Marky Ramone sits in a dark back booth at DBGB, chef Daniel Boulud’s chic Bowery eatery. “They have my marinara sauce here,” boasts the drummer of the iconic punk rock band the Ramones, pointing to bottles of his Marky Ramone’s Brooklyn’s Own Marinara Sauce.
Marky, 58, is dressed in a stylish blazer with leather sleeves — an update on the band’s classic black-leather-jacket uniform. It’s a look that complements the spiffed-up downtown streets outside.
“The Lower East Side is like anywhere else in the country now. They call it progress. I say it’s lost some of its charm,” says Marky, who has a new memoir, “Punk Rock Blitzkrieg: My Life as a Ramone” (Touchstone), out Tuesday.
The city he grew up in as a teen in the late ’60s was filled with possibility — he once shared a table with Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison at a Greenwich Village club called Salvation when he wasn’t even old enough to drink.
“I sat at the table just taking in the whole scene,” he recalls. “I didn’t have a lot to say. I watched and listened to them talking about this song, that girl, and the other kind of grass.”
Raised by a longshoreman father and teacher mother near Coney Island, Marky, born Marc Bell, was always banging on “tables, desks, playing on pots with the silverware, driving people crazy,” he says.
He also got into fights with some of his teachers — Vietnam vets — at Erasmus High School. “They would physically abuse you. I hit them back.” After his father threatened them, they left him alone.
He was still in high school when he joined his first rock band, Dust, which opened for Alice Cooper. Marky was hooked on the life.
During the 1977 New York City blackout, Marky drunkenly tried to break into a bank near Union Square by throwing rocks at the plate-glass window. “It was fun, but I was stupid,” says Marky, who joined the Ramones in 1978, replacing original drummer Tommy Ramone, who had a falling out with the band.
He was soon whisked away on a 22-city European tour opening for bands like the Clash, who helpfully explained that the fans spitting onto the stage and drenching the musicians in saliva was a form of praise, not disrespect.
Back in the States, during a cameo in the 1979 cult flick “Rock ’n’ Roll High School,” Marky says, fans showed up to the LA film set and showered bandmate Dee Dee with pot, pills and more. (He died of a heroin overdose in 2002.)
Marky also fondly recalls Phil Spector brandishing guns in the studio while the band was recording 1980’s “End of the Century,” and the time he cursed out Sting after the Police frontman dissed the Ramones while sharing a bill in 1979. (Sting made fun of a Ramones lapel pin. “F–k you,” Marky swore. “It’s just peroxide reggae,” he later quipped, referring to Sting’s music.)
Guitarist Johnny Ramone “stole” lead singer Joey Ramone’s girlfriend (the boys were not related, but took on the name). And though Joey and Johnny continued playing together, they stopped speaking permanently by the early ’80s. “We weren’t normal people,” Marky says.
In 1982, Marky was booted from the band — he was drinking heavily, hiding vodka bottles in garbage bins and eventually crashed his car through the plate-glass window of a Downtown Brooklyn furniture store. A stint in rehab was followed by work as a bike messenger and a construction worker.
The Ramones welcomed a sober Marky back in 1987. And two years later, he found himself at the home of author Stephen King, who invited the band — big horror and sci-fi fans — to his home.
“During a break in the friendly Yankees-Red Sox debate between Johnny and King, [the writer] handed Dee Dee a copy of his best-selling novel ‘Pet Sematary,’ ” Marky recalls. Dee Dee wrote the song “Pet Sematary” in less than an hour in King’s basement.
With none of the band’s original lineup still alive, Marky (now sober for 30 years) continues to tour around the world playing Ramones songs, with Andrew W.K. on vocals.
But he misses his old pals: “I would give anything if they were still here.”