Billy Joel was Right

It took me awhile to realize it, now the next generation needs to

I’m a child of the ‘80’s, surviving a time when the ability to listen to your favorite song entailed either shelling out several dollars for a cassette tape that included songs you had no intention of listening to, or foregoing that purchase and leaving it to the whims of the DJ’s to play your song on the radio. As a song ascended that ladder known as Billboard, the chances that the DJ would play it increased. So it was unfortunate when your taste didn’t match Billboard’s, and a song that you hated would get played over and over again.

In 1989, one such song was Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire.

I couldn’t stand that song, and it was overplayed on the radio to no escape. To make matters worse my little sister, several years younger than my teen-age self, took glee in singing the chorus very loudly and obnoxiously when she felt like bugging me.

We didn’t start the fire, it was always burning since the world’s been turning.

That’s about as far as she could get before I would yell at her to shut up. The thing is, I was not alone in my distaste for this song. Billy Joel himself has criticized the melody, comparing it to the sound of a dentist’s drill.

The lyrics, however, are a different story.

I’d never paid attention to them until one day I happened to catch the music video on another relic of the 1980’s - MTV. The music video starts out with a young groom from the 1950’s carrying his bride across the threshold and into the kitchen of a 1950’s house, then follows them through milestones and time — starting a family, kids growing up, becoming a grandparent and finally dying. All the while a non-aging Billy Joel keeps beat in the background. The kitchen changes through the decades, and the video also features blown-up photos of events from the past, surrounded by flames.

As I watched the video, my annoyance at the melody faded as I really took in the lyrics for the first time. I realized the song was about history - 118 moments in history to be exact, many of which I had never heard of or understood.

But the message was clear. And I liked it.

We didn’t start the fire, it was always burning since the world’s been turning.

The world has always been messed up. And maybe each generation thinks they’ve got it worse than the previous, but the truth is every generation has had its share of tyranny and abuse. And in an odd way, this can be comforting when we get overwhelmed by the negative headlines shouting to us through our smartphones. The message of the song, while not particularly uplifting, can remind us to keep things in perspective.

As it turns out, Billy Joel wrote the song for this very reason. Around Billy’s 40th birthday, John Lennon’s son, Sean, visited him in his recording studio. Sean brought a friend with him who had just turned 21, and when the conversation turned to politics and current events, the friend complained how hard it was to grow up in the 80’s, with everything going on in the world. He went on to say that Billy had it easier because he’d grown up in the 50’s, and “everyone knows nothing happened in the 50’s.” Billy challenged Sean’s friend, citing traumatic events from the 50’s and 60’s, and realized his friend wasn’t even aware of some that history. This prompted Billy to start brainstorming events that had happened in his lifetime, and a song was born.

As I start this newsletter, I’ve been contemplating what its focus should be. I am the author of a series of fantasy books for young people, with themes of liberty versus tyranny. Bob, my wise, drooling unicorn, gives the advice that to preserve freedom a country’s citizens must do three things: value freedom, treat each other as equals, and never forget history. Many people today are failing on all three of these fronts. Many are young and lost and angry, trying to fight the fire of this world without any perspective. So perhaps one of the things this newsletter can do is to provide little nuggets or stories that can help people gain perspective, much like Billy Joel’s song.

Stay tuned.