“Rock n' Roll High School” by The Ramones

"Rock 'n' Roll High School" is the title song the Ramones cut for the Rock 'n' Roll High School soundtrack, written by Joey Ramone, Johnny Ramone and Douglas Glenn Colvin, and it exists in 3 different versions. The one on End of the Century, the band's 1980 album, is Phil Spector's: a complete re-recording that kicks off with a long, sustained guitar chord and a rearranged backing, all echo and grandeur piled on top of the buzzsaw.

The song began life in early 1979 as an Ed Stasium recording meant for that soundtrack, starting with a long drum intro; that's the take the band generally played live, though it stayed in the vaults until the 1988 compilation Ramones Mania. Spector then remixed the Stasium take with his Wall of Sound treatment for the soundtrack album and 7" single before cutting the version for the album from scratch, with Larry Levine and Boris Menart engineering.

The Spector re-recording is the one in the video, where drummer Marky Ramone camps it up in drag as the female teacher. The band mimed it on The Sha Na Na Show, the only time that version was ever played, and performed the song on The Old Grey Whistle Test in 1980. It missed the US charts but reached number 67 in the UK.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.