One of Them

475. RAMONES, "Pinhead"
Produced by Tony Bongiovi; written by the Ramones
1977 Did not make pop charts

As always with the Ramones, it's not about the words. There are . . . what? Maybe forty words in the whole song. The narrator's in a hospital, maybe of the mental variety, and he's met a nurse who's changed his outlook.

Did anybody take this scenario seriously? No. This wasn't realism in which the audience became emotionally involved. As always with the Ramones, you identified with the performance not with the song. This is a song about being an outcast but feeling as if you've found a home. Despite the clear reference to Freaks, the feeling here is quite the opposite of the one at the end of Tod Browning's mutilated film. In fact, it the opposite of the feeling that the singer declares in the lyric. Along with Joey, we want to be freaks. We want to be pinheads. (Bill Griffith's Zippy comics had just started to be syndicated nationally the year before this single was released.) We all want to shout GABBA GABBA HEY (gabba gabba hey) . . .

People who think punk was all about alienation only get half the story, at least when it comes to the willfully goofy Ramones. If Johnny Rotten wanted to alienate and resensitize his audience to the point where they were self-conscious about the political economy of rock and roll, Joey Ramone wanted to build his audience a big fat clubhouse. We may be alienated from society, brothers and sisters, but we're all freaks together.