I-95 Drive Home Mystery Artist [VIDEO]

Tonight’s mystery artists had such a dramatic time together as a band their story has been turned into a theatre production. Think you know who they might be??

I found this story in the LA Times about a new play opening called ‘Four Chords and a Gun’  at the Bootleg Theatre in Los Angles that goes deep into the fractious relationships among the members of the Ramones, New York City’s architects of the late ’70s punk rock movement in the U.S.

According to the article:

There's a lot of push-pull,” The playwright Bowie says of the Ramones captured in the production, directed by Jessica Hanna, Bootleg’s producing and managing director. “Yes, the band all wants to be rock stars, but they all have very different visions in how that will be accomplished and what that will look like once they're there. " I saw that as interesting and not a very binary conflict,” he says. “It's not just, 'This person wants this thing and there's something standing in his way.' They're in each other's way. They're in their own way.”

For Ramones fans, the recording sessions for “End of the Century” are the thing of myth. The band was accustomed to a no-fuss, no-frills approach in the studio, while Spector would obsess over a singular guitar part for days. Depending on which tale you believe, Spector even pulled a gun on the band. (Hence the name)

Bowie tried to ground as much of the story as possible in fact, reading  every Ramones book he could find. A key source, he says, was “I Slept With Joey Ramone: A Punk Rock Family Memoir,” written by Joey’s brother Mickey Leigh, with Legs McNeil.

“This isn’t ‘Jersey Boys,’ ” he jokes. “There's something tragic about the show. These guys’ tragic flaw, if you want to put it in grand and mythical terms, was the need to be famous or be loved. They went to great, crazy lengths to do that, and it didn't quite work in their lifetimes. Tragedy is the oldest form of theater.”

‘Four Chords and a Gun’ runs through the end of July in LA at the Bootleg Theatre.

Here's the real thing with our featured song.