Youngstown

I absolutely love this song. I grew up in an industrial factory town, which suffered really badly in the late 20th century from deindustrialization and pimping the factories to China, just like Youngstown.

The song is about the collapse of the blue collar America, the collapse of the American steel industry, the collapse of the working class and their dreams, hopes and aspirations. Working in a steel mill is comparable to Hell, but it still is better than being unemployed and on the mercy of charity.

The protagonist is a second generation steelworker - perhaps the same as in song "Born in the USA"? - who has returned home from Viet Nam war and works as scarfer. His task is to burn off any irregularities of finished hot steel. His father, a WWII veteran, works at blast furnaces. Pyrometallurgy requires notoriously high temperatures, and the work is immensely dangerous. Taconite, coke and limestone are the feedstock of blast furnace making pig iron, and the stacks reaching the sky refer to the stacks of open hearth furnaces for refining the pig iron into steel. "Sweet Jenny" is not a girlfriend or daughter, but Jeannette Furnace, the blast furnace of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Brier Hill Works. She was taken off blast 1977 and demolished 1998.

"The big boys did what Hitler couldn't do" refers to an ex-steelworker's words when he saw the Republic steel six blast furnaces being demolished. Mismanagement, bad business practises and greed drove many steel giants into bankruptcy - and gone was also the jobs, prosperity and American way of life. The big boys managed to do what Hitler tried and failed - destroy the soul of the American working class and middle class and destroy their jobs, sense of security, hopes and the American dream. The protagonist then asks why at all did they fight in WWII, Korea and Viet Nam, and why their sons died if no better future was available.

I like the electric version of this song more. It contains the true feeling and sense of steelmaking.