Remember When The Ramones Wrote a Song Just For the Pet Sematary (1989) Credits?

I’ve had this idea for a band for a while now. I’ve shopped it around to my musically inclined friends over the years, but so far nobody has fully committed to starting this band with me. (Today’s newsletter is not a pitch for you to start a band with me, reader, but it’s not not that.)*

Anyway, the band would be called The Closing Credits, and we would exclusively play songs that are featured in (or better yet, written for) the closing credits of films we love.** We could even do cool things like projecting scenes from the movies as we play the songs!*** I don’t always like to strum my own strings, but if you’ll pardon me this one time, I think it’s a pretty excellent idea and everyone should agree.

Obviously, one of the songs we would play regularly is “Pet Sematary” by The Ramones. Reader, I love this song, and I love how it came into being.

As my very brief research**** tells me, Pet Sematary director Mary Lambert***** knew The Ramones from her days of directing music videos, and she approached the band about writing an original song for the film, which they agreed to. (Another Ramones hit, “Sheena Is A Punk Rocker,” is also featured in the film.) Around this same time, apparently, the Ramones were touring, and King invited them to hang out with him in Maine, which is a thing you can do if you’re Stephen King. Again, they agreed, because the Ramones were cool guys.

Here’s where the good stuff kicks in. Legend has it, when the band showed up at King’s home, he handed bassist Dee Dee Ramone a copy of the novel, at which point Dee Dee “retreated to the basement” in a wave of inspiration. An hour later, Dee Dee emerged from the basement with the lyrics to the song in hand. (Drummer Marky Ramone would go on to say that this event made him realize that Dee Dee and King were similar writers because they both “penetrated the curiosity, fears, and insecurity carried around” by other people that these people “couldn’t put into words.” Whatever that means.)

This rules for several reasons, but the main reason is because Dee Dee very clearly did not read the novel before he wrote the song. One could infer this from the fact that it’s very difficult to read a novel in one hour, let alone read a novel and write a song within that same hour, but the lyrics are a dead giveaway. The song mentions things like “ancient goblins and warlords” as well as moments late at night “when the wolves cry out.” If you’ve seen Pet Sematary, you know that there are no wolves or warlords or ancient goblins. Dee Dee also references Victor (the dead jogger who haunts the protagonist throughout the film) twice in the lyrics, but he doesn’t reference any other characters, which means Dee Dee probably thought Victor is the main character, and I think that’s great.

The song—which, to be clear, is a song that I like very much—holds a special place in Ramones lore. It was actually their highest chart-topping single, peaking at #4 among Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks, and it was a staple of the band’s live shows in the 90s. It has also been covered many times. But hardcore Ramones fans are said to hate this song, which is understandable, because hardcore fans of anything tend to hate whatever is most popular about that thing.

But the song was also the last music video that Dee Dee appeared in with the Ramones, which makes it a fitting eulogy of sorts. The video—which looks like it cost approximately $375 dollars, and I love that about it—features the band playing on a platform in an open grave, and that platform gradually descends into the ground over the course of the video. At the end, a glowing tombstone is placed over the band’s grave. Very fitting indeed.******

Now that you know the whole story, I assume you love this song now too, if you didn’t already. And I expect to see you singing along with me at the next Closing Credits show.*******

*Looking at you, Craig. Let’s make it happen.

**Under special circumstances, I think we could incorporate opening credits songs into the set list. Take David Cronenberg’s Fast Company, for example. The closing credits song is very good, but the opening credits song absolutely rips. Like Michael McDonald doing his best Bruce Springsteen impression.

***One time, my high school emo band played a show on a Friday the 13th, so we got three or four little box TVs, dubbed a half-hour montage of Jason Voorhees running around killing people, and synced that up on all of the TVs to play while we played our set. It was super rad. Also, this show was at a church.

****I glanced at two Wikipedia pages. Maybe three? Who’s to say.

*****Mary Lambert is still one of only two women to adapt a feature film based on a Stephen King story. (I’m kinda surprised this number hasn’t changed since it doubled in 2013.)

******The video feels even spookier nowadays when you consider that the Ramones’ three foundational members—Johnny, Joey, and Dee Dee—all died between the ages of 49 and 55.

*******After reading this week’s newsletter, my editor, John, said “I actually learned something about a movie this time!” Whoops. Sorry about that.

Pet Sematary is available on Netflix, AMC+, and DirecTV, and it’s available to rent elsewhere.