When was streets of philadelphia written

Add Your Thoughts 49 Comments. Memory Those of us who are gay, who lived through the s know what this song is about. We were dropping like flies, wasting away, getting all kinds of weird diseases like Kaposi's Sarcoma and PCP Pneumonia. We died, sometimes in horrible agonizing pain, sometimes slowly drowning from the fluid in our lungs. And nobody cared. Nobody gave a damn. But even if you weren't there, you don't have to do a lot of deep thinking to understand the meaning of this song.

The lyrics are perhaps too literal for comfort. We would start losing weight uncontrollably, losing maybe a few pounds, maybe more, every week. Literally "wasting away". It's not surprising that pretty soon we were "unrecognizable to [ourselves]" and our "clothes don't fit me no more". I was down to pounds when the first treatment came out.

I literally looked like I had been in a concentration camp. Every week the paper would come out, and the weekly obituaries. Up to twelve pages in the Washington Blade in a single week. Every week, another friend got sick. Every week, another friend died. Every weekend was spent going to funerals and visiting hospitals. Our friends were literally "vanished and gone".

And indeed there was "no angel gonna greet me". Our churches threw us out. They were afraid to touch us, afraid to share a meal, for fear they would catch it. It was "just you and I my friend". It even showed a bit of what Kaposi's Sarcoma looks like, although the filmmakers had to water it down a lot to get the film made.

If they showed the true horror of AIDS, nobody would pay to see it. But this song captures the pain, the loss, and the loneliness that was AIDS for those of us who lived through it. Follow this link to see an award winning photograph of Ken Meeks, a real victim of the plague, with Kaposi's Sarcoma. My partner had it in the s. He had it on his skin, and also on his organs -- his kidneys, liver, and intestines.

Kaposi's is a terribly painful way to die. He couldn't face his fate, and he killed himself. There was an error. Thanks for sharing your story, very heartfelt indeed. Those of us who are not gay that were around in the 80's remember the pain of AIDS as well. The establishment scared to death and promoting fear. Instead blaming the gay community. An awful name that meant Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. Family members. And by the way Tom Hanks plays the gay lawyer in the movie.

For his brilliant portrayal of the character, he won an Academy Award for his role. Name Optional. May 18, July 9, October 28, Skip to content Bruce Springsteen. Between this, Philadelphia's strong box office performance, and the single being a Top 10 pop hit, "Streets of Philadelphia" became one of Springsteen's best-known songs to the general music audience.

Nonetheless, Springsteen went on to perform the song only sparingly in his own concerts. In solo guitar form and missing the song's trademark synthesizers-and-drums feel, it was performed semi-regularly on the solo and stark Ghost of Tom Joad Tour. After that, the song became a rarity, only appearing a dozen times on the E Street Band Reunion Tour, and, as of September , only a couple of times across the three tours after that.

It was released as a promotional single on the same day as the album and the other three promotional singles. The song was the best recieved song from the album being regarded as better than the original. Many critics called it one of the stand out performances of his entire career it also recieved some of the best reviews of his career.

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