Single Awareness: The Ramones – “Pet Sematary” (1989)

As a teenager, there are a few things you are told about punk rock music. There are a handful of records that you are expected to pick up, to do your research and understand that this is where everything started. Oh sure, as you get older you’ll discover that The Stooges and The MC5 come even earlier in the lineage, but for all intents and purposes, most people will suggest that The Ramones were the progenitors of punk, at least stateside. Coming from New York, they were a group of musicians who took on a shared identity, sharing last names and outfits while playing rock music at its simplest.

What becomes mind-blowing is that even if you’re a snob who thinks they’re anarchic and broke all the rules, the reality is that they’re rooted in a simplified version of yesteryear, finding pop hooks played loud and fast, using repetition to get the crowd pumped up. If you ask singer Joey Ramone’s plan for the band, it was to give the music back to the kids. They broke it down to its core elements, capturing the boredom and recklessness of bedrooms across America and, in all sincerity, taught them that anyone could play guitar. They didn’t need to have these elaborate hooks. All they needed to do was strum a few chords.

I never hated The Ramones, though I never loved them as much as the generation before me. Sure they had dozens upon dozens of songs that you wanted to crank up and rock out to. You could learn how to play any of their songs in a half-hour. There’s plenty to like because, more than anything, they never felt pretentious. They were pure energy and while I never owned more than a 30-song greatest hits album, I was able to understand their appeal easily. If you weren’t singing along by the second go-around of the chorus, then you weren’t paying attention. Many bands would try to be them, but there was only one Ramones.

That’s the thing. Many great punk bands from the 1970s left their mark, but The Ramones were the only band who kept going no matter what. Sure they had line-up changes throughout, but for a solid 25 years, they were able to play consistently year after year, pumping out albums. Again, I can’t speak for their quality, but one has to wonder what more they had to say after a certain point. The idea of writing songs about aimlessness eventually becomes, ahem, aimless. When do you just fade into being a legacy act, playing “Blitzkrieg Bop” because nobody wants to hear the new stuff?

With that said, there is something about having fans in high places. One of their most noteworthy compatriots was writer Stephen King. The story goes that during a tour stop in Maine, King invited the band back to his home and showed them around. When he showed them his transcript for “Pet Sematary,” bassist Dee Dee Ramone took it to the basement and came out an hour later with the lyrics to the eponymous song. According to Wikipedia, it was one of the many examples of how confident Dee Dee was in his craft to leave the band and start his own career… as a rapper named Dee Dee King.

It’s difficult to go in a straight line right now because hearing that news brings me back to my high school years when I was really into reading musician autobiographies. I read Dee Dee’s “Legend of a Rock Star” which had this incredible insight into The Ramones. Then again, I felt like maybe I was too young, as the latter chapters blended drug addiction with his belief that these half-assed rhymes that would make up his rap career were brilliant. To me, it’s difficult to not see Dee Dee as a little outside of his depth, serving as one of the dozens of reasons the band would eventually fail. It’s been probably 15 years since I read it, but the mix of drug addiction and ego is my first memory when you think of Dee Dee Ramone.

Which makes “Pet Sematary” as a song particularly intriguing. Unlike his later career, it felt like a genuine Ramones song. While Joey had issues singing the song because of the arpeggios, reflective of contemporary ballads, they delivered this goofy song about the band not wanting to be buried in a pet sematary. There was an earnestness that could win you over. After all, this was the genre that gave us Glenn Danzig and The Misfits, who took sci-fi and horror imagery into even more ridiculous places. The idea of these four guys from New York looking back on their life seems quaint when compared to “Last Caress.”

Then again, Dee Dee probably accidentally read “The Dark Tower” outlines instead because if you get into the verses, its’ far less committed to its vision. To summarize the book, it’s a story about a family who loses their cat and buries them in a nearby pet sematary. Plain and simple, it’s a zombie story, but with dead animals. King considers it to be one of his truly horrifying novels and arguably one of his most creative and original ideas in a career of them. It’s a story about loss and coming to terms with their absence. 

So, what does Dee Dee mention in this song?

Under the arc of a weather stain boards

Ancient goblins, and warlords

Come out the ground, not making a sound

The smell of death is all around

And the night when the cold wind blows

No one cares, nobody knows

Okay, it’s not terribly off-kilter, but it’s still confusing how he makes the jump from dead animals attacking him to questioning his own life. They feel idiosyncratic and these details feel slapped together in an awkward fashion, meant more to create a vivid horror scenario than reflect something bittersweet about mortality. In a song where Joey is probably going to die, it’s strange that he’s worried about living his life again. Why not just try to live your life now? 

Then again, it was one of their last vestiges of a major hit, serving as a fun Halloween track thanks to its spooky imagery. You didn’t have to understand what was going on. All you had to do was recognize that somebody wrote a pretty cool song about King. Given that he was considered The Master of Horror, on the verge of ending another decade with nonstop best-sellers, it was exciting to have his cult of personality delivering on the rock charts as well. Who wouldn’t love to have one of their favorite bands write a song about their work? It was easily the biggest sign of respect.

Because of the timing, “Pet Sematary” would become the theme song for the film version. Directed by Mary Lambert, Pet Sematary (1989) was considered one of the better adaptations of his work, managing to convey the eeriness of the source material so clearly. Even if there were aspects of it that were rugged and jerky, the final act was one of those astounding examples of practical effects, able to scare audiences in such a way that it perfectly conveyed the tension of the story. It was a movie that had everything, from a great story to an actual King cameo (arguably the quintessential one), and then at the very end, over the closing credits, comes The Ramones with the song that summarizes the viewer’s experience perfectly.

An odd thing about the song’s legacy is that it wasn’t as renowned as one would immediately think. Sure, I have no understanding of how The Ramones were perceived by 1989 or if their subsequent album “Brain Drain” was any good. However, it was strange to note the immediate impact wasn’t as well received. Sure, the movie was a success that earned five times its budget, but for some reason the only immediate impact I found the song to have was with The Razzie Awards, which nominated it for Worst Original Song. Given that this is the same organization that once nominated Shelley Duvall in The Shining (1980) for Worst Actress, it’s easy to suggest that either taste differs or time has made fools of us all.

While it can’t be considered their most masterful music video, they did have an accompanying version that showed the quartet wandering around a pet cemetery. There wasn’t much to the video, save for cameos from The Dead Boys and Blondie, who usually sang along during the chorus. Otherwise, it was a straightforward video that found the group walking to their grave before standing inside, a giant lid being placed over the six-foot hole. It’s ominous in hindsight, but overall it’s easy to see why it was perceived as goofy. Name a Ramones video that didn’t feel a bit goofy. “Rock N Roll High School” finds them looking at science beakers and insinuating their disappointment that it isn’t a bong.

There’s an additional version that spliced in clips from the film, though it wasn’t that significant of a change. This celebration of dead pets was a wonderful experience. Frankly, I like the novelty of this track whenever it manages to pop up. In some ways it feels rather fangless, existing as a tame track in lyrical imagery. However, it’s so much fun when you’re caught up in the mood and just want to dance. If only all King books had songs written about them, then maybe the world would be a better place. 

Though the story doesn’t end with The Ramones cover. While it has gone on to prove how vital the song ultimately remains, it’s amazing to go back to the idea that there was only ever one Ramones. There was a remake of Pet Sematary (2019) that could’ve been a dark and chilling masterpiece but was lacking an atmospheric dread to make the scares land. It was another conventional remake during a resurgence of King’s work. Then, without fail, there was a cover by Starcrawler at the end to complete the homage. If the song was really as Razzie-worthy as they claimed, it wouldn’t be there to play us out.

Dee Dee Ramone

While one can argue that this is one of the rare contributions on lyrics from Dee Dee that wasn’t bizarre, it definitely gave the band a bit more of longevity. They still were able to write hits and one that somehow felt like an ominous commentary on their own surrealistic survival. They were approaching 25 years in the industry by the end, and there’s a good chance that they felt like they were half-past dead, crawling from the grave as the young acts emerged around them. Even then, what gave them a vitality is that while hundreds of bands could imitate them, nobody was ever going to match their impact or style. They might come close, but it wasn’t likely to surpass.

They were always going to be the progenitors of punk. People would always discover their albums and want to start their own bands. So much of music has stemmed from those four chords that have been molded into so many different shapes. While you can argue that The Ramones lost relevance by the end, they did one thing better than any other band. They were evidence that you could do music your way and make it matter. If you wanted, you can write songs about horror novels and make them into timeless hits. You could be friends with Stephen King. That’s what The Ramones did, and it’s a big reason they’re never going away, being continually reborn as the record starts for a new listener.