The song's lyrics, with their explicitly serious content, were a departure from the Ramones' usual style. Problems playing this file? See media help. it was actually Dee Dee." Beauvoir's camp states that he was equally involved in the lyrics in addition to his music and melody contributions. Mickey Leigh, Joey's brother, who was particularly close with Dee Dee, claimed that while "everyone believed Joey had been the impetus to write the song. Commentators on the song tended to suggest that Joey was its primary author. Joey Ramone shared writing credit with Ramones bassist Dee Dee Ramone and Ramones producer and former Plasmatics bassist/keyboardist Jean Beauvoir. How can you forget six million people being gassed and roasted? ![]() We're all good Americans, but Reagan's thing was like forgive and forget. We had watched Reagan going to visit the SS cemetery on TV and were disgusted. There were thousands of such soldiers for whom Nazism meant no more than a brutal end to a short life." ĭiscussing the inspiration for the song, Ramones lead singer Joey Ramone, a Jewish man, explained that the president "sort of shit on everybody." Interviewed in 1986, he said, īefore departing for Germany, Reagan ignited more controversy when he expressed his belief that the soldiers buried at Bitburg "were victims, just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps." In his remarks immediately after the cemetery visit, Reagan said that "the crimes of the SS must rank among the most heinous in human history", but noted that many of those interred at Bitburg were "simply soldiers in the German army. The phrase also echoes the title of the film's sequel, Bonzo Goes to College (1952), though Reagan did not appear in that picture. Employed as an epithet for Reagan, Bonzo is actually the name of the chimpanzee title character in Bedtime for Bonzo, a 1951 comedy starring Reagan. The phrase "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg" was coined by protesters in the weeks leading up to Reagan's trip. Among those vehemently opposed to the trip were Jewish and veterans' groups and both houses of the U.S. Reagan's plan to visit the Bitburg cemetery had been criticized in the United States, Europe, and Israel because among the approximately 2,000 German soldiers buried there were 49 members of the Waffen-SS, the combat arm of the SS, which committed many atrocities. The visit was part of a trip paying tribute to the victims of Nazism and celebrating West Germany's revival as a powerful, democratic ally of the U.S. Reagan laid a wreath at the cemetery and then gave a public address at a nearby air base. president Ronald Reagan to a military cemetery in Bitburg, West Germany, on May 5, 1985. The song was written in reaction to the visit paid by U.S. This second version of the title is the one used on subsequent live and compilation albums. It was eventually retitled "My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg)", and appeared on the band's album Animal Boy, released in 1986. As an import, however, the record became a hit on U.S. The 1985 single did not receive an American release. While not commercially successful, it was critically well received. Lyrically, the song was a departure from the usual Ramones topics. president Ronald Reagan had paid a state visit to a German World War II cemetery where numerous Waffen-SS soldiers were buried. ![]() The song is an emotionally charged commentary on the Bitburg controversy from earlier that year, in which U.S. It was issued as a single in the UK by Beggars Banquet Records in mid-1985. " Bonzo Goes to Bitburg" is a protest song by American punk rock band the Ramones.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |