Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier

The Ramones - 'Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World' (The Ramones - 1976)

For a band so fond of declaring “ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR !”, their album concludes with the 1-2-3 punch of ‘Let's Dance’, ‘I Don't Wanna Walk Around With You’ and ‘Today Your Love, Tomorrow The World.’ a near breathless sprint to the end that clocks in under 6 minutes. The famous count-off still has the previous song ringing in the background when it starts.

It is straightforward to fall into the trap of believing that differentiating between different songs by The Ramones is falling into an argument about different shades of the same colour. You can see why someone would think that, with an average song length of 2:15 and an average of 13.5 tracks on their first four albums. On their debut album, the band covered Chris Montez’s ‘Let’s Dance’ and tackled politics, violence, relationships, and the final track ‘‘Today Your Love, Tomorrow The World’ - Nazism.

The song is arguably one of their more controversial owing to the original lyrics, which can be heard in live versions.

Seymour Stein, who signed the band to Sire Records, was unhappy with the band singing “I’m a Nazi, baby”, he told the New York Times;

It was shocking to me; I’m sorry. I’m a Jewish kid from Brooklyn.

Stein threatened to pull the song from the album. And it didn’t seem like there would be much room for debate on the subject. So instead, the band sing of a “shock trooper” in a stupor and go with I’m a “Nazi, Schatzi”, which, as well as rhyming reasonably well, is a German word for sweetheart. - I’ve never been any wiser on if this should be considered any less offensive than what was cut, to be honest!

The song was penned by Dee Dee Ramone about his youth in Germany and “being pushed around”. Dee Dee’s father was an American soldier stationed in Germany, and his mother a local. This didn’t change when they moved to the US; Dee Dee was bullied for being of German descent.

The title itself is a tangible reference to The Hitler Youth, and a phrase that is, potentially inaccurately associated, with them “Today Europe, Tomorrow the World.” given Dee Dee’s background, there is some overlap with the 1944 Fredric March film Tomorrow The World.

Musically - it fits the typical Ramones template of their debut and much of what they did afterwards - no change or bending of style to set us up for future work on this final track. Instead, more of the same; Tommy giving the cymbals a damn good thrashing, Dee Dee and Johnny almost playing the same guitar lines and Joey going for it, regardless of his Jewish background.

The song’s highlight is the switch to a German count-in around 90 seconds before the final chorus, and the music and album spit out in a wave of feedback. When you look into the type of subject matter The Ramones were signing about; it does bring to mind the old John Peel quote about The Fall;

They are always different; they are always the same.

Next Week: U2 and The Rolling Stones