We Started The Fire - A Burning Man history in song

A few years ago I re-wrote the lyrics to the song, "My Favorite Things" from the movie The Sound of Music, to be about Burning Man and was inspired to do it again, this time using the music from Billy Joel's, "We Didn't Start The Fire." I had a guy named Jordan Fox sing the lyrics for me, as I sound like hyena in the depths of a coke hangover while attempting to belt out a tune.

The song's verses selectively trace Burning Man's history, in rough chronological order. There's a bit of skipping back and forth (like from '99 to '98 and back) within a verse, but in general, they're roughly in order, with imagery/footage in the video that almost always matches the song reference. In a a couple of cases, however, the footage I used is out of chronological order so doesn't match up with the time period in the song, such as the line "Man burn, Temple burn" where I used a Man and Temple from later years because the video looked better.

"We Started The Fire"
Lyrics, editing & production by Dr. Yes.
Vocals by Jordan Fox.
Music by Billy Joel.

A line-by-line explanation of the lyrics follows afterwards!

Lyrics:
Baker Beach, Zone Trip 4, Cacophony, pissed off law
Black Rock Desert, Larry Harvey, Jerry James and TAZ.

Kevin Evans, Burn the Man, Danger Ranger’s Peter Pan
Crimson Rose, Marian, Seventy-Eight Olds.

Electronic music’s here, Turbo Ted’s spinning near,
Java Cow, Christmas Camp, Burning Man goes glamp. 

Will Roger, Center Camp, Harley DuBois, Lit lamps
Shooting range, trash fence downrange, everything is now changed!

We started all the fires!
We weren’t always burning 
but now we're returning
We did start the fire!
Yeah we tried to light it
And we never fight it.

Michael Furey, Papa Satan, Inferno and Hellco,
Techno Ghetto, regulation, John Law leaves the nation 

Fly ranch, Hualapai, Rod Garrett, Sheriff’s eye
New Earth Guardians, LNT is hard.

Sergey, Larry Page, drama on the back stage, 
X-Force, DMV, First Regional will now be

Piss clear, Best is here, Wheel of Time, Temple Mind
Banksy’s art, Jiffy Lube, camels on the playa!

We started all the fires!
We're forever burning
and the Conclave's whirling
We did start the fire!
Yeah we tried to light it
And we never fight it.

Theme camps proliferate, Contessa sails straight
Principles, Thunderdome, weather makes it hard to roam

Angels of Apocalypse, Passage and Colossus
Belgian waffle, first moop map, children of the dust clap

Addis’s Early Burn, Man Burn, Temple Burn
TV Free Burning Man, Big Rig’s no minivan. 

Bliss Dance, Temple Flux, Dr. Yes’s epochs
South Park, Mantfarm, we don’t need no fire alarms!

We started all the fires
Now the world's learning
that we're out there Burning
We did start the fire!
Yeah we tried to light it
And we never fight it.

Tickets sellout, Rites of Passage, Temple of Transition
Trojan Horse, Pier bestows, Oh the places you’ll go

Bank of Un-America, playa dubstep mania,
Space saucer, Cargo Cult, DPW catapult!

Truth is Beauty, Church Trap, plug n’ plays are bullcrap
Embrace hey, rain to play, what else do I have say? 

We started all the fires
Now it's concerning
and the community's churning
We did start the fire!
Yeah we tried to light it
And we never fight it.

Bug invasion, brutal cold, masturbating nun – bold,
Promise Temple, Revolution, Sextant does electrocution

White Ocean vandalized, Da Vinci’s work prized, 
Space Whale, Light House nailed, Catacombs are unveiled  

Fly Ranch purchase, hot as hell, leftover bikes bombshell
Tenere, Hatted man, Aaron’s cut lifespan. 

Robots I saw bringing awe, Nixon’s under martial law
Larry passes, Hexatron, diaper squad, the plane's not gone!

We started all the fires
We weren’t always burning
Now the BLM’s turning
We did start the fire!
And when we are gone
It’ll still burn on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on

We started all the fires
Turns out we were yearning
Now we're always burning
We did start the fire!
Yeah we tried to light it
And we never fight it.

We started all the fires
We're all still learning
we're forever burning
We did start the fire!
Yeah we tried to light it
And we never fight it.

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While many of the references in We Started The Fire are obvious, others are perhaps less so, especially for those new or newer to Burning Man. Here's your reference guide! You can always learn more about Burning Man's history here.

Baker Beach - The beach in San Francisco where the first burn happened.
Zone Trip 4 - The Cacophony Society's name for the first Burn out in the northern Nevada desert: "Zone Trip 4 - A Bad Day In Black Rock."
Cacophony - The Cacophony Society in San Francisco, whose Kevin Evans and John Law were a big part of Burning Man's founding.
Pissed off law - In '90, the cops kicked the crew off Baker Beach, forcing them to the playa and creating history. Also a side-reference to John Law, a key Cacophonist and one of Burning Man's founder.
Black Rock Desert - The site of Burning Man, in northern Nevada.
Larry Harvey - One of Burning Man's founders (to some who don't know better, "the" founder). 
Jerry James - One of Burning Man's founders.
T.AZ. - Temporary Autonomous Zone - the original intention of Burning Man, arguably.

Kevin Evans - one of Burning Man's founders.
Burn the Man - Torch the effigy.
Danger Ranger’s Peter Pan - Michael Mikel, aka Danger Ranger, is a Burning Man founder.
Crimson Rose - She led the first fire Conclave and has been a core part of the Burning Man leadership team since the early 90s.
Marian - Marian Goodell. The CEO and leader of Burning Man, having taken charge of the event in the mid 90s and having shepherded it for 20+ years.
Seventy-Eight Olds - The first art car, owned by Danger Ranger. A '78 Olds that had been damanged during the '89 Earthquake, and had the exact time of the quake on its license plate.

Electronic music's here - In '93, electronic music made its first real appearance on playa.
Terbo Ted's spinning near - Terbo Ted, aka Craig Ellenwood, spun the very first set on the playa, in '93. I did an interview with him here.
Java Cow - In the early 90s, someone dressed up as a kind of freaky cow would go around pouring coffee for people. Java cow!
Christmas Camp - The very first theme camp, in 1993, complete with fake snow and decorated Xmas trees, started the grand tradition of annoying your neighbors with music on loop.
Burning Man goes glamp - Refers to '93 and '94, which was when things started getting elaborate on the camping front. Fancy food, champagne in crystal goblets, people wearing heinous formal jackets, outrageous drag queens dressed to the 9s, etc. 

Will Roger - Cultural co-founder of Burning Man.
Center Camp - A large structure in the 'center' of Black Rock City. It started quite humbly, but is anything but now.
Harley DuBois - Along with Marian Goodell arguably rescued the event in the 90s. Effectively a co-founder.
Lit lamps - In '94, lamps in front of the Man were elevated above the playa floor, led by Steve Mobia, leading to the creation of the Lamplighters.
Shooting range - There used to be a shooting range out there. Guns were banned starting in '97, however.
Trash fence downrange - The first trash fence was in '96.
Everything is now changed - Refers to (and is an overstatement of) the changes that happened after '96.

Michael Furey - A burner who died/committed suicide by playing chicken with a van outside of Gerlach in '96. Larry Harvey's reaction to this death initiated a split with John Law that led this to be Law's last year.
Papa Satan - the '96 Burn had a strong theme and story running through it, involving Papa Satan, CEO of the evil Helco, trying to execute a hostile takeover of Burning Man. The Cacophonists put on plays and sublots in a series of pre-Burning Man events in San Francisco relating to this too.
Inferno - The '96 theme.
Helco - The evil company Papa Satan ran. One of the big art pieces that year was the Helco tower, which John Law famously climbed as it was lit, and then rode a zip line to the ground from the top as the fire began to get close to him. One of my favorite ever images of Burning Man.
Techno ghetto - After friction between electronic music fans and everyone else, a "techno ghetto" was organized in '96 about a mile north of the city to keep the large sound camps away from everybody else. Unfortunately, people were injured when a vehicle driving at high speed across the playa - this was the last year that was allowed - ran over their tent out in the techno ghetto. 
Regulation - After '96, regulation started to creep in by necessity. No guns and no high-speed driving were big ones.
John Law leaves the nation - '96 was John Law's last year, as he quit over severe disagreements over the direction of the event.

Fly Ranch, Hualapai - Burning Man was held on Fly Ranch and the next door Hualapai playa in '97 in an attempt to escape the hassles of the BLM and law enforcement. The event nearly fell apart that year.
Rod Garrett - The man recruited to create plans and documents for creating Black Rock City in compliance with county regulations. Rod's Road is named after him. 
Sheriff's eye - Even though '97 was on private property, the Washoe County sheriff was able to seize all the ticket sales at gate (back then you could just buy tickets at the gate), causing Larry Harvey to offer lifetime tickets to anyone who could chip in $500.
New Earth Guardians - A group formed in '97 by Harley DuBois to teach people  about Leave No Trace.
LNT is hard - LNT in '97 was notoriously hard because Fly Ranch and the Hualapai are not barren. There are grasses, etc, and they had some tension with the Fly Ranch landlord.

Sergey, Larry Page - Sergey Brin and Larry Page (the Google founders) started going to Burning Man, famously, in the late 90s.
Drama on the back stage - This refers to the trouble BM was having with the local community in the late '90s. It was quite a contentious relationship.
X-Force - Marvel comics referenced Burning Man in '98 in their X-force #75 comic, with people at the "Exploding Colossal Man Shindig and Hullabaloo", with a sculpture that is unmistakably the Man from Burning Man.
DMV - The first organized DMV out there was in '99.
First Regional will now be - '98 saw the first regional. "Burning Man Texas" had 30 people and a straw man built on site. The picture is of AfrikaBurn, however, which is the largest regional. I couldn't find any pics from the first Burning Man Texas.

Piss Clear - The name of a venerable publication full of info and snark, published on the playa.
Best is here - David Best and Jack Haye built the first Temple, in 2000.
Wheel of Time - The 99' theme.
Temple Mind - The Temple of the Mind was the first Temple.
Banksy’s art - Banksy came to Burning Man in 2001 and left some art behind.
Jiffy Lube - A camp at whose art display resulted in the Org, under pressure from law enforcement, ordering said art display (of two men having anal sex) taken down. 
Camels on the playa - There were real camels on the playa in the late 90s. Because people brought them, to be clear. 


And the Conclave's whirling - a reference to the Fire Conclave that performs before the Man burns.


Theme camps proliferate - They started breeding like rabbits in the early 00s. 
Contessa sails straight - an awesome art car that was a big rigged ship. First appearance was in 2002. Sadly, it has since burned down.
Principles - Larry Harvey wrote down ten principles in 2004 as descriptive of what the community at that time valued, in his opinion.
Thunderdome - They've been coming since the late 90s!
Weather makes it hard to roam - 2004 had terrible weather, with 40 registered art projects not making it because the weather stopped them from setting up. White-out dust storms to rain to very high temps and back again.

Angels of Apocalypse - An art piece in 2005 from Flaming Lotus Girls.
Passage - A large art piece in 2005 of a woman and her child, by Dan DasMann and Karen Cusolito.
Colossus - Another very large art piece from 2005, of hanging boulders that could be spun around a large center spire. By Zachary Coffin. 
Belgian waffle - A group of Belgians came out in 2006 and built Uchronia, otherwise known as the Waffle, which was the largest art piece ever built on the playa at that time. There was some controversy later when it turned out that it had some kind of corporate sponsorship.
First moop map - the first Moop Map was in 2006....
Children of the dust clap - ....and we're all excited about it! Who doesn't look forward to the Moop Map every year?

Addis’s Early Burn - Paul Addis burned the Man early in '07 as a (dangerous) prank.
Man Burn, Temple Burn - So much fire.
TV Free Burning Man - There was a tv station broadcasting back to the default world via the internet in '06.
Big Rig’s no minivan - Big Rig Jig was an epic piece of art in '07 involving a pair of semitrucks, by Mike Ross.

Bliss Dance - A 2010 art piece - first in an eventual series of 3 by Marco Cochrane - that was the talk of the playa. A large woman posing gracefully.
Temple Flux - The Temple of Flux was in 2010, which was very different from most Temples, shaped like a series of canyons instead of a building.
Dr. Yes’s epochs - I'm Dr. Yes, and I started going in 2010. I later created a Burning Man history that divides Burning Man into "epochs." https://www.burn.life/history-of-burning-man.html
South Park - Cthulhu destroyed Burning Man in a South Park episode in 2010.
Mantfarm - a large art piece from 2010 that was like a big ant farm, but for people.
We don’t need no fire alarms! - A filler line, frankly.


Now the world's learning, that we're out there Burning - A reference to the increased attention Burning Man was getting in wider culture around 2010, leading to the first ticket sellout the next year.


Tickets sellout - First time tickets sold out was 2011, and it's happened every year since.
Rites of Passage - The 2011 theme.
Temple of Transition - The 2011 temple. Still my favorite of all-time.
Trojan Horse - A giant Trojan horse was built, wheeled out onto the playa, and burned in 2011.
Pier bestows - The Pier was a giant installation that was a long pier across the playa in 2011, and then in 2012 it was back, this time with a half-sunken wrecked sailing ship at the end of it. By Matt Schultz and the Pier Group.
Oh the places you’ll go - One of the most famous videos in Burning Man's history, set to Dr. Suess's book of the same name, released in 2011.

Bank of Un-America - 2012 saw a massive installation called Burn Wall Street out on the playa. One of the five buildings was the Bank of Un-America. Others included Merrill Lynched and Goldman Sucks.
Playa dubstep mania - Dubstep was huge for awhile in the late 00s and early 10s, and then suddenly everyone decided they'd just had enough and it all-but-disappeared. Skrillex wasn't really playing the playa during that time, but as he started out in dubstep and is recognizable, I used him.
Space Saucer - The 2013 Man base was huge, shaped like a space saucer, and burned like an inferno.
Cargo Cult - The 2013 theme.
DPW Catapult - in 2015, the DPW (Department of Public Works) launched a flaming piano from a giant trebuchet. 

Truth is Beauty - 2013. The second installation of Marco Cochrane's series of giant metal women on the playa. 
Church Trap - An installation I enjoyed in 2013 of a church tilted up on its side and propped up, like a mousetrap. By Rebekah Waites
Plug n’ plays are bullcrap - Fuck plug n' plays like Caravansicle, Humano Tribe, and Lost Hotel.
Embrace hey - Embrace was a large and beautiful art installation in 2014 of two human figures half-buried in the sand, embracing. By Matt Schultz and the Pier Group
Rain to play - it rained hard Monday morning in 2014, causing the gates to close and leaving some people trapped in line for 24 hours.
What else do I have to say? - Filler line!


Now it's concerning, and the community's churning - A reference to the fact that it became harder to keep communities at BM together in the post ticket-sellout period as demand for tickets keeps rising.


Bug invasion - In 2015 bugs invaded the playa pre-gate opening.
Brutal cold - It was really cold in 2015. I remember wearing faux-fur at 4 pm.
Masturbating nun in bold - Inside the huge Totem of Confessions in 2015 was a box with a nun masturbating with a cross in a box. The Burning Man Org made them lock the box, reportedly under pressure from law enforcement.
Promise Temple - The Temple of Promise was built in 2015. 
Revolution - The third of Marco Cochrane's series of women on the playa, in 2015.
Sextant does electrocution - Sextant camp started building giant tesla coils in the mid 2010s.

White Ocean vandalized - White Ocean camp was famously vandalized in 2016 by what turned out to be disgruntled contractors. I dove into this story and discovered the truth of the situation was not what the media wanted it to be. 
Da Vinci’s work prized - DaVinci's Workshop was the 2016 theme.
Space Whale - The Space Whale was an epic large stained glass whale in 2016, by Matt Schultz and the Pier Group.
Light House nailed - One of my favorite all-time art pieces out there, in 2016. A set of giant, crooked wooden light houses. The project was led by father-son team Max & Jonny Poynton.
Catacombs are unveiled - Also 2016, the Veil of Catacombs, led by Dan Sullivan, was a huge pair of pyramids that never got quite finished, but made for one hell of a fire.

Fly Ranch purchase - In 2016, Burning Man bought Fly Ranch with $6.5 million donated by wealthy Burners. 
Hot as hell - 2017 was legendarily hot on the playa.
Leftover bikes bombshell - Thousands of bikes - something like twice as many as usual - were left behind by people in 2017.
Tenere - the Tree of Tenere, by Symmetry Labs, was an incredible art installation of a large tree lit up by 10s of thousands of sequenced LEDs for leaves. 
Hatted man - the 2017 burn featured a Man inside a hut, and he looked a like he had a hat on.
Aaron’s cut lifespan - Aaron Mitchell died in 2017 after running into the fire intentionally during the 2017 Man burn. I wrote an article on having empathy for him here.

Robots I saw bringing awe - 2018's theme was I, Robot, which, being a nice and tangible theme, resulted in a lot of robot art on the playa. 
Nixon’s under martial law - The BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) set up squads on tribal lands on the way to Burning Man to arbitrarily pull over Burners in Nixon and surrounding communities in 2018. They used nonsense reasons to search their cars, sometimes for hours, and almost all of the charges were later dropped. 
Larry passes - Larry Harvey died in 2018.  
Hexatron - A huge art piece by Mark Lottor originally built for the Electric Daisy Carnival, that was hundreds of giant LED-lit and sequenced poles, making a kind of LED forest. 
Diaper squad - My campmates and I came up with Weirdout Wednesday in 2018 and put on adult diapers to go troll people. Read about it here. 
The plane's not gone - The 747 was famously left on the playa for quite awhile after the 2018 burn. 


Now the BLM’s turning - The recent proposals from the BLM are shitty and while the Org has had trouble with the BLM before, these new proposed restrictions could wreck Burning Man.
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If you're interested in more Burning Man history, check out my year-by-year history of Burning Man. If you enjoyed the video, you might like my other videos. 

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I couldn't have made this video without the photos and footage of a lot of other people. The only photos and video that I took myself are from 2010 onwards, but by no means is all the media covering 2010+ mine. Thanks to:

Jamen Percy - Some of the drone footage, including the opening shot.
Roy Two Thousand - Some time lapses and burn footage.
Mark Day - Various pieces of footage of burns. 
Terry An - Video of the Galaxia burn.
Infinit Studios - Footage of the mostly topless woman with a mustache riding a bike. 
SevenClouds - Some drone footage from 2013.
Alex Freeman - Some burn footage.
Guy Jackson - Some burn footage.
Pete LaMoia - Video of 2013 Man burn.
Rick Parker - Video of Veil of Catacombs burn.
Afonso Salcedo - Some drone footage of the Temple of Promise.
Ahmed Elhusseiny - Some burn footage, and footage of fire dancers.
Brad Templeton - Some photos from the late 90s and early 00s. 
Stewart Harvey - Some photos from the very early years.
Duncan Rawlinson - Many photos from the 2010s. 
Scott Beale - A couple photos from the 00s.
​David Gee - A couple photos from the early 00s.
Nick Lynch -Photos from the early years.
The Burning Man Project - A number of photos.
Danger Ranger - Photos from the early years. 
Kevin Evans - Several shots of early years.
Carvermom - The photo of Java Cow.
Malderor - Shooting range photo.
Jim Provenzano - A photo of the early Temple.
Thomas K. Pendergast - A couple art shots.
Andrew Miller - DPW Catapult. 
Jim Urquhart- Tea ceremony photo.
Dustin Mosher - Photo of the 747.


​Probably others I forgot to thank, for which I deeply apologize! Feel free to email me at [email protected] and I'll be happy to rectify any error I made.