How a Tom Waits Cover Became a Defining Punk Anthem for the Ramones

Both Tom Waits and the Ramones are known for possessing an independent spirit. Waits, a restless writer and artist, crafted an avant-garde discography that covers a vast array of musical styles. But the Ramones, on the other hand, remained defiantly unchanged in their sound and style.

Yet these two opposites certainly attracted one another when the punk legends covered Waits’s defiant “I Don’t Want To Grow Up”. Let’s see how it became one of their defining punk anthems.

Two Perspectives

On the original, Waits sings in a broken voice, and his perspective feels aged, cranky, stubborn, like a weary traveler making a pit stop in a dark and smoky lounge. But in Joey Ramone’s voice, the vibe is rebellious, young, snotty. Exactly what one wants from punk rock. Taking these two versions together, you can imagine a late-night conversation between the punk and the old timer who’s seen too much and probably enough.

Yet each perspective reveals the same problem from different angles. The lyrics describe the unhappy realities of adulthood. It’s lost ideals, discarded dreams, and hypocrisies. “Makes me wish that I could be a dog,” they sing.

Waits’s version, which was written with Kathleen Brennan, appears on his 1992 album Bone Machine. His bluesy and ragged howl could be like the fading clamors of youth. But innocence remains in Ramone’s slacker reading as he glimpses the adults ruining one another and themselves.

Seems that folks turn into things,
That they never want.
The only thing to live for is today.

I’m gonna put a hole in my TV set,
I don’t wanna grow up.
Open up the medicine chest,
I don’t wanna grow up.

Adios

“I Don’t Want To Grow Up” is the first track on Ramones’ final album, Adios Amigos. Two decades had passed between the band’s groundbreaking debut and their farewell LP. In both style and attitude, like the message in Waits’s song, the punk pioneers remained unchanged.

It brings to mind another Ramones’ anthem, “I Wanna Be Sedated”. The singer wants relief from boredom, from the banalities of tour life. Perhaps not all that different from the miseries of adulthood.

Here we are, amigos. The same as it ever was.

Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images