Only 3 People Mentioned in "We Didn't Start the Fire" Are Still Alive
https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/29/Only-3-People-Mentioned-in-We-Didnt-Start-the-Fire-Are-Still-Alive/Open linkView original on lemmy.ca402
Comments71https://www.neatorama.com/2025/12/29/Only-3-People-Mentioned-in-We-Didnt-Start-the-Fire-Are-Still-Alive/Open linkView original on lemmy.ca
Bob Dylan, Chubby Checker, Bernhard Goetz
If this is a highlander situation my money is definitely on Goetz.
And that's when Chubby Checker hits you with The Twist.
They'll never see it coming.
And a lawsuit….
There will be only one
Ages 84, 84, and 78, respectively.
First time I heard him called Bernhard...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x60V0eayiAY
Doomtree - 38 airweight
3 day old reply but immediately after reading your comment I figured maybe you weren't familiar with the Beastie Boys "Stop That Train" from the Paul's Boutique album. Around 0:55 they can be clearly heard full-naming Mr. Goetz.
https://youtu.be/Dq8rRxIGSnw
Or maybe you're a fan and never realized you had heard him called Bernhardt? Anyways cheers
Bob Dylan probably doesn't have long, lol
judging by his recent gigs, he may already be gone
By "recent", you mean the last 50 years?
yeah, i was in austin the same time he was recently. everyone was goggling about going to see him and were you going to go see him? I was like, for the $400 they're asking i can watch a tape. i saw a mid-80s year old buddy guy a few years back and while as a guitar player it was a really technically interesting concert, he hardly played any songs. he mostly imitated other greats who have died and had been influenced by his style. like, cool you can play like stevie and jimi but i came to hear you dude. buddy was only $20 a pop so it was still a great concert. I was not going to risk that at $400 a pop.
"buddy guy" is not the same as Buddy Guy. If you think capitalization isn't useful, here's an example of where it is.
you understood well enough
That's wild, I could've sworn he was dead already.
In order of the FMK game, I assume?
Mysteries on the Holodeck.
I wonder when all of U2 died, though… hadn’t heard anything about that.
Another for the AI slop pile. Maybe ppl shouldn’t just ask AI a question to create this bullshit articles, eh? If I didn’t have an ad blocker active I would feel cheated by reading articles like that.
Powers died back in '77.
You know it’s not the band U2 in the song, right?
You know you are wrong on that one, right?
Bono wasn’t even born yet when the U-2 shoot down incident happened, which is also where it is placed chronologically in the song.
Also Brigitte Bardot is a racist pos. People, especially media, want to gloss over that because she was hot. Same with how Coco Chanel still gets venerated.
HP Lovecraft racist or rich white woman born in the 30s racist?
Marrying the advisor of Jean-Marie Le Pen ( leader of Front Nationale a far-right French political party) type of racist. Plus she called Marie le Pen (daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen and also a fascist) the Joan of Arc of the 21st century in an interview.
i mean if she lights the pyre
That's literally the same racism, when do you think HP Lovecraft was living/writing...?
Also, we gotta stop giving old people passes. They have the ability to change, they just choose to be bigots. My 90+ year old grandma wholeheartedly embraces my trans friends even if she doesn't fully understand how or why "Robert" became "Annalise", and she had never interacted with a trans person in her life before then.
Brigitte Bardot was just a racist, xenophobic bitter POS until the end.
Lovecraft's racism was born and fuelled out of fear of the unknown. Bardot's racism is more of the common hate-kind.
Uber-racist (and homophobe, anti-feminist, etc...)
She would have been a great asset in the Trump administration
The list of suspects narrow...
The long arc of justice will prevail.
The article is light on detail. No actual list of who's in the song.
Here's the full list of 119 references:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_references_in_We_Didn%27t_Start_the_Fire
The song also mentions the Beatles, and I'm sure there's at least one Belgian still in the Congo.
It mentions Beatlemania, which I think we can safely say has died.
And you'd need two Belgians in the Congo.
Any troubles in the Suez still?
Has the boat gotten stuck again?
this might be one of the most mildly interestings things ive ever read
Well... since "we" could be interpreted to include Billy Joel and the listener... that's two more!
I think including the listener is stretching it. I think it's pretty straightforward that "we" refers to Billy Joel's generation.
And any living Belgians who were in the Congo before 1960.
I wish the Fall Out Boy update to the song was good.
In Bo Burnham fan circles people joked that That Funny Feeling from Inside is the truer generational update to We Didn't Start the Fire 🥲
That's... entirely correct. Jesus.
At last there's a decent 1985 update:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaAYUZqZvlA
I liked the medieval version https://youtu.be/drDs-Y5DNH8
What's your issue with it?
I didn't realize the Fall Out Boy version existed before this comment and streamed it. It sounds fairly good, about what I'd expect from a Fall Out Boy update
The selection of items seems weaker to me, but for me the main sin is that the original is basically chronological, which makes it more impressive that it's a coherent song at all, if a bit overrated and very boomerific. Fallout Boy one just throws shit in at random to make the lines scan and rhyme, so it's very "meh" even as a follow-up. It feels like they kind of didn't understand that the original was a survey of the time period.
The Fall Out Boy version just blasts out a bunch of random events from the generation it is covering. Joel's version has clearly defined decades/eras and the progression through time.
Did any of those 3 people start the fire?
Damn it, every time I think I have an original thought...
I mean some of them weren’t alive even when the song came out.
Holy shit, Chubby Checker is still alive? Wow!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chubby_Checker
15 years ago he was in the news suing because someone put out a smartphone app named “Chubby Checker” and that’s was not the sort of association he wanted to his name. 😉
15 years ago... smartphone app...
Holy shit, a Fire Punch meme on Lemmy. (read Fire Punch, everyone)
I know mashups are pretty tired but I always wanted to hear a mashup of "We Didn't Start the Fire" and Prodigy's "Firestarter".
Here’s the list of everyone mentioned.
This was an interesting choice of image for the JFK mention.
I mean…only like 7 of them were alive in 1994 in the first place.
Song came out in 1989, you fool
You could have made you point just as effectively without adding 'you fool.'
But alas, he had to add "you fool", because he's secretly gilbert godfried!
Or Gandalf. Or Vezzini (sp?).
The medieval version.
https://youtu.be/drDs-Y5DNH8
New cover by fallout boy
https://youtu.be/2LkVKCWL0U4
Is this a battle royale or what?
Still say it's Joel's weakest hit, musically speaking.
4 if you count Ryan.
This Billy Joel song is from his album that marked the beginning of his decline, no longer cranking out masterpieces, and this song has always annoyed the bejeezus out of me.