Debuting in 1976, The Ramones didn’t exactly burst onto the punk rock scene. More like, they handcrafted it from scratch to influence punk everywhere from New York City to the U.K. and back. They had a new sound and an interesting look, so it was almost impossible not to be aware of The Ramones in some way or another.
Especially when they released “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg”. This protest song wasn’t initially released in the U.S., only in the U.K. But when it turned up stateside, it quickly became a hit on college radio stations. In 1986, The Ramones included it on their album Animal Boy, retitled as “My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg)”.
How Do Ronald Reagan, Nazi War Crimes, and The Ramones All Fit Together? Dee Dee and Joey Explain ‘Bonzo Goes to Bitburg’
In what has been labeled “The Most Chaotic Ramones Interview Ever Recorded,” Joey and Dee Dee Ramone discussed the protest single in 1986. Among nonsensical quips and attempts to derail the interview, the two had some surprising words for Ronald Reagan, the subject of the song.
“That was one of the few serious songs we’ve ever done,” said Dee Dee when asked about the song. “Like, Reagan’s a good guy and everything, y’know, I don’t wanna knock him. But I thought it was pretty disgusting what the Nazis did. It was really awful.”
In context, “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg” was a direct response to then-president Ronald Reagan’s May 1985 visit to Bitburg, West Germany. He was there to pay tribute to the German victims of Nazism by laying a wreath at the Bitburg military cemetery and giving an address at a nearby base. Additionally, it was a celebration of West Germany as a revived U.S. ally.
Could have been fine in theory. But among the thousands of soldiers buried there were 49 members of the Waffen-SS, the combat arm of the Nazi Party paramilitary. However, Reagan asserted that those buried at Bitburg were “simply soldiers in the German army … There were thousands of such soldiers for whom Nazism meant no more than a brutal end to a short life.”
The Ramones were just a few of many who opposed the cemetery visit. Jewish and veterans’ groups in the U.S., as well as those in Europe and Israel, protested the visit. Both houses of the U.S. Congress were also against it. Protestors coined the term “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg” before Reagan’s trip, using the name of the chimpanzee in the Reagan-led film Bedtime for Bonzo as a derogatory epithet.
Protest, Disgust, and Confusion
“They were like the devils,” Dee Dee Ramone explained in the chaotic 1986 interview. “Like Satan, a Nazi is like Satan. And for Reagan to go there and to go to the Bitburg cemetery, and to, like, praise these SS guys was really disgusting.”
When the interviewer suggested “burying the hatchet” of the literal Second World War, Dee Dee stayed firm. “That’s what they were doing,” he said. “It was all politics, y’know, like I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine. So he was going and scratching the Germans’ back [but] I don’t know what we need them for anyway.” He chuckled a moment before sobering again to continue, “But I guess they’re our allies, so we had to go over there.
“But what the hell did he go over there for? They were Nazis?” he added in a tone of disbelief. “You can’t go over there and do that stuff; that’s really nasty.”
While Dee Dee Ramone’s response in the interview could seem a bit over the top, the song itself held a similar tone. Critics praised the lyrics, but most importantly, Joey Ramone’s vocal delivery. It was a protest song, but it offered an extremely real and relatable confusion within the tone. There was anger and disgust there, but it also captured the general public’s response to Reagan’s actions. Disapproval, confusion, and overwhelming disappointment.
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