page_title: Youngstown (song)
section_title: History and themes
hierarchical_section_title: Youngstown (song) / History and themes
caption_attribution_description: Abandoned facility of defunct Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company.
context_page_description: "Youngstown" is a song by Bruce Springsteen from his 1995 album The Ghost of Tom Joad. Although many of the songs on the album were performed by Springsteen solo, the lineup for "Youngstown" includes Soozie Tyrell on violin, Jim Hanson on bass, Gary Mallaber on drums, co-producer Chuck Plotkin on keyboards, and Marty Rifkin on pedal steel guitar. The song has also been covered by Kenny Greco, Blue Moon Rising, Show Of Hands, The Stairwell Sisters, Steve Strauss and Matthew Ryan.
context_section_description: The song tells the tale of the rise and fall of Youngstown, Ohio, over several generations, from the discovery of iron ore nearby in 1803 through the decline of the steel industry in the area in the 1970s.  The lyric tells its story in a style reminiscent of Bob Dylan's "With God on Our Side", evoking American history through several wars.  It tells of how in the Civil War, Youngstown made the cannonballs that helped the Union prevail. Then the city built tanks and bombs to help win later wars, such as World War II.  Finally, the boys of Youngstown went to fight the Korean War and the Vietnam War.  Despite the town's history, when it became uneconomical to keep the steel mills in Youngstown going, they were shut down, thus doing "what Hitler couldn't do," to the devastation of the community.
  The song's story unfolds as the narrative of one family's history as factory-workers in Youngstown.  The narrator of the song himself is a Vietnam War veteran (continuing Springsteen's fixation with that war, also evident in songs such as "Born in the U.S.A." and "Lost in the Flood") and his father fought in World War II. Both also worked in the steel mills. The narrator had worked himself up to the job of scarfer, a difficult but low-paying job that entails torching the steel to remove imperfections.  Although he describes the job as one "that would suit the devil well," it is enough to put food on the table, pay his debts and provide a sense of purpose.  When the mill is shut down, he tells the owners that "Once I made you rich enough/Rich enough to forget my name."  Finally, he prays that "the devil comes and takes me/To stand in the fiery furnace of hell."  Towards the end of the song, the scope expands beyond Youngstown to other areas that were devastated by the decline of the steel industry, including the Monongahela Valley, Minnesota's Mesabi iron range and Appalachia.
  The song is set to a sparse melody.  Its simple chorus is:
  Here in Youngstown
  Here in Youngstown
  My sweet Jenny, I'm sinkin' down
  Here darlin' in Youngstown
  The Jenny mentioned in the chorus is possibly a woman but more importantly is the nickname of the Jeanette Blast Furnace, owned by Youngstown Sheet and Tube, which shut down in 1977.  Its rusting hulk still stood along the Mahoning River and was visible for miles, constituting with others like it what one newspaper writer described as "the remains of a lost civilization."
  Springsteen was inspired to write "Youngstown" and "The New Timer", another Ghost of Tom Joad song, after reading Dale Maharidge's 1985 book Journey to Nowhere: The Saga of the New Underclass, illustrated by Michael Williamson.  Journey to Nowhere chronicled the story of middle class Americans who lost their jobs and had become hobos riding freight trains like in the Great Depression.  The stories of dying steel towns inspired "Youngstown" and the stories of boxcar hobos inspired "New Timer".  In an interview with BBC Radio, Springsteen stated that his connection to this song was "probably through my own kids and my own job, in the sense that the thought of being told after 30 years or so, that what you're doing isn't useful anymore, or has no place, or that the world has changed and that's the way it is.  And you're 50 and gotta find something else to do.  That's almost impossible ... I don't know what I would do in that circumstance."  With "Youngstown", he managed to trace the rise of America as an industrial power, and the subsequent breaking of its social contract.  This contrast between the mythology of the American Dream and the realities faced by its working-class citizens is among Springsteen's most familiar themes.  Activist historian Howard Zinn included the lyrics of the song in his 2004 book, Voices of a People's History of the United States.
caption: An abandoned facility of the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company, owner of the Jeanette Blast Furnace, "Jenny" in the song
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