not strapped with a bass, Dee Dee authored two books: the autobiography Lobotomy: Surviving The Ramones; and a fictionalized account of his last few years in New York, Chelsea Horror Hotel, in which he describes being tormented by the ghosts of friends Sid Vicious, Johnny Thunders and Stiv Bators, as well as various specters that supposedly haunt the infamous hotel. He was working on a third book, Legend of a Rock Star, about his post-Ramones career, when he died.

Dee Dee was also a painter, specializing in a bright, cartoon-ish style, who's had several pieces of his work displayed in galleries. Additionally, he was a poet, reciting original work at a three-week festival celebrating the Beat Generation, held at the Knitting Factory in Los Angeles in late April.

Throughout his other endeavors, the music didn't stop, though. He and his solo band were scheduled to play a show at San Francisco's Pound SF on Saturday (June 8).

"He was a little kid who would get into trouble sometimes, but he always had a great heart, and he was incredibly creative," said longtime Ramones songwriter and producer Daniel Rey, who claimed Dee Dee sounded "better than ever" when he spoke with him by phone a week ago. The last Rey saw him in person was last month, when he, Dee Dee and C.J. Ramone played a set together at New York's Roseland.

"He was painting and he was really enjoying that," Rey continued. "He was writing books and he was going to start working on another record ... Dee Dee was always creative and liked to put stuff out — sometimes too quickly, but he always had to be doing something. He just needed to work."

"Dee Dee Ramone was the Ramones," summed up Nicole, 15, from Salisbury, North Carolina. "He was everything, more than any of the other Ramones. He was an artist, writer and musician, everything I want to be. I always wanted to meet him. I used to think about what I would say or ask. Now I'll never have the chance."

• The Ramones
• Dee Dee Ramone

Joey & Dee Dee Ramone
Photo: MTV News

The Ramones, with their torn jeans, black leather jackets and walloping, supercharged riffs, were not only the definitive punk band (they created the classic form); they were also a great American band. And Dee Dee Ramone — who died at his home in Hollywood on Wednesday night at the age of 50 — was a crucial creative motor within the group (see "Dee Dee Ramone Found Dead In Los Angeles").

"He was the main songwriter," guitarist Johnny Ramone told MTV News. "And he was one of the great star bassists of all time — the model for all the punk bassists after him.

"It's shocking," he continued. "I thought he didn't do drugs anymore. He always walked a tightrope, but he was a survivor."

Dee Dee and Johnny had talked about forming a band as far back as 1972, when they both had piddling jobs with the same company in their native Forest Hills in Queens, New York. "Then we decided we wanted to be normal — and you can't be normal if you're in a band," Johnny said. "But then I lost my job in 1974, and I said to him, 'Well, let's start a band.' "

The group ultimately wound up including minimalist drummer Tommy Erdelyi ("Tommy Ramone") and singer Jeffrey Hyman ("Joey Ramone" — who died of lymphatic cancer just 14 months ago). Johnny (born John Cummings) provided the group's thunderous riffs (played so fast that their early sets at New York's CBGB sometimes lasted just 20 minutes). Joey brought a loveable, melodic bubblegum consciousness to the group. Tommy contributed a basic, propulsive thwack. And Dee Dee, who wrote such early Ramones gems as "Havana Affair" and "Long Way Back to Germany," (and hollered out the "One! Two! Three! Four!" kickoffs so familiar to fans at live shows), added a sometimes startling personal candor. (One of his songs, "53rd and 3rd," on the Ramones' 1976 debut album, reflected his experiences as a sometime male hustler scrounging for drug money at that notorious Manhattan pickup intersection.)

Dee Dee's longtime heroin addiction often made him difficult to deal with. "He was a complete liar," says former Ramones manager Danny Fields, who's now writing a book about Joey Ramone. "Nothing he said was true. He once told me, 'I think with my heart, man.' I said, 'What a good thing you don't think with your head.' "

On the other hand, Ed Stasium, who worked with the Ramones early on as a producer and engineer, says that Dee Dee "seemed to me at all times to be the same, whether he was f---ed up or not. But then I never saw him down and dirty."

Stasium recalls talking to Dee Dee after the Ramones recorded their (relatively) biggest commercial hit, the 1980 album End of the Century, produced by legendary '60s pop-master Phil Spector (whom Dee Dee claimed held him captive in his mansion). "He told me, 'Man, I don't know who played bass on that record. I know I wasn't there.' But, you know, he definitely was."

After years of unjustly minimal record sales and brutal, nonstop touring, Dee Dee quit the Ramones in 1989. He briefly became a rapper, of all things (very unsuccessfully), and later, after moving to L.A., an extremely marginal novelist. He was also a painter in later years; and although the popular perception was that he had fallen out with the Ramones because of their incessant internecine squabbling, Dee Dee in fact kept writing songs for the group right up through their studio swan song, the 1995 album Adios Amigos.

"They were guys who had arguments between themselves," says Arturo Vega, the Ramones' art director and conceptual consultant. "But by the next morning, they'd be talking to each other again."

Dee Dee reunited with the Ramones for their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in March; and just a few weeks ago, at a solo-with-band appearance at a booksellers' convention in New York, he offered up a tribute to his departed friend Joey, performing the signature Ramones tunes "Pinhead" and "Blitzkrieg Bop."

Johnny Ramone said it "took about 12 hours" before Joey's death sank in last year, and he figured there'll be a similar lag in processing Dee Dee's departure.

"It's hard, you know? It's hard to hear about these things and finally realize ... you know: 'They're gone.' "

—Kurt Loder

• The Ramones
• Dee Dee Ramone

Dee Dee Ramone
Photo: MTV News

Dee Dee Ramone, a founding member of punk pioneers the Ramones, died Wednesday night in his Hollywood home, according to a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Coroner's office. The bassist was 50 (see "Dee Dee Ramone Remembered By Kurt Loder").

Ramone (born Douglas Glenn Colvin) was found unresponsive by his wife at 8:25 p.m. She called 911, and fire department paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene at 8:40 p.m.

A coroner's office spokesperson said the case will be treated as a possible accidental drug overdose. Investigators found a syringe and other drug paraphernalia on Ramone's kitchen counter. An autopsy was conducted Thursday, though the cause of death remains unknown, pending the results of toxicology tests by the coroner's pathologist, which normally takes up to six weeks. The process is often expedited, however, when media attention surrounds a case, the spokesperson said.

Dee Dee formed the Ramones in the Forest Hills section of Queens, New York, in 1974 with guitarist Johnny Ramone (John Cummings), drummer Tommy Ramone (Tom Erdelyi) and singer Joey Ramone (Jeffrey Hyman), who died of lymphoma last April (see ). During his Ramones tenure, Dee Dee wrote or co-wrote such tunes as "Rockaway Beach," "Strength to Endure," "Too Tough to Die," "Teenage Lobotomy," "Psycho Therapy" and "Chinese Rocks."

Dee Dee left the band following the release of 1989's Brain Drain to adopt the persona of rapper Dee Dee King and was replaced by C.J. Ramone (Christopher John Ward).

When his rap debut, 1988's Standing in Spotlight, proved less than successful, he formed the Chinese Dragons.

Dee Dee returned to the Ramones fold in the '90s, penning "Pet Sematary," the group's musical contribution to the Stephen King film of the same name, and several tracks for the Ramones' studio swan song, 1995's Adios Amigos. He reunited with the Ramones in August 1996 for a show at the Hollywood Palace that featured cameo performances by Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, Motörhead's Lemmy Kilmister, Rancid's Lars Frederiksen and Tim Armstrong, and Soundgarden's Chris Cornell and Ben Shepherd. The performance later resulted in the 1997 live album We're Outta Here!.

"He was a star and the most influential punk rock bassist," Johnny Ramone said in a statement. "I believe he has influenced every kid playing bass that saw him perform. ... He was my friend and I will always miss him."

He last shared a stage with his fellow Ramones in March, when the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (see ).

"I'll never forget Dee Dee's classic acceptance speech at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony," Ramones manager Gary Kurfirst said in a statement, "when he walked up to the microphone and said, 'I would like to thank myself, and congratulate myself, and if I could, I would pat myself on the back.' That was Dee Dee, direct and to the point. ... Dee Dee Ramone was punk rock. I'm really going to miss him. He was truly a unique individual and there will never be anyone like him."

"He was sort of a wacky guy who wrote great songs," said Deborah Harry, whose band Blondie, like the Ramones, emerged from New York's CBGB scene. "He was a really good songwriter, though a little self-destructive. He was always nice to me, and we always had a good time together. He was a lot of fun.

"He had this sort of manic energy," she added. "I always thought that the Ramones were this tactical force, like the Marines jumping out of a plane or something. They had this focus and energy that I really admired."

"I was still working out the final details on Joey's headstone when I got the shocking word that another brother in our extended family was gone," said Mickey Leigh, Joey Ramone's brother. "For me, he was one of the greatest rock and roll songwriters alive. Today, sadly, another life becomes legend. My heartfelt sympathies go out to his wife, family and friends."

[This story was updated at 12:14 P.M. EST on 06.07.02.]

—Joe D'Angelo and Gideon Yago

• The Ramones
• Dee Dee Ramone