Rock Musician, Songwriter. He is remembered as a founding member and bassist of the pioneer punk-rock band The Ramones in 1974. Although the band members were not brothers by blood, they all adopted the last name of 'Ramone'. He was the band's most prolific lyricist and songwriter, writing many of the band's most well-known songs, such as "53rd & 3rd," "Glad to See You Go," "Commando", "I Wanna Be Sedated," "Teenage Lobotomy," "Rockaway Beach", and "Poison Heart". He was born Douglas Glenn Colvin, the son of an American soldier and a German woman. As an infant, his family relocated to Berlin, Germany, due to his father's military service, which required the family to relocate frequently. His parents separated during his early teens, and he remained in Berlin until the age of 15, when he, along with his mother and sister, moved to the Forest Hills, New York, in order to escape his alcoholic father. There he met John Cummings and Thomas Erdelyi (later dubbed Johnny and Tommy "Ramone"), then playing in a band called The Tangerine Puppets. After an unsuccessful guitar audition for the rock band Television, Cummings convinced him to form their own band with then-drummer Jeffrey Hyman, later Joey Ramone, in 1974. Joey took over vocal duties after he determined that he could not sing lead vocals for longer than a few songs as his voice shredded. He first suggested naming the band The Ramones, after reading that former Beatles star Paul McCartney often signed into hotels under the alias "Paul Ramon". He added an 'e' to the end of that surname and the band members all agreed to adopt the surname "Ramone" as a means of conveying their unity. The band released 11 albums while he was a member, including "Ramones" (1976), "Leave Home' (1977), "Rocket to Russia" (1977), "Road to Ruin" (1978), "End of the Century" (1980), "Pleasant Dreams" (1981), "Subterranean Jungle" (1983), "Too Tough to Die" (1984), "Animal Boy" (1986), "Halfway to Sanity" (1987), and "Brain Drain" (1989). In 1989, he left the band to pursue a short-lived career in hip hop music under the name Dee Dee King and released the album "Standing in the Spotlight" (1989). In 1992, he formed another short lived project named Dee Dee Ramone and the Chinese Dragons, which was followed by the most successful of his post-Ramones projects, a group named Dee Dee Ramone I.C.L.C. (Inter-Celestial Light Commune), which lasted from 1994 to 1996, releasing the album "I Hate Freaks Like You" (1994). He then recorded two solo albums, "Zonked" (1997), and "Hop Around" (2000). Also in 2000, he released his album "Greatest and Latest," consisting mainly of covers of songs he wrote as part of the Ramones. He toured the world playing his new songs, Ramones songs and some old favorites in small clubs, and continued to write songs for the Ramones until 1996, when the band officially retired. He began using drugs as a teenager and struggled with drug addiction for much of his life, particularly heroin. He appeared clean in the early 1990s but soon began using heroin again. He wrote three books, "Lobotomy: Surviving the Ramones" (2000), the novel "Chelsea Horror Hotel" (2001, in which he and his wife move into New York City's famous Hotel Chelsea and believe they are staying in the same room where Sid Vicious allegedly killed his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen), and "Legend of a Rock Star: A Memoir: The Last testament of Dee Dee Ramone" (a daily journal of commentary on his last, hectic European tour in the spring of 2001, released after his death). In 2002, The Ramones were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He died later that year from a heroin overdose in his Hollywood, California apartment, at the age of 50.