"We Didn't Start the Fire": A Song of Cold War History

0:00 On September 18, 1989,

0:02 American musician William Martin Joel released a song that is perhaps

0:05 one of the greatest encapsulations of Cold War history ever produced.

0:10 The rock andor roll song in question runs

0:13 as a list of memorable people and events

0:15 that took place after the artist's birth in 1949

0:19 leading up to the release of the song.

0:21 These dates just happen to largely coincide

0:24 with generally accepted major dates of the Cold War.

0:28 So, while I personally don't think that this is either

0:30 the best Cold War song or even my favorite Cold War song,

0:34 it is a little slice of Cold War history wrapped up in a catchy tune.

0:39 I'm your host, David, and today we are going to run through the list

0:42 of people and events on Billy Joel's 1989 classic hit, We Didn't Start the Fire.

0:48 This is the Cold War.

0:56 So, a bit of background on the song itself.

0:58 Joel wrote it in 1989 at the age of 40

1:01 in reaction to a conversation he had with a 21-year-old he met

1:04 in studio who believed that 1989 was a worse time to be

1:08 at that age than someone who grew up in the 1950s.

1:11 As the world in 1989 was an unfixable mess,

1:15 Joel's response was that all 21-year-olds felt similarly.

1:19 And Joel, a self-described history nut,

1:21 decided to start outlining the events that had transpired in his lifetime.

1:26 Joel had also indicated that the song started as a country song,

1:29 but shifted to rock and roll.

1:31 Released in September 1989 on his album Stormfront,

1:34 We Didn't Start the Fire was met with mixed critical reception,

1:38 but was commercially a hit, going to number one on the US Billboard chart,

1:42 and has been certified six times platinum since then.

1:45 That's over 6 million units sold in the US for those who may be interested.

1:50 Despite this, Joel never liked the song,

1:52 describing it to interviewer David Horn in 1993 as really not much of a song.

1:57 If you take the melody by itself, terrible, like a dentist drill.

2:01 The song, however, is upbeat and catchy,

2:03 and the lyrics would have had some great name recognition for most

2:06 listeners in at least their mid to late teens and older.

2:10 The lyrics are just a stream

2:12 of consciousness chronological listing of significant events,

2:15 people, and places from Joel's life.

2:18 As a listener, you don't need to know each specific reference,

2:21 as it is about catching the ones you do know.

2:24 The song also benefited from a spot of luck in the timing

2:27 of its release just ahead of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

2:31 This gives the song a sense of capturing an era.

2:34 on being asked about the timing, Jolola said, quote,

2:37 "It was just my luck that the Soviet Union decided

2:40 to close down shop soon after putting out the song." Okay,

2:44 so with that bit of background, here we go.

2:47 The song begins with a reference to Harry Truman.

2:49 Truman was, of course, the 33rd president of the United States and was

2:53 inaugurated into his second term on January 20th,

2:56 1949 after a surprise victory in the 1948 election.

3:01 Truman is notable for such things as the Marshall Plan,

3:03 the Truman Doctrine, and remilitarizing the United States during the Korean War.

3:08 His presidency helped establish the format of the Cold War.

3:12 Next comes Doris Day,

3:14 a singer and actress most wellknown for her 1947 hit song K Saras,

3:19 after which she began a successful film

3:21 career while continuing to release hit music.

3:25 Then Joel refers to red China which is acknowledgement of Mao's 1949 victory

3:30 in the Chinese civil war giving control of mainland China to the communists.

3:34 The loss of China would have far-reaching policy

3:37 decisions in the United States for decades to come.

3:41 Johnny Ray is a reference to the piano playing musician

3:44 who in the early 1950s rose to prominence playing a mix

3:47 of jazz and blues and is often credited as being

3:50 an early developer of what was to become rock and roll.

3:54 Ray, a white man, acted as an acceptable bridge between the black musicians

3:59 playing blues and jazz and the growing white audience listening to the music.

4:04 South Pacific is a reference to the Rogers and Hammerstein

4:06 Broadway musical of the same name that debuted in 1949.

4:11 The musical itself is based on some of the stories from James

4:13 Mitchner's Tales of the South Pacific itself a Pillard surprise winner.

4:18 South Pacific has been highly successful and revival continue

4:22 to be mounted in the US and the UK.

4:25 Walter Winchell was a newspaper columnist who

4:28 had established a career in the 1930s

4:30 denouncing fascism and by the late 1940s and50s had joined the McCarthy

4:35 bandwagon in denouncing communism as the greatest

4:38 threat to the United States often by means of personal attacks and denunciations

4:43 against those who had crossed him.

4:45 Joe Deaggio is of course the baseball player who in 1949 signed

4:49 a new contract with the New York Yankees for a whopping $100,000.

4:55 In 1949, this was a staggering amount of money and Deaggio

4:59 became the first baseball player to break the 100K barrier.

5:04 Joe McCarthy was, of course,

5:06 the Wisconsin senator who rose to national prominence in 1950 when he leveled

5:11 accusations that the State Department had

5:13 been totally infiltrated by communists and spies.

5:17 He would over the following few years lead what amounted to a witch hunt,

5:21 attacking anyone he suspected of being even somewhat left-leaning,

5:25 even if things like evidence was lacking.

5:28 McCarthyism has gone on to mean the defamation of character

5:31 or reputation by means of widely publicized indiscriminate allegations,

5:36 especially on the basis of unsubstantiated charges.

5:41 1950 was the year that the next reference appears, Richard Nixon.

5:45 This was the year that Tricky Dick would first be

5:47 elected to the Senate following his involvement in the Alger case.

5:52 Nixon would go on to be not only Eisenhower's vice

5:54 president and would blues to Kennedy in the 1960 election,

5:58 but would himself become the 37th president sworn into office in 1969.

6:03 A major Nixon event gets another shout out later in the song.

6:07 Next comes Studebaker, the US car manufacturer who starting from about

6:11 1950 began a rapid decline in prosperity.

6:14 This was the result of being outco competed and left behind in the price

6:18 war being waged between Ford and GM as America rapidly began its embrace,

6:24 some would say obsession, with the automobile.

6:27 Juel then references television as it was from 1950 that the device began

6:32 its transition from a luxury good to the now almost ubiquitous household device.

6:38 across the United States and the world.

6:40 New television stations began broadcasting

6:42 and programming began to really expand.

6:46 The last line of the opening verse states, "North Korea, South Korea,

6:50 as it is in 1950 that the North invades the South, sparking the Korean War,

6:55 one of the seminal defining events of the Cold War."

7:00 The verse ends with a reference to that blonde bombshell herself,

7:03 Marilyn Monroe, who had her breakout year in 1950,

7:07 appearing in five Hollywood films.

7:09 The Ticket to Tomahawk, The Ashvalt Jungle,

7:12 Right Cross, The Fireball, and All About Eve.

7:15 Norvagene Baker was on her way to enduring, if somewhat unwanted, stardom.

7:20 Okay, so half of her sin and Billy Joel

7:22 has only covered the first two years of his life.

7:25 The song is, as most of us who have heard it,

7:28 very much front-loaded with references to things from the 1950s.

7:32 This is very much a reaction to the comments made by the young

7:35 man in studio I mentioned at the start of the episode,

7:38 who Joel recalled, tell him,

7:40 quote, "You grew up in the 1950s and everybody knows

7:43 that nothing happened in the 1950s." With that being said,

7:48 let's move to the second half of the first verse.

7:51 The Rosenberg's reference is of course meaning Ethel and Julius Rosenberg,

7:54 the husband and wife duo who had been involved in the Manhattan

7:58 Project and had passed secret nuclear information to the Soviets.

8:02 Convicted in 1951 and sentenced to death under the Espionage Act of 1917,

8:08 a degree of doubt was woven into the levels of their guilt, specifically Ethel.

8:12 And a campaign for clemency was begun,

8:15 which failed by 1953 when both were executed.

8:19 The next reference, Hbomb, refers, of course,

8:21 to the 1951 decision by the US government

8:24 to proceed with the development of the super,

8:26 the hydrogen bomb, the next evolution of nuclear weapons.

8:30 This program would quietly come to fruition in 1952 with the Ivy Mike shot,

8:35 which vaporized the island of the Alugalab in the Marshall Islands.

8:39 Ivy Mike was not a weaponized hydrogen bomb as it was the size of a warehouse,

8:44 but the nuclear arms race between the Soviet Union and the US was in full swing.

8:50 Sugar Ray is of course a shout out

8:51 to the boxer Sugar Ray Robinson who defeated Jake Lamada

8:55 over 13 rounds to become the undisputed world middleweight

8:59 title holder in a fight referred to as the St.

9:02 Valentine's Day Massacre.

9:04 Sugar Ray Robinson went on to a distinguished boxing career

9:07 and has been referred to as the best pound-for-pound boxer in history.

9:13 Panunjam, Joel's next reference, is of course the village of Panunjam,

9:17 the site where peace talks between communist North Korea and Chinese

9:21 representatives and delegates from the United Nations forces in Korea were held.

9:26 These talks continued until an armistice was finally reached in 1953,

9:30 bringing an end to the active fighting of the Korean War.

9:34 The song then moves over to the arts of 1951,

9:36 first by mentioning Brando, meaning Marlon Brando,

9:39 who was nominated for an Oscar for best actor

9:41 for his role in A Street Car Named Desire.

9:44 This firmly established Brando as a Hollywood star.

9:47 And to the horror, the horror of some,

9:50 he would go on to become a real godfather of acting.

9:54 The next song lyric, The King and I,

9:56 is a nod to the opening of the Broadway musical starring a young

10:00 Ule Briner as the king of cyam and Gertrude Lawrence as Anna.

10:04 The King and I has gone on to be a Broadway and West

10:07 End favorite and has spawned several big screen adaptations over the years.

10:12 The last 1951 reference is to The Catcher in the Rye, a novel by JD Salinger,

10:17 which so many teens over the world have read

10:19 and fallen in love with for its themes of angst, alienation, and rebellion.

10:24 Of course, it's the same book that when it's reread as an adult,

10:28 people often discover that its protagonist is a phony.

10:31 Eisenhower is, of course, the 34th president of the United States,

10:35 elected in 1952 and sworn into office in early 1953.

10:40 Vaccine references to the 1952 development of the polio vaccine by Jonas Sulk,

10:45 first tested in 1953 and then approved

10:47 for full use in the United States in 1955.

10:50 The mass vaccination campaigns that then followed all but eliminated

10:54 polio as a public health threat because vaccines do that.

10:59 England's got a new queen refers to the 1952 death of King George

11:03 V 6th and the ascension to the throne of the young Princess Elizabeth.

11:07 Her coronation the following year helped spur

11:09 television sales across the UK and North America.

11:13 Marciano refers to Rocky Marciano,

11:15 the boxer who beat Jersey Joe Walcott over 13 rounds to become

11:19 the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world at the age of 37.

11:24 Liberace is, of course, a reference to the entertainer whose TV show,

11:28 The Liberace Show, first aired in 1952, catapulting him to widespread stardom.

11:34 Notable for his visual flare, Liberace was among the first to take advantage

11:38 of the televised medium to promote his talent.

11:42 Santana goodbye the last reference of the first verse is of course

11:46 George Santiana the philosopher writer and poet who died in 1952.

11:52 Santiana who taught at Harvard for 26 years is credited

11:55 as being a major influence on people such as web deo,

12:00 Robert Frost, TS Elliott and Gertrude Stein.

12:03 We didn't start the fire.

12:04 It was always burning since the world's been turning.

12:07 We didn't start the fire.

12:09 No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it.

12:12 The second verse looking at 1953 kicks

12:14 off with two related names, Stalin and Malenov.

12:17 This was of course the year Gyorgi Malanchov

12:19 assumed leadership in the Soviet Union as part

12:22 of a leadership troka along with Barrier

12:24 and Kushchoff following Joseph Stalin's piss soaked death.

12:28 Malanchov was instrumental in the removal of Barrier before

12:31 losing in a race for power against Nikita Cornlord Kushchoff.

12:36 The next name mentioned is Nasser Gaml Abdul.

12:39 Not yet leader of Egypt,

12:41 1953 was the year he began making moves to remove Muhammad Nagwib,

12:46 something he would accomplish the following year.

12:48 We'll come back to Egypt in a minute.

12:50 Proop is, of course, Sergey Proo, the Soviet composer.

12:53 He died on March 5th, the same day as Stalin,

12:56 and his death went largely unnoticed and unrecognized as a result.

13:00 I highly recommend you all go listen to his violin

13:03 concerto number one like as soon as possible.

13:07 The next line begins with Rockefeller,

13:09 a reference specially to Nelson Rockefeller according to Joel

13:13 for his time as governor of New York.

13:15 Although it should be noted that Nelson was only elected governor from 1959,

13:20 while this section of the verse is about 1953.

13:23 Sometimes artists just have to take liberties to make it work.

13:27 Campanella is a nod to Roy Campanella, the Brooklyn Dodgers catcher,

13:30 who was named the National League's MVP for the second time in 1953.

13:35 The last reference for the year is communist block,

13:38 which obviously means those countries under Soviet domination,

13:41 but more specifically is a nod to the 1953 East German uprising,

13:45 where the government in Berlin wanted workers to work more for less pay,

13:49 and the workers collectively said nine.

13:52 Starting into 1954, that was the year

13:54 that Roy Cohen resigned as Joe McCarthy's council,

13:58 starting to bring a close to the worst of the red scare,

14:01 although its social impacts would last decades.

14:05 Juan Peron was in his second term in Argentina and at his most popular,

14:10 but had begun making changes and challenging the supremacy

14:13 of the church and would see him ousted soon after.

14:18 1954 was the year that Arturo Tuscanini, the next mention of the song,

14:22 finally retired as conductor of the NBC Symphony Orchestra,

14:26 which had been responsible for bringing

14:28 decades of classical music to American ears.

14:31 The baton was passed to Looney Tunes.

14:34 Dacan launched by Dupant in 1954,

14:37 was the commercial name for polyethylene terraethylate or PET,

14:42 which has become the most common form of polyester fiber used in clothing.

14:47 Your father or grandfather's favorite plastic shirt?

14:49 Probably Dacron.

14:51 Jengen Fu Falls is of course a reference to the surrender of the French

14:55 outpost in northwest Indochina which finally sparked

14:59 the end of the first Indo-China War.

15:02 Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley and His Comets

15:05 was released that same year by Deca Records

15:08 and has been credited as being the first song

15:10 to bring rock and roll to a wider audience.

15:14 The next block of references kicks off with 1955 and Einstein,

15:18 which is the year the world famous physicist dies at the age of 76.

15:22 Brilliant Man, Zero F's given haircut.

15:25 1955 is the year that James Dean catapulted to film stardom,

15:29 starring in Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden.

15:33 It's also the year he died in a car crash,

15:35 immortalizing the young actor at just 24 years old.

15:39 Brooklyn's Got a Winning team is a call

15:41 out to the Brooklyn Dodgers only World Series win.

15:44 The club relocated to LA in 1957.

15:48 Davy Crockett refers to the Disney release of Davy Crockett,

15:52 King of the Wild Frontier,

15:54 a part of the American Frontier mythos that was heavily leaned into at the time.

15:59 Peter Pan is a reference not to the Disney movie in this case,

16:02 but rather the live television broadcast of the Broadway

16:06 musical adaptation of the JM Berry story.

16:09 It was even in color.

16:11 Elvis Presley in 1955 was well on his way to becoming the king of rock and roll

16:16 and his Sun Records contract was bought out

16:18 by RCA Victor for the princely kingly sum of $40,000.

16:24 1955 is also the year the next

16:26 reference Disneyland opened its gates in Anaheim, California.

16:30 It took several years for Nikita Kushchev

16:32 to be denied entry due to security reasons.

16:35 1956 begins with Bridget Bardau who catapulted to sex

16:39 kitten status with her role in and God created women.

16:43 Bardau would go on to be both an animal lover and a terrible racist.

16:49 1956 is of course the year that Budapest

16:51 rose in armed revolt against its Soviet overlords.

16:55 Although thousands died and many more fled,

16:58 the result was a less restrictive form of imposed

17:01 control until the collapse of communism 31 years later.

17:05 Joel goes on to mention Alabama where in 1956 the Montgomery bus boycott began,

17:10 one of the key events of the civil rights movement in the United States.

17:16 Khrushchev in 1956 refers to the 20th Party Congress

17:19 and the Soviet leaders private speech denouncing the excesses

17:23 of Stalin and beginning the process of dismantling the cult

17:26 of personality that had been built around the Soviet dictator.

17:31 Princess Grace is a reference to the actress Grace Kelly who appeared

17:35 in her final film that year before marrying Prince Reineer III of Monaco.

17:41 Payton Place refers to the best-selling book of that name written by Grace

17:45 Matalius that proves alongside Lady Chatterly's Lover

17:48 and Fifty Shades of Gray, sex sells.

17:53 Trouble in the Suez, the last reference in the verse is an understated

17:57 nod to the Egyptian seizure of the Suez Canal,

17:59 the joint Anglo FrenchIsraeli plan to take it back,

18:02 and subsequent regional war that threatened to go nuclear.

18:06 We didn't start the fire.

18:08 It was always burning since the world's been turning.

18:11 The third verse kicks off in 1957 with a mention of Little Rock,

18:15 meaning the standoff that occurred in the Arkansas

18:17 capital over integrated schooling in the state.

18:21 President Eisenhower ended up federalizing the National Guard to enforce

18:25 the Supreme Court ruling of Brown versus Board of Education,

18:28 which banned segregated schools.

18:31 1957 was the year that Boris Pastnac had his most famous work published, Dr.

18:36 Jivago for which he won a Nobel Prize for literature.

18:40 Due to content that was critical of the communist regime,

18:43 the book had to be smuggled to Italy for publication

18:46 and past was eventually expelled from the writer union.

18:49 He died 3 years later.

18:52 Joel then moves back to baseball and Mickey Mantel,

18:55 the Yankees center fielder and renowned hitter.

18:58 Mantle was at his best in 1957.

19:01 Of course, 1957 was also the year that Jack Carowak published what

19:06 is possibly the defining book of the beat generation on the road.

19:10 If you've never read it, I strongly recommend it.

19:14 Splutnik is the start of the space race where the Soviet

19:16 Union became the first nation to put an artificial satellite in orbit.

19:20 Its steady pulsing sparked a panic among

19:23 many Americans growing fearful of nuclear war.

19:26 Jiao and Lai, the premier of the PRC,

19:28 marked 1957 by almost being blown up by a bomb on board

19:32 his aircraft flying from Hong Kong to the Bandong Conference in Indonesia.

19:36 Jiao was not actually on board the aircraft due to illness,

19:40 but that didn't stop the KMT and possibly the CIA from the attempt,

19:44 as has been widely suspected.

19:46 Bridge on the River Quai was one of the most successful movies of 1957,

19:50 starring William Holden and Obi-Wan himself, Alec Guinness.

19:54 The story told in the movie of British PS in Burma being forced to build

19:58 a railway bridge is fictional but resonated

20:01 with audiences as did the cinematography and music.

20:05 A truly great movie.

20:07 Lebanon is the first reference from 1958

20:09 where the unstable political and religious agreement

20:12 that had been in place since 1943 finally

20:15 collapsed leading to open fighting between divided groups.

20:18 This was only stopped following Operation Bluebat,

20:21 the deployment of over 14,000 US Army soldiers and marines.

20:25 This is a really complicated series of events,

20:28 but we do have a video that you can watch if you're interested.

20:31 Link in the show notes.

20:33 Charles de Gaulle established the French Fifth

20:35 Republic in 1958 following the Algerian Crisis,

20:38 a coup attempt led by the French military

20:41 who were opposed to concessions being made in Algeria.

20:44 We have a video on all this, too.

20:46 Link be in the show notes.

20:48 California baseball is a reference to not only

20:50 the aforementioned Brooklyn Dodgers moving to LA that year,

20:53 but also the New York Giants moving to San Francisco.

20:57 That leaves you the Yankees or the Mets.

21:00 Oof.

21:01 Starkweather homicide is a reference to Charles Raymond Starkweather,

21:05 who went on a three-month kill spree,

21:07 murdering 11 people in Nebraska and Wyoming

21:10 before being arrested in January 1958.

21:13 Starkweather was executed the following year.

21:16 Rounding out 1958 is a reference to children of theolyomide.

21:20 Theolyomide introduced in 1957 and widely available in dozens of countries was

21:25 used as a sleep aid but notably as an anti-nausea medication during pregnancy.

21:30 Over the following years, a sharp increase in birth defects was noted resulting

21:34 in the drug being pulled from markets over the following years.

21:38 It resulted in much stricter testing

21:40 and licensing of medications in many countries.

21:43 The last section of references in the third

21:45 verse are all related to the events of 1959.

21:49 Joel starts with the death of musician Buddy Holly in a plane

21:51 crash along with Richie Balance of Los Loos and the Big Bopper,

21:56 the day the music died and all of that.

21:59 1959 also saw the release of Benhur,

22:01 which at over $15 million was the most expensive movie ever made at the time.

22:07 The movie would however make over $146 million

22:10 at the box office and win 11 Academy Awards, so probably worth it.

22:16 The next reference, Space Monkey, is talking about Miss Ael and Miss Baker,

22:20 a Reese's Macak and a squirrel monkey respectively,

22:23 who were both launched into orbit that year and survived the trip.

22:27 These missions were vital precursors to human space flight.

22:31 Mafia, Joel's next shout out,

22:32 is a nod to the January conviction of 20 Mafia bosses.

22:36 following their capture and indictment after a 1957

22:39 crime boss meeting in Appalachin, New York in 1957.

22:44 While the trial did prove that there

22:45 was a national network of organized crime conspirators,

22:48 all 20 men had their convictions overturned on appeal.

22:52 On a more fun note, 1959 was the year

22:54 that Huloops passed 100 million units sold in the US.

22:58 On a less fun note, 1959 was also the year of the Cuban Revolution,

23:02 which saw Castro come to power,

23:04 overthrowing the US backed dictatorship of Fukhensio Batista.

23:08 Cuba has remained a thorn in the US sides ever since.

23:12 Edsil is a no-go is a reference

23:14 to the failure of the much hyped Edsil car brand, a division of Ford Motors.

23:18 uninspired designs and poor quality were hampered by a recession

23:22 and losses of $250 million at the time, resulting in Edelt being shut down.

23:30 Now, the first reference in the song to the 1960s is You2,

23:34 with 1960 being the year that Gary Powers and his CIA

23:37 spy plane was shot down by the Soviet Union,

23:40 creating a rather significant international incident.

23:44 1960 is also the year that Singman Ree, the corrupt dictator of South Korea,

23:48 won his fourth election with a staggering 100% of the vote.

23:54 Anger towards this result and other election scandals triggered the April

23:57 revolution and Rey was flown into exile by the CIA.

24:02 Poliola is a reference to the 1960 congressional testimony of not a robot Dick

24:06 Clark regarding illegal payments to DJs and radio

24:10 stations by record labels to play songs.

24:14 Kennedy is, of course, a reference to the young senator from Massachusetts who

24:17 defeated Vice President Tricky Dick Nixon to win the presidency,

24:21 putting the Democrats back in office after 8 years.

24:25 Chubby Checker is a nod to the man who

24:26 took the song The Twist all the way to number

24:29 one on the Billboard charts after performing the song

24:32 on American Band Stand and The Dick Clark Show.

24:35 A lifetime of back pain has ensued for millions.

24:39 Psycho, the Alfred Hitchcock horror film was released in 1960,

24:43 influencing and impacting generations of filmgoers and filmmakers.

24:47 We all go a little mad sometimes, haven't you?

24:51 Belgians in the Congo, the last reference in the verse,

24:53 is of course about the independence of the Republic of the Congo from Belgium,

24:58 despite continued Belgian presence and impact there.

25:01 We have a tidy little video about that, too.

25:04 See the show notes.

25:05 We didn't start the fire.

25:06 No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it.

25:09 The fourth verse covers only three years starting in 1961,

25:13 but they are rather packed with events.

25:15 The first reference is to Hemingway being, of course,

25:18 the author whose suicide that year following

25:21 a long struggle with depression rocked the literary world.

25:25 Ikeman is a reference to the 1960 capture and transfer from Argentina to Israel

25:30 by the Israeli Mossad and Shinbett of the Nazi war crime criminal Adolf Ikeman.

25:35 He was later tried and executed for crimes against humanity.

25:40 Stranger in a Strange Land, on the other hand,

25:42 is the 1961 Robert Heinland science fiction novel,

25:45 which would go on to win the Hugo Award for a best novel the following year.

25:50 For those who may be interested, this is the book that coined the word Grock.

25:55 1961 is also the year that Robert Zimmerman signed a contract

25:59 with Colombia and has since become one of America's greatest poets.

26:04 Bob didn't change his last name until

26:06 the following year to the more familiar Dylan.

26:09 Berlin is a reference to two things that year.

26:11 The Berlin crisis, one of the most tense standoffs of the Cold War,

26:15 where US and Soviet tanks stood facing each other only meters apart,

26:19 and the start of the construction of the Berlin Wall,

26:21 perhaps the single most iconic symbol of the period.

26:25 Bay of Pigs invasion is of course a reference

26:27 to the catastrophic CIA backed invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles.

26:32 The failure was not only salt in the wound

26:33 of American inability to deal with Castro,

26:36 but helped to solidify the communist regime on the island.

26:41 1962 begins with acknowledgement of the film

26:44 Lawrence of Arabia released that year.

26:46 The biopic starring Peter Otul would win numerous awards.

26:50 The soundtrack by Maurice Shereé is fantastic and it

26:53 spawned the greatest talk show appearance of all time.

26:56 Look up Peter Oul, Camel, and Letterman and see if you don't agree.

27:02 British Beetle Mania is the next reference and including

27:05 this in the 1962 set is a bit of a stretch.

27:09 Although that is when the Beatles signed and recorded their demos.

27:12 Beetle Mania didn't really break until 1963,

27:16 but it rhymes with Arabia, so hey, why not?

27:20 Miss refers to the race riot that broke out in Oxford,

27:23 Mississippi as segregationists at the University of Mississippi attempted

27:28 to prevent the enrollment of James Meredith, a black man.

27:32 Kennedy invoked the Insurrection Act and 30,000

27:35 National Guardsmen were activated, two people died,

27:38 and the university was integrated in a tremendous

27:41 step forward in the modern civil rights movement.

27:44 1962 was the year that the first crude American space flight took place,

27:48 sending John Glenn around the Earth

27:50 three times before safely returning to Earth.

27:53 Liston beats Patterson, that is Floyd Patterson,

27:56 was soundly defeated in a firstround knockout by Sunny

27:59 Lon to become the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.

28:03 Moving on to 1963, the first reference is to Pope Paul, that is Pope Paul V 6th,

28:09 who was elected Pope on the sixth ballot and who was

28:12 expected to continue the reform work of the Second Vatican Council.

28:16 Malcolm X, the spokesman for the Nation of Islam in 1963,

28:20 evoked widespread anger in his reaction to Kennedy's assassination,

28:24 referring to the event as chickens coming home to roost.

28:28 He himself would be assassinated several years later.

28:31 British politician sex is a reference to the Proffumo affair where

28:35 the secretary of state for war John Proffumo was caught having

28:39 an affair with a showgirl Christine Keeler who also happened

28:42 to be involved with the Soviet naval attache in London Yagghi Ivanov.

28:47 The follow from the scandal was

28:49 the resignation of Prime Minister Harold McMillan

28:52 and the eventual defeat of the Conservatives

28:54 in a general election the following year.

28:58 JFK blown away.

28:59 What else do I have to say?

29:02 We didn't start the fire.

29:03 It was always burning since the world's been turning.

29:06 We didn't start the fire.

29:07 No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it.

29:10 So, moving to the last verse,

29:12 this is where we start to see the time scale accelerate.

29:15 There are only 24 references covering the years 1964 to 1989.

29:20 Considering the song was written to highlight that the 1950s and early 1960s,

29:24 when Joel was a kid, was an eventful time period, this kind of does make sense.

29:29 Skipping 1964 completely,

29:31 birth control marks the 1965 Scottish decision of Griswald versus Connecticut,

29:36 which allowed for married couples to use contraceptives

29:40 without government restriction based on grounds of privacy.

29:44 The precedent established in Griswald would be later

29:46 cited in multiple other cases related to sexual privacy.

29:51 Ho Chi Min is a reference to the North

29:53 Vietnamese president in the year that US combat troops

29:56 began to deploy to South Vietnam as the American

29:59 attempt to contain communism in Southeast Asia escalated dramatically.

30:04 Richard Nixon back again is a reference to the 1968 election of Richard Nixon,

30:09 who we last saw in this 1960 Kennedy reference.

30:13 Nixon and his VP Spiro Agnu overwhelmingly defeated both of his opponents,

30:18 Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace.

30:21 Quickly moving on to 1969, Moonshot is of course the Apollo 11 landing

30:25 on the moon by astronauts Louisie Armstrong and Buzz Lightyear.

30:29 Booya Kasha Woodstock refers to the music

30:32 festival which attracted over 400,000 people to upstate

30:35 New York and is often recognized as the high

30:38 point of the hippie counterculture in America.

30:41 Go listen to Hendrickx perform and get back to me.

30:44 Moving forward to 1972, that was the year the Watergate scandal broke,

30:48 where members of Nixon's re-election campaign were caught

30:51 breaking into the DNC headquarters to plant listening devices.

30:55 The efforts of the administration to cover up the scandal resulted in Richard

30:59 Nixon's resignation because that's what politicians used

31:02 to do when caught breaking the law.

31:04 Punk rock is not associated firmly to any one year,

31:08 but it emerged as a musical force in the early to mid 1970s.

31:12 Thematically linked to anti-establishment messaging,

31:15 early punk pioneers that helped popularize the genre include the Sex Pistols,

31:20 the Ramones, the Stooges, and the Clash.

31:22 Hey ho, let's go.

31:24 The next reference is to Manakim Bean, elected Israel's PM in 1976.

31:29 He would be key in negotiating the Camp David Accords in 1978,

31:33 thus bringing a lasting and forever peace to the Middle East.

31:36 Right.

31:37 Right.

31:39 Reagan is, of course, Ronald Reagan,

31:41 the former governor of California and belist actor

31:43 who began a campaign for president in 1976,

31:46 losing to Gerald Ford in the primaries,

31:48 but obviously positioning himself for the 1980 campaign.

31:52 Palestine is obviously a reference to the struggle for independence and autonomy

31:56 in the Israeli occupied territory which has a forever quality to it.

32:01 Terror on the Airline is a call out by Joel of the rapid

32:04 increase of airline hijackings that were taking place in the mid1 1970s.

32:08 Notable among these was the Air France flight 139 which eventually made its way

32:12 to Uganda where it was stormed

32:14 by Israeli commandos freeing most of the hostages.

32:17 Ayatollas in Iran marks the Iranian revolution where

32:20 the deeply unpopular sha was overthrown and replaced

32:23 by a theocracy led by the Ayatollas who

32:26 remain in power as of the recording this video.

32:29 Russians in Afghanistan rounds out the 1970s where the Soviet

32:33 army deployed to neighboring Afghanistan to protect socialism there.

32:37 What followed was a 10-year guerrilla war which resulted in the withdrawal

32:41 of the Soviet Union and civil war and jihadist movements in Afghanistan.

32:46 The second half of The Last Verse takes us rapidly into the 1980s where in 1981,

32:51 Wheel of Fortune, the American Game Show,

32:54 brings in Pat Sjack and Vanna White as hosts.

32:57 Sjack would remain host until 2024 while White is still there clapping away.

33:02 I'd like to buy a vowel.

33:05 Sally Ride is a reference that takes us to 1983 when the physicist

33:09 became the first American woman in space on board the space shuttle Challenger.

33:13 Heavy metal suicide is a 1984 reference to John Daniel McComem,

33:18 a 19-year-old who committed suicide after listening

33:21 to the Aussie Osborne song Suicide Solution.

33:24 McComem's parents filed a lawsuit blaming the heavy metal artist,

33:28 but failed to prove their case.

33:30 This heavy metal scare is one of several moral panics that marked the 1980s.

33:35 Foreign debts is a nod to a wave of countries,

33:38 especially across Latin America, defaulting on their national debts.

33:42 Joel's next reference is to homeless vets,

33:45 the increased public awareness of the situation

33:47 faced by many veterans of the Vietnam War

33:49 who were experiencing the untreated effects of PTSD

33:52 and lacked support and access to care.

33:56 The 1980s was racked by the AIDS crisis

33:59 and was subject to extreme amounts of fear, misinformation, and bigotry.

34:04 At the time, a positive diagnosis of HIV,

34:07 which would lead to AIDS, was seen as an almost death sentence.

34:11 But thanks to decades of research and destigmatization,

34:14 it is now not only treatable to allow a normal life, but it is also preventable.

34:20 Crack.

34:20 The next reference Joel makes is to crack cocaine,

34:24 a recreational drug that swept through

34:26 American inner cities from the mid1 1980s.

34:29 The crack epidemic, as it was called,

34:31 was met with increased prosecutions and harsher

34:33 sentences that largely impacted already marginalized communities,

34:37 especially African-American ones.

34:39 Bernie Gats is a reference to a 1984 shooting on the New York City

34:43 subway where Bernard gets shot four men who gets alleged tried to rob him.

34:48 Get claimed self-defense and would be found

34:50 not guilty of attempted murder or assault,

34:53 but would serve 8 months of a one-year

34:56 sentence for unlawful possession of a weapon.

34:59 The case brought up issues of vigilantism, racism, and trusted law enforcement.

35:04 Moving into the last reference of the song,

35:06 Joel next mentions hypodermics on the shore,

35:10 referring to the so-called syringe tide in New Jersey, New York,

35:13 and Connecticut in 1987 and 1988,

35:16 where improperly disposed of medical waste from a landfill

35:20 in Staten Island was washing up on beaches in the area.

35:24 The sharp drop in tourism had a substantial

35:26 impact on regions like the Jersey Shore,

35:29 though Snookie brought them back, of course.

35:31 China's under martial law brings us to 1989

35:34 and the gene declaration of martial law in China

35:36 to end the studentled pro-democracy protests which Beijing

35:40 would like us to all believe never actually happened.

35:44 The image of the so-called tank man,

35:46 a lone figure standing in sole defiance of a line of Chinese tanks,

35:50 has gone on to be globally famous.

35:53 Rock and Roller Cola Wars is the last line in the song

35:56 and is a nod to the marketing war being waged between Coke and Pepsi,

36:00 each of which lead into sponsorship deals

36:02 with global superstars like WDY Houston and Michael Jackson.

36:06 The Cola Wars were serious business at a time where

36:09 capitalism was clearly seen as we didn't start the fire, but when we are gone,

36:15 it will still burn on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

36:20 Kind of like this episode.

36:21 And that brings us to the almost end of the episode.

36:24 I don't know that this song really teaches us anything about the Cold War.

36:28 Well, other than maybe there was an awful lot of individual events going on all

36:32 of the time that we don't really necessarily ever

36:34 think about as weaving a wider fabric of events,

36:38 the backdrop of life, if you will.

36:40 And to me, that's what the song

36:41 reveals across its almost 120 separate references.

36:45 Historical time periods like the Cold War can

36:48 be distilled into a series of major occurrences.

36:50 But even major events are still taking place among regular life going on.

36:55 Music, films, medicine, births, and deaths.

36:58 Of course, we also need to consider that we

37:00 didn't start the fire is very much an American song.

37:03 Their references aren't necessarily all American,

37:06 but they are all things that had impacted the US.

37:09 There's no reason that this song couldn't have its own

37:12 Soviet version or Chinese version or Indian and so on.

37:16 The fact that I continue to see new fan- created lyric sets for this song,

37:20 but referring to current events just demonstrates to me our need

37:24 to contextualize events and highlight that life may always feel like,

37:28 to quote, an unfixable mess, and yet we still burn on and on and on and on.

37:35 As a quick side note to close things out,

37:37 I'd like to point out that We Didn't Start the Fire,

37:39 although it is clearly a Cold War song isn't even the best

37:42 Cold War song on the Stormfront album it was released on.

37:46 That honor without a doubt goes to the song Leningrad.

37:49 A mirrored story of American and Soviet kids born after the war

37:52 and living through the same events from different sides of the Iron Curtain,

37:56 including the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Korean War, and Vietnam.

38:00 As for my own personal favorite Cold War song, well,

38:03 that honor has to fall to Nana's 1983 hit balloon.

38:08 Although Alphavville's Forever Young is a close second.

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38:37 please remember that history is shades of gray and rarely black and white.