Joey Ramone's real-life sibling has written a biography

[StevieB]

Music fans know Mickey Leigh's brother, Jeff, as Joey Ramone, one of rock's most influential, enigmatic frontmen. Mickey knew him as the big brother who offered to share his bed whenever Mickey was frightened by the monster under his own.

Mickey and Jeff were born and raised in the Forest Hills neighborhood of New York City's Queens borough. Mickey played in his first band, the Overdose of Sound, as a fifth-grader, and when he was 12, his brother Jeff produced his first studio record.

In 2001, Mickey lost his only brother to lymphatic cancer in a hospital in New York, a city that had remnants of Joey Ramone sprinkled everywhere in its DNA.

Nobody knew the Ramones singer better than Mickey Leigh, and in his new book, "I Slept With Joey Ramone: A Family Memoir" (Touchstone, $26), he skillfully reveals the humanity, tragedy and triumph behind the long-legged, leather jacket-clad rock legend.

Co-written by the man who invented the term "punk rock," Legs McNeil, "I Slept" reads like the best Ramones songs sound: honest, gritty, clearly voiced, often funny, and always engaging.

I caught Leigh and McNeil on the phone before their reading in Minneapolis this week.

Q Why do we need another Ramones book?

A "Nobody's gotten it right yet," says Leigh with a sigh. "I really wanted to get it right once and for all."

Leigh has a very real and appealing narrative voice. "I write like I speak," he explains.
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