Bass Guitar Place: Dee Dee Ramone

The Ramones - an American Rock band often regarded as the first punk rock group.

Formed in Forest Hills, Queens, New York with their surnames as "Ramone", though none of them are actually related. They performed 2,263 concerts, touring virtually non-stop for 22 years., in 1974, all members of the band used stage names In 1996, after a tour with the Lollapalooza music festival, the band played they final show, and then disbanded.

The band's three founding members - Joey Ramone, Johnny Ramone and Dee Dee Ramone, died within 8 years of the break-up.

Dee Dee Ramone (Douglas Glenn Colvin) (September 18, 1951 - June 5, 2002) was a German-American songwriter and bassist, best remembered as a founding member of punk rock band The Ramones.

Dee Dee was also known for his distinctive count-in style, used to start off many Ramones songs.

Though nearly all of the Ramones' songs were credited equally to all the band members, Dee Dee was the group's primary lyricist and songwriter. He was the bas guitarist the for the group from their formation in 1974 through 1989, although at first he wanted to play the guitar.

Dee Dee struggled with drug addiction , especially heroin; he began using drugs as a teenager, and continued to use for the majority of his adult life. He seemed to clean up his act in the early 1990s and to remain clean for most of that decade until 2002, when he was found dead from a heroin overdose.