Tommy Ramone

Tamás Erdélyi was born on January 29, 1949,[3][4] in Budapest. His Jewish parents[5] were professional photographers,[3] who survived the Holocaust by being hidden by neighbors. Many of his relatives were killed by the Nazis.[6]

The family left Hungary during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. In 1957 he emigrated with his family to the United States.[7] Initially settling in the South Bronx, the family moved up to the middle-class neighborhood of Forest Hills in Queens, New York.[8] Verona Estates in Forest Hills was the place where Tamás grew up and later described as “home sweet home”.[9][10] He changed his name to Thomas Erdelyi.[3]

In high school, Tommy played guitar in a mid-1960s, four-piece garage band, the Tangerine Puppets, with a schoolmate and guitarist, John Cummings, the future Johnny Ramone.[3][11] After leaving school at 18,[10] he started working as an assistant engineer at the Record Plant studio, where he worked on the production of the 1970 Jimi Hendrix album Band of Gypsys.