Johnny Thunders & The Replacements’ “Johnny’s Gonna Die”

While Johnny Thunders was drowning in the drugs, alcohol, and unhealthy relationships that came along with his rockstar status, The Replacements were prophesizing his inevitable demise. Johnny’s Gonna Die, the first track off the B side of The Replacements’ 1981 debut album, Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash, foretold the heartbreaking death of former New York Doll and Heartbreaker. “Johnny always takes more than he needs. Knows a couple chords, knows a couple leads. Johnny always needs more than he takes. Forgets a couple of chords, forgets a couple of breaks.”

The leather-clad star, dressed in furs and high heels, was known for his mysteriously dangerous stage presence. His typically quiet demeanor was easily masked by the drag, the drugs and the rock and roll. Thunders’ drug abuse began early on in his career. He began taking heroin, which would plague him until his death, after his band mate and good friend, Billy Murcia, died in 1972. A common side effect of heroin is nausea, in an interview, Leee Black Childers shared that Johnny would keep a bucket behind his amp in case he needed to vomit on stage. Behind the mask of Johnny Thunders was a very insecure, very broken Johnny Genzale. In the fall of 1977, Thunders married his longtime girlfriend, Julie Jordan. Like most things in Johnny’s life, his marriage was not without its faults. In fact, Jerry Nolan, a fellow former New York Doll, didn’t attend the wedding because he believed that Thunders was making a mistake. The Thunders-Jordan marriage was riddled with drug abuse and conflict which ultimately resulted in Jordan leaving Thunders, taking their kids with her.

Thunders best known work, So Alone, released in 1978 was the product of Thunders’ work in The Living Dead. Despite the record’s success, his self-destructive behavior landed him on and off the streets for quite a few years. In 1983, he met 20-year-old Suzanne Blomqvist. For eight years, they shared a life together and went on to have a daughter, Jamie. In 1991, things were beginning to look up for the then 38-year-old rocker. In the spring of that year, he was planning to record an album in New Orleans, a dream he had had for quite some time. In a sudden and terrible twist of fate, on April 23, 1991, Thunders was found dead in his New Orleans hotel room. An official cause of death was never released as all tests and information released to the public were inconclusive.

Though The Replacements released the song almost ten years before Thunders’ death, their warning was unfortunately in vain, as Johnny knew best. “And everybody tells me that Johnny is hot. Johnny needs something, what he ain’t got. And Johnny’s gonna die.”