While the overall impression we get of Dee Dee is of an almost child like naivety when it comes to certain aspects of the world, there's also an element of immaturity as he sounds like a petulant child when he talks about various aspects of his relationships with other people. While the impression we get of him in the short History On My Arms is that of someone who we want to like as he's genuinely having fun with the film crew as they're setting up for the shoot, what peaks through in Hey Is Dee Dee Home changes that some what. Especially after he gives his version of what happened in Paris between him, Stiv Bators, Johnny Thunders, and the others involved in that project.
While the accusations of theft against various people can be understood, as he'd already described how he used to steal from his roommates when he was hard up for cash and needed a fix, so you can see how he could easily believe other people capable of doing the same thing if he thought they were using heroin. However, when he started rambling on about how the apartment that Stiv and his girlfriend had in Paris where he was staying was possessed by the devil, and there was something evil about it, you began to wonder about his reliability as an impartial witness to events. (On the Wikipedia entry for the Ramones there's a brief mention of Dee Dee suffering from bipolar illness, which would explain some of his more outrageous claims about Paris.)
As a point of comparison in Vom In Paris, Vom Ritchie, who has obvious and genuine affection for Dee Dee, is embarrassed by some of the accusations that Dee Dee had levelled against Stiv and his girlfriend Carol. According to Vom, Stiv had paid for Dee Dee and his girlfriend to come to Paris, had bought Dee Dee a bass to play for the sessions as he had shown up without any instruments, and was supplying them with room and board in his apartment. The real problem, according to Vom, was an old animosity between Dee Dee and Thunders based on Thunders taking credit for the song "Chinese Rocks" (slang for heroin) which Dee Dee wrote..
Article comments