Joey Ramone

The punk rocker who did not hide his politics


He wrote of the whole labeling controversy, "It's just a smokescreen for the real problems: the S & L deficit, the homeless, the environment."

Birth: May 19, 1951
Died: Easter Sunday April 15, 2001

Joey Ramone, the punk pioneer who died from cancer Sunday at age 49, was more than just a groundbreaking rocker. He was, as well, an artist with a conscience, whose forays into political commentary earned praise from Nelson Mandela and ran afoul of Ronald Reagan.

The Ramones defined the punk-rock ethic in the mid-1970s with their high-velocity sound, two-minute songs and sworn-to-fun-loyal-to-none lyrics. But in the 1980s, Joey Ramone -- who grew up Jeffrey Hyman in the New York City neighborhood of Forest Hills -- surprised casual listeners to the raw and raucous band by evidencing a more serious and decidedly political bent.

Furious after watching a televised report of Ronald Reagan's May, 1985, visit to the Germany military camp at Bitburg, where the former president laid a wreath at a cemetery containing graves of Nazi soldiers of the Waffen SS, Ramone dashed off a set of lyrics that became the song, "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg." Released as a single, the song featured the sizzling guitars and crashing drums that marked it as a classic Ramones cut, but the lyrics took a savage slash at the "morning-in-America" president: "You're a politician -- don't become one of Hitler's children," went one line.

The song created a major stir, earning play on college radio and gripes from conservatives who objected to the deliberate "confusion" of the nation's chief executive with the monkey he appeared with during the movie career that preceded his political plunge.

It also marked a political plunge for Ramone, whose lyrics had always been characterized by biting, socially-conscious satire, but who now presented a more overtly activist side of his persona. One of the lines in "Bonzo" went, "If there's one thing that makes me sick, it's when someone tries to hide their politics," and, clearly, Ramone was no longer hiding his politics.

In 1985, as well, he joined Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Bobby Womack, the members of Run DMC and four dozen other rock and rap artists in recording "Sun City" -- a seering anti-apartheid song written by Steven Van Zandt, the veteran member of Springsteen's E Street Band who today is perhaps best known now as one of the stars of "The Sopranos." One of the most well-read and well-thought activist-artists in contemporary music, Van Zandt had traveled to South Africa to research songs for a solo album and came back burning mad at American and European musicians who were appearing at the Sun City resort. in the Bophuthatswana homeland.

The song is best remembered for its "I ain't gonna play Sun City" chorus. But Van Zandt's lyrics actually featured a sweeping denunciation of the Reagan administration's "constructive engagement" policy of supporting South Africa's National Party government while supposedly prodding it to ease its brutally racist apartheid laws. And sounding the battle cry against Reagan one more was Joey Ramone, who was featured in the section of the song that went, "Our government tells us we're doing all we can/Constructive engagement is Ronald Reagan's plan/Meanwhile people are dying and giving up hope/This quiet diplomacy ain't nothing but a joke."

Ramone snarled the "constructive engagement" line in an award-winning video of what rock critic Dave Marsh in 1996 identified as one of the Top 20 Political Songs of the previous two decades. Marsh, arguably the most politically savvy analyst of contemporary music, singled out Ramone's involvement in the project for recognition. Another fan of the song was former South African President Nelson Mandela, who hailed it as a vital contribution to the international struggle to free South Africa.

Ramone continued to insert political commentary into his songs as the years went on, focusing in particular on the constraints big business had placed on media and music, and on censorship. On the 1992 album, "Mondo Bizarro," for instance, he attacked Tipper Gore's music labeling proposals as "un-American policy" and declared, "Hey, hey, all you senator's wives/Better take a look at your own lives/Before you go preaching at me."

The chorus to Joey Ramone's anti-censorship tune spoke volumes about the ideological side of a man who may not always have been politically correct, but who always seemed to get to the political point: "Ah, Tipper, come on," he wrote of the whole labeling controversy, "It's just a smokescreen for the real problems:
the S & L deficit, the homeless, the environment."

 

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