The Heartbreakers
There were differing recollections about how the song became part of The Heartbreakers' repertoire. Richard Hell said, "I brought it to the next rehearsal, exactly as it was done by the Heartbreakers for all those years. I would sing it because it was a song I brought in." Dee Dee, on the other hand, wrote in his memoir, "When Jerry was over at my place one day, we did some dope and then I played him my song, and he took it with him to a Heartbreakers' rehearsal."
In either case, the song became one of the band's most popular songs. As Hell states, "After I left the Heartbreakers, they kept playing 'Chinese Rocks' and then ended up recording it" for the band's 1977 debut album, L.A.M.F.. "And they put all of their names on it, though nothing had changed about the song--they just added their names to it. Johnny Thunders...had nothing to do with 'Chinese Rocks' at all."
All vinyl pressings L.A.M.F. including the 1984 L.A.M.F. Revisted album continued to credit the song writers as, Thunders, Heartbreakers' drummer Jerry Nolan as well as Ramone and Hell. It was only after the deaths of Thunders and Nolan that the credit was changed. However, both the 1994 and 2002 CD reissues of L.A.M.F. now name the three Ramones as the writers Joey, Johnny Ramone and Dee Dee -- but not Hell.
"The credits are false," Dee Dee wrote in 1997. "Johnny Thunders ranked on me for fourteen years, trying to make out like he wrote the song. What a low-life maneuver by those guys!" The online databases for both ASCAP and BMI, however, credit the song to just Dee Dee Ramone and Hell.
In the Heartbreakers' live performances of the song, Thunders would often change the lyrics to more explicit ones.
Read more about this topic: Chinese Rocks