We Didn’t Start the Fire (1989) – Billy Joel

We Didn’t Start the Fire is a song which spiels off historical figures and events (with a heavy North American slant) from the mid to late 20th century. The meaning and suggestion of the title reminded me of comments by historian Dominic Sandbrook in a recent Triggernometry podcast. When he was asked if he was worried about the current state of the world, he replied, “Why worry?” If history teaches us anything, it is that terrible and unpredictable events occur all the time, often without warning.

If you asked an average German in 1911 to speculate about Germany’s future, they might have been optimistic given the country’s prosperous position. The terror, complete upheaval and eventual defeat Germany experienced through World War I and World War II would have seemed unimaginable. Things can change with dizzying speed.

We also now have a highly sanitised, self-deluding and idealistic view of human nature. Many – like the moral exhibitionists and virtue signalists they are – sit in judgement of historical figures, acting like hanging judges over people who lived in an entirely different age with different moral and political frameworks, worldviews and customs. Think again sunshine. Judging the past by today’s standards is easy; understanding it is much harder.

So, with that hindsight, why worry about what is beyond your control and impossible to predict? We also like to think the age we live in is unique, and that whatever happens in it is something uniquely our own that we somehow began. No, we didn’t start the fire, as Billy Joel sings:

It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning.

And this is the big revealer:

But when we are gone
It will still burn on, and on.

That is what history has taught us.

We Didn’t Start the Fire is my desert island Billy Joel song. Songs like Piano Man and Just the Way You Are haven’t aged as well to my ears in comparison with We Didn’t Start the Fire, which I still love rattling off word for word whenever it comes on. When “Dylan, Berlin” is recited, it makes the hairs on my arms stand up.

I mean, the song isn’t exactly a work of genius, since the words could have been taken from any encyclopaedia or history essay. It panders to Baby Boomers and Generation X by focusing on the history they lived through, but that’s fair enough because it makes the song relatable and something they can reflect on from a personal perspective. Even critic Steven Ettinger said, “What was truly alarming was the realization that we, the listeners, for the most part understood the references.”

The real punch, as alluded to above, is the chorus. It gives everyone a moment to pause and put history into perspective, in keeping with the arguments I described earlier.

Joel fans may have a completely different perspective and still hold his classic output in the highest esteem while playing down his late-’80s material. That’s perfectly fine, because opinions on music can vary enormously. I’ll give you one example of that, which is a story I love to recall from my secondary school days that I’ve told before – my apologies to those who’ve already read it.

I saw Billy Joel’s Storm Front tour in 1991 (which included We Didn’t Start the Fire) in Sydney with my schoolmate Gary, who also happens to be the artist behind the caricature of my family featured in the ‘Reflection‘ menu. Gary was an enormous Billy Joel fan. We’d go back and forth over music – he was all about Billy, while I leaned more toward Elton John.

I still remember when Elton’s Kiss the Bride came out. Gary would badger me by singing, “I want to kiss the bridegroom!” instead of “I wanna kiss the bride, yeah!” A clever jab, much like his caricature. So yes, I went to the concert mostly to humour Gary, though I did (and still do) have a soft spot for some of Joel’s music, especially today’s featured track.

As mentioned, We Didn’t Start the Fire is my favourite. I’m also very fond of history and politics, as they were my major at university, and they remain subjects I love reading and learning about. Despite Joel’s own disdain for the song – calling it “terrible, like a dentist drill” and “a terrible piece of music” – it became one of his signature songs. It has also been criticised by many later music critics as one of the weaker songs in his catalogue.

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Snippets from Wikipedia:

(We Didn’t Start the Fire) – A list song, its fast-paced lyrics include a series of brief references to 119 significant political, cultural, scientific, and sporting events between 1949 (the year of Joel’s birth) and 1989, in mainly chronological order.

(We Didn’t Start the Fire) – Joel’s third single to reach number one in the United States Billboard. Storm Front became Joel’s third album to reach number one in the US.

Joel conceived the idea for the song when he had just turned 40. He was in a recording studio and met a 21-year-old friend of Sean Lennon who said “It’s a terrible time to be 21!” Joel replied: “Yeah, I remember when I was 21 – I thought it was an awful time and we had Vietnam, and y’know, drug problems, and civil rights problems and everything seemed to be awful.” The friend replied: “Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it’s different for you. You were a kid in the fifties and everybody knows that nothing happened in the fifties.” Joel retorted: “Wait a minute, didn’t you hear of the Korean War or the Suez Canal Crisis?” Joel later said those headlines formed the basic framework for the song.

[Verse 1]
Harry Truman, Doris Day
Red China, Johnnie Ray
South Pacific
Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio
Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon
Studebaker, television
North Korea, South Korea
Marilyn Monroe

[Verse 2]
Rosenbergs, H-Bomb
Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, The King and I
And The Catcher in the Rye
Eisenhower, vaccine
England’s got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace
Santayana goodbye

[Chorus]
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No, we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it

[Verse 3]
Joseph Stalin, Malenkov
Nasser and Prokofiev
Rockefeller, Campanella
Communist Bloc
Roy Cohn, Juan Peron
Toscanini, Dacron
Dien Bien Phu Falls, “Rock Around the Clock”
Einstein, James Dean
Brooklyn’s got a winning team
Davy Crockett, Peter Pan
Elvis Presley, Disneyland
Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Khrushchev
Princess Grace, Peyton Place
Trouble in the Suez

[Chorus]

[Verse 4]
Little Rock, Pasternak
Mickey Mantle, Kerouac
Sputnik, Zhou En-lai
Bridge On The River Kwai
Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle
California baseball
Starkweather Homicide
Children of Thalidomide
Buddy Holly, Ben-Hur
Space Monkey, Mafia
Hula Hoops, Castro
Edsel is a no-go
U-2, Syngman Rhee
Payola and Kennedy
Chubby Checker, Psycho
Belgians in the Congo

[Chorus]

[Verse 5]
Hemingway, Eichmann
Stranger in a Strange Land
Dylan, Berlin
Bay of Pigs invasion
Lawrence of Arabia
British Beatlemania
Ole Miss, John Glenn
Liston beats Patterson
Pope Paul, Malcolm X
British politician sex
J.F.K. blown away
What else do I have to say?

[Chorus]

[Verse 6]
Birth control, Ho Chi Minh
Richard Nixon back again
Moonshot, Woodstock
Watergate, punk rock
Begin, Reagan, Palestine
Terror on the airline
Ayatollahs in Iran
Russians in Afghanistan
Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride
Heavy metal suicide
Foreign debts, homeless vets
AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz
Hypodermics on the shores
China’s under martial law
Rock and Roller cola wars
I can’t take it anymore

[Chorus]

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
But when we are gone
It will still burn on, and on
And on, and on

[Outro]
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No, we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No, we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No, we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning

References:
1. We Didn’t Start the Fire – Wikipedia