{"id":974023,"date":"2019-12-12T13:15:33","date_gmt":"2019-12-12T20:15:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=926129"},"modified":"2019-12-12T13:15:33","modified_gmt":"2019-12-12T20:15:33","slug":"flashback-billy-joel-hits-number-one-with-we-didnt-start-the-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/music-news\/flashback-billy-joel-hits-number-one-with-we-didnt-start-the-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"Flashback: Billy Joel Hits Number One With \u2018We Didn\u2019t Start the Fire\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Billy Joel<\/a> rattling off historic names and events most people under 30 have never heard of hardly seemed like the formula for a hit song, especially in 1989 when the charts were dominated by the likes of Poison, Paula Abdul, Janet Jackson, Debbie Gibson, and New Kids on the Block. But it was 30 years ago this week that his history lesson\/rock song \u201cWe Didn\u2019t Start the Fire\u201d knocked Milli Vanilli\u2019s \u201cBlame It on the Rain\u201d off the top spot to become the number-one song on Billboard\u2019<\/em>s Hot 100.<\/p>\n

The song was inspired by Sean Lennon expressing dismay to Joel over the state of the world and wishing he\u2019d grown up in the Fifties where \u201cnothing happened.\u201d \u201cAre you kidding me?\u201d he asked Lennon. \u201cHave you ever heard of the Korean War? You ever hear of Little Rock? You ever hard of the Hungarian Uprising? All kinds of stuff happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

To hammer the point home, Joel began writing down a list of historical people and events, starting in his birth year of 1949 and continuing through the present day. \u201cThe chain of news events and personalities came easily \u2014 mostly they just spilled out of my memory as fast as I could scribble them down,\u201d Joel told biographer Fred Schruers in his book Billy Joel: The Definitive Biography.<\/em> \u201cI had a chord progression that originally belonged to a country song I was trying to write, and I sandwiched the words into those chords \u2014 \u2018Harry Truman, Doris Day,\u2019 okay, so far so good \u2014 but then I didn\u2019t know what to call the song, and therefore what words to use in the chorus.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was unable to think of a chorus until Rolling Stone<\/em> founder Jann Wenner visited him at the Hit Factory while he was working with producer Mick Jones. He threw out a bunch of possible titles like \u201cDancing Through the Fire\u201d and \u201cWalking Through the Fire.\u201d When he got to \u201cWe Didn\u2019t Start the Fire,\u201d Wenner encouraged him to go with it. \u201cSo it\u2019s Jann\u2019s fault,\u201d Joel told Schruers. \u201cI\u2019m going to blame it on him because some people hate that song.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Popular on Rolling Stone <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWe Didn\u2019t Start the Fire\u201d became the lead single from Storm Front.<\/em> This was Joel\u2019s first time working without producer Phil Ramone since 1976\u2019s Turnstiles,<\/em> but his 1986 LP The Bridge<\/em> was a commercial and critical disappointment and he wanted Foreigner guitarist Mick Jones to give him a more modern sound. The gambit worked better than anyone could have guessed since \u201cWe Didn\u2019t Start the Fire\u201d became his first Number One since \u201cTell Her About It\u201d in 1983.<\/p>\n

The song also provided a generation of kids with a valuable history lesson. Countless Billy Joel fans first learned about events like the Suez Canal crisis, the failure of the Edsel, John Glenn\u2019s mission into space, and the U-2 spy-plane incident from the song.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the original video where a young couple lives through the Fifties, Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties as Billy Joel looks on and flames slowly engulf them.<\/p>\n

This was Billy Joel\u2019s last Number One hit and it\u2019s rare he gets through a concert without playing it. It usually comes near the end of the show, but in November he opened one of his Madison Square concerts with it. No matter where it falls in the show, it\u2019s guaranteed to get thousands of fans screaming out timeless lyrics like \u201cMarciano, Liberace, Santayana, goodbye\u201d even if they don\u2019t know what hell they are referencing. (It\u2019s a boxer, a pianist and a philosopher.)<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Billy Joel rattling off historic names and events most people under 30 have never heard of hardly seemed like the formula for a hit song, especially in 1989 when the charts were dominated by the likes of Poison, Paula Abdul, Janet Jackson, Debbie Gibson, and New Kids on the Block. But it was 30 years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-974023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-26 16:28:42","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KFMU Solar Powered Radio","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=974023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974023\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=974023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=974023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=974023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}