Talk:Allentown (song)

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Untitled[edit]

I'm sure I read somewhere that he was going to originally call it Levittown after where he grew up, but changed his mind. Can anyone find a proper source? mentioned

The Billy Joel song Allentown actually began as Levittown and was to be a song about where Joel grew up. Unfortunately he found the city rather boring and these are the lyrics he wound up with:

Well we're living here in Levittown
And there's really not much going down.
I don't see much when I look around,
The grass is green, the trees are brown
And we're living here in Levittown.

and

Yet in Stuart Bird's documentary ``Building the American Dream, Joel said he strained to write a song specifically about his home. Unable to think of what to say, he gave up and changed ``Levittown to ``Allentown, producing yet another hit.

Neither are good enough sources, though the second one hints at a good source--Bedders 08:04, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

YouTube links[edit]

This article is one of thousands on Wikipedia that have a link to YouTube in it. Based on the External links policy, most of these should probably be removed. I'm putting this message here, on this talk page, to request the regular editors take a look at the link and make sure it doesn't violate policy. In short: 1. 99% of the time YouTube should not be used as a source. 2. We must not link to material that violates someones copyright. If you are not sure if the link on this article should be removed, feel free to ask me on my talk page and I'll review it personally. Thanks. ---J.S (t|c) 04:29, 8 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have lived in Allentown most of my life and spent my party years in Bethlehem on the southside. My father worked at the steel and I had some older friends who had very brief careers at the steel. Billy Joel nailed it in the song. We only had two beefs, my generation, the Jones generation, 1. We live a couple minutes outside of Jersey and an hour from NYC and 45 minutes from Phil: we were blue collar but we ran into NYC all the time for fun, everyone did. The country couldn't know. They thought we were boondocks steel town. 2. The other gripe we had was that the song itself was really a drag. It was not our kind of music. We acknowledged Billy Joel as a talent. We dissed the song, not for the lyrics: for the music. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.58.36.124 (talk) 00:41, 30 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not to be rude, but Wikipedia isn't the place to share personal thoughts and memories, it's an encyclopedia. This page is a place to discuss improving the article. The good news is that there are many other places on the Internet where you can share these feelings; but Wikipedia isn't for that. Thanks and happy editing! Chillowack (talk) 23:02, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

did he?[edit]

Did he take the mayor up on the scholarship idea?--Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 15:23, 27 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Kintetsubuffalo: Don't think so - see http://articles.mcall.com/1992-12-27/features/2880003_1_bethlehem-steel-allentown-american-dream/2 GoingBatty (talk) 23:06, 28 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think the remark about asking for royalties should either conclude with the resolution (probably no according to the remark above, but the link given is inaccessible from Europe), or removed. Now it's just an incomplete piece of trivia. 2001:985:5AA4:1:781F:9F6C:448A:82A1 (talk) 12:22, 25 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Try this archived link instead: http://archive.today/2014.08.05-061335/http://articles.mcall.com/1992-12-27/features/2880003_1_bethlehem-steel-allentown-american-dream/2 GoingBatty (talk) 14:05, 28 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]