ALLENTOWN, Pa. – When Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk walked into his surprise birthday party at City Hall, his staff surprised him with a singalong to a song he hates.<\/p>\n
\u201cAllentown\u201d by Billy Joel.
Mayor Tuerk singing “Allentown” at his birthday party
The 1982 hit includes the lyrics, \u201cWell, we\u2019re livin\u2019 here in Allentown\/And they\u2019re closin\u2019 all the factories down\u201d \u2013 marking the city a symbol of the American rust belt.<\/p>\n
\u201cAllentown\u201d was the first single off Joel\u2019s album \u201cThe Nylon Curtain.\u201d<\/p>\n
After a four-month run on the single\u2019s chart that saw it peak at No. 17, the song left the charts 40 years ago this week.<\/p>\n
But even after four decades, it continues to be a source of argument for Allentown and the Lehigh Valley \u2014 so much so that one of the mayor\u2019s staff actually stormed out of the party and refused to participate in the song.<\/p>\n
People thought he was joking at first, but he appeared legitimately angry about the song choice, and flat-out said, \u201cI won\u2019t participate in this. I hate that song so much.\u201d<\/p>\n
Showing the complicated feelings people at City Hall have toward the song, some laughed at the man\u2019s fuss, and others appeared to empathize.<\/p>\n
The song is a lament of the more than 30,000 stable jobs at Bethlehem Steel Corp. and other factories in the area that suddenly closed in the late 20th century \u2013 and all the lives that never were the same when their stable jobs were taken away.<\/p>\n
Some folks in Allentown don\u2019t like the song because they say it\u2019s not accurate. Mayor Tuerk is among them.<\/p>\n
At the surprise party, after singing along, doing his best to keep the right pitch, he got to the part that says, \u201cAnd it\u2019s getting very hard to stay\u2026\u201d He couldn\u2019t help but ad-lib a sharp, \u201cNo it\u2019s not!\u201d
\u201cIt\u2019s so wrong,\u201d Tuerk said of that lyric. \u201cI don\u2019t know how it felt in 1982, but it doesn\u2019t feel like that now. It\u2019s not getting hard to stay, it\u2019s getting hard to \u2013 it\u2019s hard to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n
The tone of the song is another thing with which Tuerk takes issue. Admittedly not a music expert, he said, \u201cIt\u2019s a minor-chord song, but we\u2019re a major-chord city.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Hard to keep a good man down\u2019<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no denying there\u2019s still poverty in Allentown.<\/p>\n
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 23.3% of Allentown residents live in the federal definition of poverty.<\/p>\n
Even more prevalent are the \u201ccost burdened,\u201d who have to spend more than 30% of their income on rent and housing expenses. People in that situation make up almost a third of the population in the Lehigh Valley, and more than half of those who rent their homes.<\/p>\n
Despite that situation, there\u2019s an abundance of people and groups trying to make it better.<\/p>\n
High Schools have specialized programs and staff trying to keep kids in school. Nonprofits and churches keep a tally of those living in homeless encampments, and offer them bus passes, water, and new tents.<\/p>\n
Soup kitchens welcome anyone with no questions asked, and give their clients hugs when they walk in the doors.<\/p>\n
\u2018Out in Bethlehem they\u2019re killing time\u2019<\/p>\n
Joel has said his original idea with \u201cAllentown\u201d was to write a song about Levittown \u2014 the planned community for WWII veterans near Joel\u2019s hometown of Hicksville, New York.<\/p>\n
As released, \u201cAllentown\u201d includes references to Bethlehem Steel, where someone from nearly every older Lehigh Valley resident\u2019s family worked.<\/p>\n
Guillermo Lopez was among those people who came from a Bethlehem Steel family. He said that among himself, his wife and his extended family, his family tree punched about 300 years on the clock for that company.<\/p>\n
Lopez said he likes the song.<\/p>\n
\u201cArtistically, I think it’s a great song,\u201d he said. He said the record\u2019s \u201cmood, the sounds of the steam, of the clanging and machinery, it just puts puts you right back in the steel mill. If you worked here, you know exactly where you are to hear those noises.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lopez said the work at Bethlehem Steel was hard on him. He now walks with a cane, and on a few occasions during his 27 years at the company, he said, he came close to being in serious accidents on the job.<\/p>\n
On one occasion, two ports on a boiler exploded, and he was trapped in the crossfire with no way to escape the danger zone.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it exploded, and all this fire and steam and flame came out. And I couldn’t go anywhere,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause everywhere I turned, I remember it singed on my eyebrows off. My nose hairs were gone. I remember, my skin was like tender and puffy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lopez, like everyone else at Bethlehem Steel, was laid off when the mill closed down and went bankrupt. He said he\u2019s thankful for the job, but now spends some of his time spreading the word about the unfair treatment he and other racial groups faced at the mill.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will say this, that I’ll speak from my father and my perspective, and that, for many of the Puerto Ricans that came here, that was big money,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd then when you found out what other people were making, you went, \u2018Huh? what’s up with this?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Lopez was not the only one who had criticisms of the race relations at Bethlehem Steel. A 1973 article from the New York Times<\/a> described unfair assignments that favored white employees, and were hard on workers of color, and the issue even made its way to to the courts throughout the years.<\/a><\/p>\n Joel\u2019s early days in the Lehigh Valley<\/p>\n Before he achieved worldwide fame, Joel spent time playing gigs in the Lehigh Valley.<\/p>\n In November 1973, almost a decade before he released \u201cAllentown,\u201d Joel played at the Roxy Theatre in Northampton \u2014 performing two shows in the same night.<\/p>\n On the microphone, he expressed how amazed he was that so many people showed up.<\/p>\n It was Joel\u2019s first headline show. At that time, the Roxy only had 585 seats.<\/p>\n Los Angeles-based music producer Denny Somach produced the show \u2013 he\u2019s from the Lehigh Valley. Since he was working for a small radio station, WSAN, at the time, he drove Billy Joel to the show. Somach remembers the reaction Joel had to the unexpected fanfare on the way in.<\/p>\n \u201cOn the way into the theater, we walked into the lobby, there was a sign that said \u2018The Roxy theater welcomes the Piano Man, Billy Joel\u2019 with his picture and underneath it, \u2018plus Henry Gross,\u2019\u201d Somach said. \u201cAnd he looks at the sign and he goes, \u2018I can’t believe this. No one’s ever given me a sign. This is amazing.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cI said, \u2018Billy, they’re gonna love you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Billy Joel plays at the Roxy Theatre in Northampton, PA. On the tapes, Joel expresses how surprised he is to see so many people in the audience \u2013 especially people who know some of his songs.<\/p>\n On the tape, he says, \u201cHow much is this Northampton? I\u2019d like to buy it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018We\u2019re not giving up or moving out \u2014 we\u2019re going to try\u2019<\/p>\n Joel\u2019s 2014 biography \u201cBilly Joel,\u201d which was written with his cooperation, gives an account of an incident that he said led to his writing \u201cAllentown.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI remember that when I was starting getting big, there was no large venue in Allentown, and some kid came up to me after [a show there] and said, \u2018You\u2019re never coming back here,\u2019\u201d Joel recounts in the book.<\/p>\n \u201cI asked him why, and he said, \u2018Because anybody who gets big never comes back here.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cI was really touched by that, and at the same time it stirred up a bit of guilt. I thought, \u2018Goddamn it, I\u2019m not going to let that happen.\u2019 Yet it did happen. He was right: There was no venue big enough to play in Allentown,\u201d he said in the book.<\/p>\n The book tells how that incident spurred Joel to change the song about Levittown he was writing to \u201cAllentown.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI was trying to tell a story that young fan and people across the Lehigh Valley could relate to: They thought they knew how their lives would go, and it just didn\u2019t work out that way.\u201d<\/p>\n Joel, when asked about the criticisms from the people of Allentown, issued the following statement to LehighValleyNews.com:<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m very grateful to the Lehigh Valley area audiences for supporting our concerts during our early years of touring,\u201d Joel said. \u201cThe ‘Allentown’ song lyrics were intended to be a tribute to the indomitable spirit of the people there.\u201d<\/p>\n That echoes what he said when asked about the song during a 1982 television interview.<\/p>\n \u201cI was talking about America,\u201d he said then. \u201cI wasn\u2019t talking about Allentown the town, I was talking about it as a symbol of the American city. And a lot of people my age are wondering, \u2018Gee, my old man had a job, you know, in this particular place, isn\u2019t it my birthright to get the same job? This is America after all.\u2019 Well I\u2019m finding\u2019 out it\u2019s not so.\u201d<\/p>\n In a newspaper interview shortly after, Joel summarized it by saying of the song: \u201cIt\u2019s saying, \u2018We\u2019re not giving up or moving out \u2013 we\u2019re going to try.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. – When Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk walked into his surprise birthday party at City Hall, his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120],"class_list":["post-275944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Somach made an audio tape of the performances \u2013 then lost it \u2013 then recovered it in 2018. Somach said he had a feeling Joel was going to be famous one day, so started rolling his tape recorder in the crowd.<\/p>\n