Who was the real Bonzo from ‘Bonzo goes to Bitburg’ by the Ramones?
From the buzzsaw guitar to the proto-gang vocals, many key aspects qualify Ramones as punk pioneers. One of the most important was frontman Joey Ramone’s lyrics, which were often transgressive, political and deeply sardonic, lampooning what three-quarters of the band and many of their generation deemed America’s pitfalls.
While they have many highlights in this vein, such as ‘We’re a Happy Family’ and ‘The KKK Took My Baby Away’, which paint the America of their era in an absurd light, perhaps the most effective and vitriol-filled is 1985’s ‘Bonzo Goes to Bitburg’. The rousing anthem was composed with a specific target as the country was deep in the throes of its Ronald Reagan-led neoliberal evolution.
While Reagan was immensely popular in Conservative America, with him the hero of Wasps and deemed by his acolytes as the very literal manifestation of the special possibilities that made the country so great, as nowhere else in the world could a B-movie actor become the political executive, others absolutely hated him. His deeply polarising nature presented another similarity with his British counterpart, Mrs Thatcher.
‘Bonzo Goes to Bitburg’ was written in reaction to Reagan’s visit to the Bitburg military cemetery in West Germany on May 5th, 1985. When there, he laid a wreath and gave a public address, as it was part of a trip paying tribute to the victims of Nazism. However, even before he got there, he was criticised across the world, as members of the Waffen-SS, who committed many crimes against humanity during the war, were buried there.
Reagan could not help himself. Before setting off to Germany, he stated that the soldiers interred at Bitburg were “victims” just like those in the concentration camps. Not done there, when delivering his speech at Bitburg, he claimed that while the SS’s crimes were heinous, he maintained that many of those buried there were “simply soldiers in the German army”. Imagine the outcry if the doddering Joe Biden would have made such a statement.
As Joey Ramone was from a Jewish family, he felt particularly aggrieved by the president’s visit to Bitburg and his comments. He said he was “disgusted” and remained a prominent critic of the Reagan presidency until it ended.
So, who was the real Bonzo?
It wasn’t Ramone who coined the phrase “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg”; it was protestors who came up with it when making their feelings known to the outside world. However, it was perfect for expressing their anger.
The name Bonzo was also already familiar to Americans and was a fitting epithet for the foolish President. Bedtime for Bonzo is a 1951 comedy Reagan starred in, which also featured a chimpanzee named Peggy playing the character Bonzo. The title of the Ramones track mirrors that of the 1952 sequel, Bonzo Goes to College, although Reagan wasn’t in it.
Although the single took some time to become a US college radio hit, the band had to retitle it ‘My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg)’ when it was re-released on Animal Boy. That was because guitarist Johnny Ramone, the staunch conservative in the band, was a dedicated Reagan supporter. As you might imagine, this philosophical difference caused a lot of issues between him and the rest of the group.
