Big fan of Nick Cave ever since I first heard The Birthday Party. But, me being a true pedant, even Nick is not immune to my fernickittiness. Although it hasn't tainted my love of Nick's work in general, this has been bugging me since September 2004. In the song There She Goes, My Beautiful World from the album Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus Cave declares:
JohnnyThunders was half alive
when he wrote Chinese Rocks...
As any fule kno Douglas Glenn Colvin (1951-2002) aka Dee Dee Ramone and Richard Lester Meyers (b1949) aka Richard Hell, wrote the song Chinese Rock(s) in 1976.
What happened is really clear, and the songwriting credits can all be checked at BMI. The song is by me and Dee Dee, but Dee Dee did 75 percent of it. I mean, all I did was write two verses out of three. Dee Dee wrote the music, the concept was his. He's basically responsible for it. But he brought me the song; he didn't even know Johnny and Jerry, but we were friends and he thought the band was great. And when the Ramones didn't want to do the song he said, 'Look, I've written one verse of this song with the chorus and it's about heroin, how about you write the rest of it and it's yours?
Richard Hell (2005)
Dee Dee gives us a version 2:30 into the video...
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Funny, I heard "when he rode Chinese Rocks" - didn't know that about the song, but it makes total sense.
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