Who wrote the lyrics for the Ramones?
The Ramones are, in many ways, the perfect band for drunken karaoke: energetic enough to carry you through, but with often incomprehensibly slurred lyrics, and with a runtime rarely exceeding two minutes.
If you look at the liner notes of their albums, though, you might be surprised to learn that the punk pioneers not only had lyrics, but they were pretty brilliant lyrics at that.
Although the debate will invariably wage on over whether the Ramones’ 1976 debut album was, indeed, the first true ‘punk’ album, the Queens outfit certainly weren’t the first to adopt that endearingly raucous sound. They were, however, among the first to give the punk explosion a distinctive look, bedecked in their iconic leather jackets, ripped jeans, and hair dark enough to scare mainstream rock into submission.
What’s more, the Ramones blitzkrieg delivery style perfectly encapsulated the ‘live fast, die young’ attitude of New York’s punk generation, and anthems like ‘Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue’ predicted the ‘No Future’ manifesto of their entire movement, stretching from the piss-stained floors of CBGB’s all the way to dark underbelly of The Roxy in London’s Covent Garden. Nowhere was free from the sonic assault of the New Yorkers, and they managed to maintain that dominance for far longer than many of their punk contemporaries.
A core part of that enduring appeal came from the diversity of the band’s material. Sure, their discography is largely composed of downstroke-driven, short, sharp punk eruptions, but within that recurring sound the band managed to explore a lot. From politically-charged protests against Ronald Reagan in ‘Bonzo Goes to Bitburg’ to 1960s-infused pop prowess in the band’s beloved cover of ‘Baby, I Love You’, the sonic repertoire of the Ramones is far more expansive than it is often credited for.
So, who wrote the lyrics?
As far as who exactly should be credited for that discography, the answer isn’t as simple as totting up writing credits. In the spirit of punk unity, the Ramones tended to share writing credits on all their material, a practice which extended right up until their ultimate demise in 1996 and encircled virtually everything they did aside, obviously, from cover songs. Invariably, then, every Ramone had a part to play in the creation of those iconic tracks, but some were more involved than others.
“Hi, I’m Dee Dee Ramone and I’d like to congratulate myself,” was how the Ramones’ bassist summed up his contributions to the band during their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame acceptance speech, and it acts as a good summary of his songwriting credits within the band.
Originally acting as the band’s frontman and lead singer, Dee Dee wrote the vast majority of the Ramones’ greatest lyrics, and his contributions far outweighed his bandmates both in quality and quantity.
You wouldn’t guess it if you looked at his post-Ramones rap career as Dee Dee King, but the bassist had a natural knack for songwriting, and although his bandmates did tend to pitch in, it was from his mind that punk anthems like ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ or ‘53rd and 3rd’ arose. In fact, you can see just how essential his contributions were to the band by listening to the steep drop-off in quality following his departure in 1989.
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