Animal Boy

Animal Boy is the ninth studio album by the American punk rock band Ramones, released through Sire Records on May 19, 1986. Due to conflicts within the group, the album features less of lead singer Joey Ramone, both in performing and writing, and less performing from guitarist Johnny Ramone. Bassist Dee Dee Ramone wrote and sang more on this album than on previous albums, and Richie Ramone became the first drummer to write songs for the band since Tommy Ramone, the band's original drummer. Richie also wrote for Too Tough To Die (1984). The album spawned four singles, all of which charted on the UK Singles Chart, as well as other charts. In addition to singles, the band promoted their album using a music video for "Something to Believe In", which parodied the contemporary benefit concerts Live Aid and Hands Across America. Lyrical themes of the album range from band members' frustrations with one another, themselves, and loved ones, to more politically themed songs—a rarity in Ramones music. "My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg)" saw the Ramones criticizing U. S. President Ronald Reagan for his controversial visit to a military cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, despite Johnny Ramone disagreeing with the song's message. Critically, Animal Boy was not as acclaimed as its predecessor, Too Tough to Die, with some critics quick to point out that the band had strayed far from their original style and were experimenting with several genres by this point. However, the album charted in four different countries, including the United States and United Kingdom.

By 1985, there was a considerable amount of conflict between band members. Lead singer Joey Ramone went so far as to withdraw from the writing process, after having been a vital part of it on previous records. Joey recalled: "I'd had it with the Ramones. 'Mental Hell' is about that. Part of it came from breaking up with [then girlfriend] Angela. The other part of it was that I had really had it with the band." This would be the first time the band featured the drummer as a songwriter since original drummer Tommy Ramone, with Joey reasoning that he wanted to make Richie feel like a part of the band. Joey had felt past drummers had not been so much a part of the band, nor any good at writing, and called Richie a "regular Phil Collins." In his 2012 autobiography, Commando, Johnny Ramone awarded the album a "B−" grade, lamenting the album's production quality and commenting that the guitar parts did not even sound like him. "The producer on [Animal Boy], Jean Beauvoir," Johnny related, "was selected by the label, not us." The band recorded most of the album with Beauvoir at Intergalactic Studios in New York City in December 1985. "My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg)" had been recorded earlier in the year and released as a UK only single in June 1985. In the winter of 1986, Beauvoir and Joey Ramone flew to Stockholm, Sweden to record the lead vocals at ABBA's Polar Studios, where the album was also mixed.

Animal Boy featured a range of genres and musical elements that were completely new to the band and had not been featured on previous albums. Frequent use of synthesizers, as well as minimalistic "gimmicky" lyrics,

The album begins with Joey singing "Somebody Put Something in My Drink", written by Richie, who stated that he came up with the lyrics while he was dating Frankie Valli's daughter and mistakenly drank after someone else in a nightclub. "Love Kills" was inspired by the Alex Cox biopic Sid and Nancy (also known as Sid and Nancy: Love Kills). The lyrics relate that the couple will never be able to win with drugs, despite the fact that the song's writer himself, Dee Dee, would later succumb to a heroin overdose. In an interview with East Coast Rocker, Joey explained: "What Reagan did was fucked up. Everybody told him not to go, all his people told him not to go, and he went anyway. How can you fuckin' forgive the Holocaust? How can you say, 'Oh well, it's OK now?' That's crazy!" Dee Dee also asserted that Johnny had made the band seem right winged. "It was the first time we could make a statement to show we weren't prejudiced," he explained. "We'd just had these skinheads at our gigs, punks walking around wearing swastikas." "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg", the original title, was relegated to parenthesis. "Bonzo", a pejorative nickname for Reagan, refers to a chimpanzee from Bedtime for Bonzo, a 1951 comedy film in which Reagan starred. "Mental Hell", the next track and the second written by Joey, dealt with his recent stress with the band and his relationship with his girlfriend, Angela, ending. Author Dave Thompson described "Eat That Rat" as "reaching back to their pure punk past." While "Eat That Rat" is one minute and thirty seven seconds long, the shortest track on the album is the next song, "Freak of Nature", which clocks in at one minute and thirty two seconds. Johnny explained that it was written by him and Dee Dee while changing reels in an open reel audio tape recording at the studio. is the third and final song written by Joey. The album's last track, "Something to Believe In", was influenced heavily by British pop,

For the album's front cover, the band wanted to take a photo with a monkey from the Bronx Zoo. George DuBose originally took the picture in the zoo's monkey house, but this photo was rejected by the zoo director. The zoo would not allow the band to borrow a chimp for photographing, so DuBose decided to try hiring Zippy the Chimp, a baby chimpanzee who had appeared on Late Night With David Letterman and was successful. The resulting idea was to take the picture of the band standing in front of a gorilla cage with Punk Magazine founder Legs McNeil in a gorilla costume. Richie is holding Zippy, and DuBose had to refrain from flashing light so as not to frighten it. However, according to DuBose, the chimp was already out of control. "Zippy was getting wild," Dubose recalled. "He wasn't looking at the camera and was fucking around with the guys. I wasn't getting the picture because the chimp was out of control, so finally the trainer goes up to Zippy and whacks him across the face." Animal Boy was released on May 19, 1986. While touring for its promotion, the band only used four to five songs from the album while the rest of the setlist was derived from songs off earlier releases. Johnny described this type of concert setlist to promote releases to be common for "a lot of later [Ramones] albums," saying it was "because the material just didn't measure up to our other stuff." There were multiple explanations given for why the single was not released in the United States: the product manager at Sire Records explained that it was both a "financial and political" decision, while the parent company, Warner Bros. Records, claimed that "It just wasn't considered a good enough record." The single's jacket cover depicted President Reagan giving a speech at Bergen Belsen concentration camp before going to Bitburg, but the image was removed from later pressings. British newspaper Melody Maker claimed it was removed because the band received pressure from "Moral Majority, the Patriotic League of the Alamo, and the SS." The video was described by author Everett True to be "reassuringly foolish" and "a welcome return to [the Ramones'] old sense of humor." Several guests are featured in the video, including X, the B52s, Weird Al Yankovic, Spinal Tap, Ted Nugent, the Circle Jerks, Toni Basil, Rodney Bingenheimer, Holly Beth Vincent, Penn and Teller, and Afrika Bambaataa. Because the music video was praised by Warner Bros., they released "Something to Believe In" as a double A side with "Somebody Put Something in My Drink."

The album received mixed reviews from critics. Village Voice music critic Robert Christgau gave the album a "B+" and considered both "She Belongs to Me" and "Crummy Stuff" to be "defensive sounding", but called "Something to Believe In" an anthem and praised "My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg)". In a retrospective review, Eduardo Rivadavia, editor for AllMusic, criticized the album for using more modern commercial conventions and for its heavy use of synthesizers and keyboards in an attempt to reinvent the band's style. Rivadavia specifically pointed to "Somebody Put Something in My Drink", which he claimed "wastes an aggressive vocal performance from Joey Ramone by supporting it with a shamelessly polished synthesizer backing track", and referred to "Something to Believe In" as "unbearably soft". It entered the UK Album Charts on May 31, 1986, where it stayed for two weeks and reached a peak position of No. 38. The album entered the Canadian charts on June 7, 1986, at No. 96, moving up to No. 94 a week later. The album returned to position No. 96 on June 21, leaving the chart on July 12. On June 11, it entered the Swedish Sverigetopplistan charts, where it remained on the chart for one week at No. 37.

Track listing adapted from the Animal Boy liner notes.