Quotes from Tommy Ramone

I was born in Budapest, Hungary, and moved to the United States in 1956. It was during the Hungarian Revolution when Russian tanks rolled into Budapest, and my family - me, my brother, and my parents - escaped over the border to Austria. We just took whatever we could carry. It was perilous, but we made it across.

Bowie's 'Hunky Dory' influenced me. 'Ziggy Stardust' influenced Johnny Ramone a lot, especially his guitar parts.

I was always into bluegrass as a kid. Basically, I like music that has a basic simple structure and that has a lot of emotion and feel. Bluegrass and other old time music fits the bill, as well as what became punk - they both kind of have a similar framework.

Dee Dee very much filled in the bottom of our sound as opposed to supplying the rhythm.

The drums were new to me; I was just playing what was in my head. I was a guitar player originally - so on the drums, I just played what was in my head rather than caring too much about what others were playing. And in that way, I came up with a simple but unique style.

We used to sit around and listen to the radio and not hear anything like the stuff we like, so we decided to play it ourselves.

In the early days, I was living with Dee Dee for a little while, and he was never around then, either. He would always be out. He was kind of an energetic guy who was always on the run.