Hey old guys! Please, please help me with my homework!

[signalman]

I bet there are some babyboom folks on this board who could give me some insight into some of these historical cultural references in Billy Joel's song "We Didn't Start the Fire." Come on, it'll be fun for you, nostalgia time.

And I won't have to bust my buns looking all this stuff up.

So what does it mean? I gotta admit, the only part I understood the first time I heard the song was "JFK blown away." Oh, and I know who Marilyn Monroe was. The rest of it is kind of a blur to my generation.

WE DIDN'T START THE FIRE
--by Billy Joel--

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

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

Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser aand Prokofiev
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc

Roy hn, 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, Krushchev
Princess Grace, Peyton Place, trouble in the Suez

CHORUS

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac
Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, Bridge on the River Kwai

Lebanon, Charlse 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

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
JFK, blown away, what else do I have to say

CHORUS

Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again
Moonshot, Woodsto, Watergate, punk rock
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline
Ayatollah's 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
But when we are gone
Will it still burn on, and on, and on, and on...

 

[Foundation]

<< Hey old guys! >>



I don't think you will have much luck getting help by calling out "Old Guys"

 

[rh71]

I was just going to say the same thing...

Anyway, when I was in the 5th grade (I'm 24, you do the math)... I came across a printout that explained all of this and their time period. Maybe you can find it online somewhere that explains this song like it did for me back then. I'm kinda curious about some of this stuff myself.

 

[Geekbabe]

<<

<< Hey old guys! >>



I don't think you will have much luck getting help by calling out "Old Guys" >>



lol, yeah really... I'm so old I don't think I can remember enough to help you !!!

 

[littlezipp]

I'm not an old guy, but understand the majority of the song... Just what exactly do you not/need to know?

 

[minendo]

Find out what year he wrote it (1989 I think) and subtract 40 from it. That is the first year of the song (the first verse) and then it just goes year by year. So all you have to do is a search by year and see why that person/place/event/thing made the news.

He wrote it for his 40th birthday by the way.

 

[geekybear]

will give you some to get you started:

children of thalidimide: thalidimide was a drug that when given to pregnant women, caused the baby to have a deformed arm.

england's got a new queen: and she's still the queen today

rock around the clock: a rock and roll song

little rock: for school desegregation

sally ride: female astronaut

 

[signalman]

Thanks u guys (n gals).

I guess I got most of my education from MTV, so it makes sense that I would be writing an essay about a song!