¡Adios Amigos! (in Spanish, "Goodbye Friends") is the fourteenth and final studio album by the American punk rock band Ramones. It was released on July 18, 1995, through Radioactive Records. The Ramones disbanded a year after its release and subsequent tour.
Background
The album was recorded at Baby Monster Studios in New York City, and was the band's third album on Radioactive Records after leaving Sire due to lack of significant sales and chart success. Relations within the band were strained, due to Joey Ramone's deteriorating health—having been diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma—Joey and Johnny Ramone’s decade-long feud and a burgeoning rift between Marky and C.J.
While bassist and songwriter Dee Dee Ramone had left the band following 1989's Brain Drain, ¡Adios Amigos! features six of his compositions, including three previously released: "The Crusher" was originally recorded for his 1989 debut solo album, Standing in the Spotlight (a rap album released under the name Dee Dee King), while "Making Monsters for My Friends" and "It's Not for Me to Know" were originally recorded for the 1994 album I Hate Freaks Like You, which he performed with I.C.L.C. ¡Adios Amigos! also contains cover versions of Tom Waits' "I Don't Want to Grow Up" and The Heartbreakers' "I Love You".
The American version of the album features a hidden track, "Spiderman", slightly different from the version the Ramones originally recorded for the Saturday Morning tribute album. The Japanese version and Captain Oi reissue of the album feature the bonus track "R.A.M.O.N.E.S.", originally recorded by Motörhead as a tribute to the Ramones on their 1991 album 1916.
Production and recording
Johnny Ramone stated that ¡Adios Amigos! had "perhaps the best of all the guitar sounds I ever got." Dee Dee Ramone makes his first appearance on a Ramones album since 1989 during the bridge of the closing track "Born to Die in Berlin", singing in German and recorded via telephone.
Artwork
The album cover of ¡Adios Amigos!, which features two Allosaurus wearing sombreros, is a digitally altered version of a painting by artist Mark Kostabi, named Enasaurs, which features the dinosaurs wearing yellow witch hats. Johnny Ramone added that the dinosaurs were "what we felt like."
The back cover shows the band tied and bound before being executed by a firing squad. Johnny said that he stipulated that the band not be photographed from the front, reasoning, "I was very protective of how we looked at that point, and some of us looked worse than others." He added, "I had asked that they put the name of the record company on the backs of the firing squad executing us, and they wouldn't go with that."
| rev2 = Robert Christgau
| rev2Score =
| rev3 = Entertainment Weekly
| rev3Score = A−
|rev4 = Punknews.org
|rev4score =
| rev5 = Q
| rev5Score =
|rev6 = Rock Hard
|rev6Score = 7.0/10
| rev7 = Rolling Stone
| rev7Score =
Track listing
Personnel
Ramones
- Joey Ramone – lead vocals (tracks 1, 3, 5–7, 9, 11–13 and "Spiderman"), backing vocals (track 4)
- Johnny Ramone – guitars
- Marky Ramone – drums
- C.J. Ramone – bass; lead vocals (tracks 2, 4, 8, 10 and "R.A.M.O.N.E.S.")
Additional musicians
- Daniel Rey – lead guitar
| align="center"| 61
|-
|-
|-
|-
|}
Singles
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Single
! Chart (1995)
! Position
|-
| rowspan="2"| "I Don't Want to Grow Up"
|-
|-
|}