Richie Ramone, who served as the drummer for the Ramones during a stint in the 1980s, has been appointed to the Board of Directors for Ramones Productions, Inc. just a few weeks after RPI director David Frey was ordered to vacate his position.
“I am thrilled to welcome an actual Ramone to RPI’s Board of Directors,” said Mickey Leigh (aka Mitchel Hyman), Joey Ramone’s brother and a director at the company, in a statement shared with Variety. “His deep understanding of the Ramones’ music and his passion for the band’s legacy will be invaluable as we continue to honor their contributions to the world of music.”
Richie Ramone (aka Richard Reinhardt) joined the group in 1983, playing on “Too Tough to Die,” “Animal Boy” and “Halfway to Sanity.” After leaving the band in 1987 due to financial disputes, he released three solo albums and appeared on Joey Ramone’s 2012 posthumous record “…Ya Know?” He also published his autobiography “I Know Better Now: My Life Before, During and After the Ramones” in 2018.
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The appointment comes after Frey was ousted from his post earlier this month at the groundbreaking punk-rock group’s parent company, which manages all of the band’s business dealings. That ruling was a legal victory for Linda Cummings-Ramone, Johnny Ramone’s widow, who shares a 50 percent stake in RPI alongside Leigh and sought to remove Frey from the board.
The ruling put a speed bump on the path to an upcoming Netflix film with Pete Davidson attached to star in an adaptation of Leigh’s memoir “I Slept With Joey Ramone,” as the arbitrator determined that Frey was “deeply involved” in the project and “well-aware of his obligation to obtain Ms. Cummings-Ramone’s consent.”
Cummings-Ramone and Leigh have been locked in legal turmoil for years. In early 2024, the former filed a lawsuit against Leigh and Frey over the development of the film, which she said would thwart plans to develop an actual biopic of the band. Frey and Leigh filed a countersuit in March stating that the film would not be a biopic, but rather an adaptation of a family memoir. The future of the film remains unclear, though further negotiation could bring it to fruition.