Surviving Ramones do best to reduce interest in legacy

Marky Ramone, with the sort of eye for accuracy that would make the New Yorker proud, has flatly denied the old story that Phil Spector pulled a gun on the band while they were working together:

"There were no guns pointed at anybody," he said. "They [guns] were there but he had a license to carry.

"He never held us hostage. We could have left at any time. We had the keys."

Of course, the guns and hostages story may very well not be true. But why on earth would you be so keen to kill a tale that makes your band part of rock legend? It's as if Alistair Cooke had suddenly blurted out "actually, I wasn't even in town the night Kennedy got shot..."

It must be the first case in history of a story getting smaller in the retelling.