Transcript
Narrator/Host (0:00)
Foreign.
Jake Brennan (0:05)
Elvis. Listen, I spend, like all of you do, an obscene amount of time trying to manage my life in this modern digital world that we all live in. Life is already complicated. And when your health and weight loss goals take a back seat because you can't figure out what your insurance company is going to allow you to do or not do, it's easy to get frustrated and to give up and to feel stuck. Well, RO has a solution for you. Their insurance checker is built to unstick you in this moment. Okay? It's free, it's simple, and it's built to help you move forward. Figure out what you need, figure out what you have at your disposal, and figure out how you can best impact your health. Rose Insurance checker is going to let you know if you're covered for GLP1s for free. All right? All right. If you want to see if you're covered or not, just submit your insurance card and RO will take care of the rest. No paperwork, no hassle, no calling somebody who sounds like they're upset at you just because you picked up the phone. No waiting on hold. Ro's free insurance checker will send you a comprehensive report of your coverage details so that you can make a decision. That's right. For your goals, go to ro co Disgraceland for your free insurance check. That's ro code Disgraceland to see if your insurance covers GLP1s for free. Go to ro co safety for boxed warning and full safety information about GLP1 medications. All right, 2026 is almost here, and I'm going to try and save more money this year than I normally do because I want to travel more than I normally do. I want to spend more time with my family, checking out new spots around the country that we haven't been to. In order to do this, I gotta save more. I have to be way more efficient with my finances, which is why I'm using Monarch. Managing your money does not have to be a struggle this year, guys. Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool designed to make your financial life and your whole life easier. I can see exactly where my money's going to, what I'm spending on, what I need to be spending on, and what I don't need to be spending my money on. I mean, you guys know what it's like, this digital world that we live in. We're constantly signing up for services, subscriptions, all kinds of stuff that we think we need. And we might need it temporarily, but ultimately we don't need it in the long run. But you know, you wake up 10 months later and you realize you just spent a thousand dollars over the course of almost a year on something that you didn't need. Monarch is the go to tool for a New Year's financial reset. You can use the Monarch app to review your spending throughout the year, especially throughout the holidays. You can set fresh budgets for the new year. Get ready for 2026. I love their automated weekly money recap that they give you a window into for saving for my future financial goals. Monarch makes it super easy when more easier than ever to stay financially fit in the short and in the long term this new year achieve your financial goals for good. Monarch is the all in one tool that makes proactive money management simple all year long. Use code disgraceland@monarch.com for half off your first year. That's 50% of your first year@monarch.com with code disgraceland. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. This is a story about heartbreakers. It's about a hotel room and a body on the floor. It's about corporate rock dreams and punk junkie nightmares and the distance between the two. It's also a story about conspiracy theories and rock and roll myths, about self fulfilling prophecies and stacks of missing cash. This is a story about Johnny Thunders. Which means it's a story about great music. Some of the greatest and most authentic music to come out of the punk era and beyond. Unlike that clip I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my melotron called second line stompbox mk2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to you're in Love by Wilson Phillips. And why would I play you that specific slice of Nepo cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on April 23, 1991, and that was the day that Johnny Thunders was found dead in a New Orleans hotel, his money, guitars and clothes gone and the rest of the story already beginning to write itself on this episode. Rock and roll myths, self fulfilling prophecies, Heartbreakers, junkies and Johnny Thunders. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgrace. When you think of a musical icon who was the walking, talking definition of how rock and roll looks and sounds and feels, which is to say, raw, switchblade sharp and effortlessly cool and who also possessed both street tough swagger and deep vulnerability, you think of Johnny Thunders. He's your favorite rock n roller's favorite rock n roller. Whether you're down with Joe Strummer, Nikki Sixx, Paul Westerberg, the Colts, Billy Duffy, or Social Distortion's Mike Ness. First in the New York Dolls and later in the Heartbreakers and his own solo career, Johnny Thunders distilled rebellion, attitude and God given musicality down to a high proof red hot essence. But one of the reasons that Johnny Thunders was this mythic avatar was because he embodied the whole package of rock and roll. The good, the bad and the ugly. He was an addict, he was self destructive, and at the age of 38 he was dead. Chapter one the body in room 37 the St Peter House Hotel, these days known as The Inn on St. Peter, sits on the corner of St. Peter and Burgundy streets in the heart of the French Quarter in New Orleans. Built in the year 1805, it's a quintessential quarter Crescent City building with Spanish style architecture and a wraparound second floor balcony. It was here on the afternoon of Tuesday, April 23, 1991, that housekeeper Mildred Coleman was going from room to room, making her usual rounds, swapping out towels and trash bags and so on. At 3:30 she arrived in room 37. She knocked on the door. There was no answer. The room number stuck out in her mind because earlier that morning at around 8am the front desk clerk had called room 37. After a series of loud, disturbing noises, the occupant had answered and the noises had ceased. But now there was an absence of sound coming from inside the room. Mildred knocked again and nothing. Now this wasn't unusual. Hotel guests were in and out at all times of the day and night. So she pulled a key from her pocket, slid it into the lock, turned the handle, and pushed the door open. The rank smell of sweat hit her nose first. And there was something else too, something rancid, but she couldn't put her finger on it. The room was a mess. The sheets had been ripped from the bed and what appeared to be empty prescription pill bottles were strewn across the floor. And then Mildred saw him. The occupant of room 37, one John Gonzale, aka Johnny Thunders. He was lying on the floor, stuffed halfway under the dresser. His body was bent into a shape like the letter U. Mildred gasped, instinctively throwing her hand up to cover her mouth, and the next thing she knew she was screaming. Across the street from the St. Peter House, singer songwriter Willie Deville, formerly of CBGB Mainstays Mink Deville sat on a stoop outside his apartment strumming an acoustic guitar. Just one year prior, Willie had beaten Johnny to his dream of coming to New Orleans, making an R B record with local musicians. But now it was Johnny's turn to beat Willie. Johnny Thunder's over here. Burning out. While Willie deville merely faded away, Willie watched as police cars began flooding the corner outside the hotel. A short while later, the cops carried Johnny's body out. Willie had seen a lot of things, but he'd never seen a body contorted into a shape like a pretzel before. It was so undignified. But Willie knew his friend deserved more. And he also knew that rock and roll was nothing without its myths. So when the local press started to sniff around when they asked questions, Willie deville lied and told them that Johnny had died with his guitar in his hands. In reality though, Johnny Thunder's guitar was gone. Johnny had been robbed blind, or so it appeared. But New Orleans PD they didn't care about a dead junkie's missing stuff. All they were interested in was closing the case and closing it fast. So that's what they did. Six days later, on April 29, the city coroner's office investigator John Gagliano told the Associated Press that Johnny Thunders had died of an overdose due to the quantity of methadone and cocaine found in his body. In their eyes, it was open and shut. A drug fiend is as a drug fiend does and all of that. Some of Johnny's friends, like Willie deville across the street with his guitar, weren't all that surprised. For others, however, not only was the cop's conclusion wrong, it had all the signs of a cover up. And that's when the truth came calling. Dee Ramone picked up the phone While scratching away at his bed head. His bleary eyes could hardly make out the time on the clock. Yeah, he snarled into the receiver. Dee Dee, a voice was saying, it's Stevie. At this, Dee Dee Ramone sobered up a bit, enough to comprehend what Stevie was about to tell him. Stephie Classen was the other guitarist in Johnny Thunders touring band at the time of Johnny's death. Indeed knew he was hurting. Dee Dee, for one, had his own complicated relationship with Johnny Thunders over the years. Years ago, that little shit had stolen Dee Dee's song Chinese Rocks and made it his own. And then when he was deep in the throes of junkie addiction, Johnny Thunders, well, he reverted to junkie compulsions, like stealing Dee Dee's shit so that he could sell it for more drugs. And at some point, Dee Dee Ramone had just had Enough. So he poured Drano or Clorox or some chemical cleaning agent he couldn't exactly remember. He poured it all over Johnny's stuff. And then he pissed on Johnny's clothes. And then the piece de resistance, he took Johnny's guitar, one of those cheap Les Paul juniors that he loves so much, and he broke that in half. These were the thoughts running through Deedee Ramone's head as Stevie was telling him all about what had happened at the hotel in New Orleans. That when the cops got to Johnny's room, all they found were empty bottles of methadone and a single syringe floating in the toilet. Everything else was gone. His guitars, those nice silk suits that he bought on the road, his drugs, his passport. And here was the real kicker. Thousands of dollars in cash just disappeared. We're talking 10, maybe $20,000 total. And the pieces of trash who stole all those things. These vultures disguised as so called friends. They made Johnny Thunders their mark. As soon as he rolled into town wearing those nice threads, his pockets lined with money, they took him out, stroked his ego. This punk poet laureate who never really got his due, especially here in the States. But he got it that night. And once they gave it to him, once they lulled him into a doped up complacency with hero worship and drugs. That's when they went in for the kill. It was true what the cops said. Johnny did die of an overdose. But the overdose wasn't delivered by his own hand. He was given a hot shot by some thieving degenerates. To put it plainly, Johnny Thunders was murdered.