Twisted Tales: Ronald Reagan Is Root of Ramones Rift

Long before Hannity and Colmes made public dung-tossing an integral part of the national political discourse, philosophical punk rock BattleBots Joey and Johnny Ramone duked it out behind the scenes on a regular basis. While the surly Ramones guitarist did his best to have the band lead with its right hook -- as evidenced by the baseball bat-toting eagle that served as the Bruddas' de facto logo -- Joey stuck more closely to the politics of his left-leaning mom, Charlotte Lesher.

The fearsome foursome managed to keep a lid on their internecine squabbles for the better part of a decade -- well, other than during a blip when Joey penned 'The KKK Took My Baby Away' in response to having his girlfriend poached by Johnny. But when Ronald Reagan made the inexplicable choice to lay a wreath at Bitburg cemetery -- a German boneyard containing the remains of Nazi stormtroopers -- during a 1985 visit, things came to a head.

When Joey -- a nice Jewish boy named Jeffrey Hyman when off-duty -- heard the news, he was so incensed that he dashed off a screed he titled 'Bonzo Goes to Bitburg,' which didn't sit well with his guitarist, an avowed fan of Nancy's old man. Johnny got so huffy, in fact, that he resorted to the rock band equivalent of taking his ball and going home, refusing to play on the song -- the first time a Ramone had sat out a song entirely.

So, when Joey sang the lines "You're a politician/Don't become one of Hitler's children," he did so without the benefit of his longtime compatriot's Mosrite ringing in his ears, deferring instead to Jean Beauvoir of the Plasmatics (who is credited as the tune's co-writer).

Johnny took things one step further when it came time to release the song -- which was rushed out as a single in the U.K. -- on this side of the pond, demanding that its title be changed (to 'My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down') for its inclusion on the 'Animal Boy' album. The guitarist's efforts to uphold the legacy of the man he called "the greatest president of my lifetime" ultimately went for naught, although we suppose a posthumous awarding of the Republican National Committee's ketchup-is-a-vegetable honor isn't out of the question.