History
The phrase comes from a scene in the 1932 motion picture Freaks, in which the title characters chant the line "Gooble, gobble, we accept her, we accept her, one of us, one of us!" (The Ramones saw Freaks at an art house cinema on a rare day off when an outdoor event they were to perform at was canceled due to bad weather.) One of Freaks main characters is a microcephalic, or "pinhead," named Schlitzie.
In Allan Arkush's film, Rock 'n' Roll High School, during a Ramones concert at the The Roxy, a character in a Schlitzie mask appears on stage carrying a large sign with the phrase "Gabba Gabba Hey." Afterwards, the band felt it necessary to the live experience, and a roadie, usually Mitch "Bubbles" Keller, would appear on stage in a pinhead mask, hand the sign to Joey Ramone, and perform a dance on stage, colloquially referred to as the "jerk dance." In later years, Keller updated the "pinhead" with a brightly colored, mismatched, polka-dotted dress sewn together for him by an employee of the Ritz.
Sometimes celebrity guests (such as Eddie Vedder) would don the mask and/or costume on stage. The pinhead would usually leave after the song was finished, but sometimes would appear for promotional purposes, such as live performances on television or music videos. To this day, the pinhead, along with the Ramones Presidential Seal is an emblematic symbol of the band and appears on many items of Ramones merchandising.
In 1991, a Ramones tribute album called Gabba Gabba Hey was released.
Read more about this topic: Gabba Gabba Hey
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