Tommy Ramone was the odd man out in the Ramones — the pioneering New York punk band that combined primal rock’n’roll energy and social dysfunction to define the punk generation and spearhead a noisy musical insurrection that inspired the Sex Pistols, the Clash and a thousand other bands.
The advance troops of the punk revolution, the Ramones were misfits. The bassist Dee Dee Ramone (real name Douglas Colvin) was a heroin addict and sometime male prostitute; the singer Joey Ramone (Jeff Hyman) had an obsessive-compulsive disorder that led to time in a psychiatric hospital; and the guitarist Johnny Ramone (Johnny Cummings) had been a violent teenage delinquent. Tommy Ramone (born Tamas Erdelyi), the drummer, suffered none of their addictions, disorders or dysfunction and without his