YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – It was almost three decades ago that Bruce Springsteen made one of his most unlikely tour stops.
On Jan. 12, 1996, the rock superstar played a show in Stambaugh Auditorium in Youngstown. Springsteen was on a solo acoustic tour for his somber 1995 album “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” which included “Youngstown” – a song told from the perspective of a steelworker who lost his livelihood when the mill closed.
It was then and now unheard of for the rocker to play a city the size of Youngstown. But because of the connection the song made with the city, The Boss carved out some time between his Detroit and Cleveland dates.
Tickets went on sale the same day the concert was announced, creating a one-two punch of surprises.
Eric Simione, a now-retired teacher at Boardman High School, made sure he got in line and bought a ticket.
On Friday evening, Simione gave a lecture about the song at Mill Creek Park’s Ford Nature Center. He discussed how “Youngstown” is intertwined with the city, the park and Mahoning Valley history.
Because of its sparse and noncommercial sound, the “Tom Joad” album was far from Springsteen’s biggest work. But it did win the 1997 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album.
Springsteen still occasionally plays “Youngstown” in concert – the powerful song becoming a highlight when he does. On the first night of his two-concert run at Pittsburgh’s PPG Paints Arena last August, the song drew a roar of approval.
Always a voice of the workingman, Springsteen took an interest in the troubled city of Youngstown and its struggling residents back in the early 1990s.
He did some exploring when he was in town for the Stambaugh concert, making a foray into the abandoned site of the Jeannette – or “Jenny” – blast furnace that he made famous in the song. A stark black and white photo of Springsteen on snow covered land with Jenny rising in the background has become a piece of local iconography.
The Jeannette furnace was part of Youngstown Sheet & Tube’s Brier Hill Works. It was shuttered in the late 1970s, in the early days of the collapse of the steel industry, and was demolished not long after Springsteen’s visit.
The New Jersey rocker made another local site famous in that song – the Heaton iron furnace in what is today Struthers.
The lyrics of “Youngstown” start with a scene-setting mention of the furnace:
“Here in northeast Ohio, back in 1803,
James and Daniel Heaton found the ore that was lining Yellow Creek.
They built a blast furnace, here along the shore.
And they made the cannonballs that helped the Union win the war.”
The stone remnants of the furnace still stand in a wooded area of Struthers that is part of the Mill Creek Park district, although it is difficult to reach. Simione isn’t sure if Springsteen made an attempt to visit the Heaton furnace, but he said it’s unlikely since it can be a treacherous hike in January.
The Heaton furnace was the humble beginning of the Mahoning Valley steel industry, even though it was primitive and was in operation for only five years. James Heaton would go on to found the city of Niles.
Simione’s lecture covered some of his own memories of Youngstown’s steelmaking past. He recalled having dinner on holidays at his grandparents’ home in Campbell – one of the tiny concrete company homes.
His grandparents, like many in that era, led simple lives but took great pride in their home and their work in the mill.
A replica of the interior of those row houses, which had two rooms downstairs and two upstairs, can be viewed in the Youngstown Museum of Industry and Labor.
“You can imagine what it was like having 15 people in there for Easter,” Simione said.
The oversized role of the city’s steel industry in the nation’s history cannot be overstated, Simione said.
In 1952, during the Korean War, President Harry Truman took control of the nation’s steel mills just days before a strike. Truman sided with the union, but he needed the mills to stay open to support the war effort, Simione said.
The steel companies were furious and filed lawsuits to end the nationalization of their plants, but it was the suit filed by Youngstown Sheet & Tube that made it to the Supreme Court. The court sided with the corporation’s argument by a 6-2 vote, ruling the president cannot take possession of private property without the authorization of Congress or the Constitution.
That decision, which set a precedent for war powers by a president, is still viewed as one of the most important Supreme Court decisions.
A pie chart displayed by Simione showed just how rapidly the steel industry’s demise came after World War II.
In 1945, the U.S. made 64% of the world’s production of steel. By 1985, that number had dwindled to 11%. Today, it’s around 4%.
Pictured at top: Bruce Springsteen is shown on the New Jersey shore in this 1980 photo. When the rocker visited Youngstown in 1996 to perform at Stambaugh Auditorium, he also explored one of the city’s decaying steel mills. (Photo by Joel Bernstein)