WE DIDN'T START THE FIRE
 According to the Octopus's Garden website.....
 "Billy Joel (reportedly) wrote this song because he overheard a child say that he felt sorry for "older people" like Billy Joel because no "history" happened in their lifetime, that NOW (or the time the song was written) was going to be the world's most historical time period. The comment got to Billy Joel so much that he sat down and wrote this to prove that his lifetime has been FULL of history."
Click here for a preview of Billy Joel's song.
  1949 1950  1951 1952

           
 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 good-bye.

Chorus
 We didn't start the fire, It was always burning, since the world's been turning. 
We didn't start the fire, Well we didn't light it, But we tried to fight it.
1953 1954 1955  1956

Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser
and Prokofiev, Rockefeller, Campanella, 
Communist bloc,

  Roy Cohen, Juan Peron, Tosconini, Dacron,
Dien Bien Phu falls,
Rock Around the Clock,

Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn's got a winning team, Davey Crockett, Peter Pan,
Elvis Presley, Disneyland,

 Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Khrushchev, Princess Grace,
Peyton Place,
Trouble in the Suez.
1957 1958 1959 1960

Little Rock, Pasternak,
Mickey Mantle, Kerouac, Sputnik, Chou 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
 We didn't start the fire, It was always burning, since the world's been turning. 
We didn't start the fire, Well we didn't light it, But we tried to fight it.
1961 1962 1963 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?		 We didn't start the fire,
It was always burning, Since the world's been turning. 
We didn't start the fire, Well we didn't light it, But we tried to fight it.
1964 to 1989
Birth control, Ho Chi-Minh, Richard Nixon back again,
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, Punk Rock, Begin, Reagan,
Palestine, Terror on the airlines, Ayatollah in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan,
Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, Heavy metal, Suicide,
Foreign debts, Homeless Vets, AIDS, Crack, Bernie Goetz,
Hypodermics on the shore, China's Under Martial Law, Rock and Roller Cola Wars,
I can't take it any more!
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...


Learn more about Billy Joel here.

 

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