"Joel got the idea for the song when he had just turned 40.
He was in a recording studio and met a friend of Sean Lennon who had just turned 21 who said "It's a terrible time to be 21!"
Joel replied to him, "Yeah, I remember when I was 21 -- I thought it was an awful time and we had Vietnam, and y'know, drug problems, and civil rights problems and everything seemed to be awful."
The friend replied, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's different for you.
You were a kid in the fifties and everybody knows that nothing happened in the fifties".
Joel retorted, "Wait a minute, didn't you hear of the Korean War or the Suez Canal Crisis?"
Joel later said those headlines formed the basic framework for the song."
According to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Didn't_Start_the_Fire#History
"Joel got the idea for the song when he had just turned 40. He was in a recording studio and met a friend of Sean Lennon who had just turned 21 who said "It's a terrible time to be 21!" Joel replied to him, "Yeah, I remember when I was 21 -- I thought it was an awful time and we had Vietnam, and y'know, drug problems, and civil rights problems and everything seemed to be awful." The friend replied, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's different for you. You were a kid in the fifties and everybody knows that nothing happened in the fifties". Joel retorted, "Wait a minute, didn't you hear of the Korean War or the Suez Canal Crisis?" Joel later said those headlines formed the basic framework for the song."
@AkaiEdge The link is not right for some reason: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Didn%27t_Start_the_Fire#History
@AkaiEdge The link is not right for some reason: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Didn%27t_Start_the_Fire#History
@AkaiEdge Argh! I can't edit these and the links are both wrong...
@AkaiEdge Argh! I can't edit these and the links are both wrong...