Music at the end of the world: The harrowing Billy Joel song that played during 9/11
Music played at Austin J Tobin Plaza.
Why wouldn’t it? It was the plaza that connected all the buildings of the World Trade Centre. For pretty much every single working day, it was a bustle of constant activity. Tourists taking in the sights. Office workers eating lunch. Business people having one last smoke before the meeting that will decide their future. For a certain type of person, it was the very heart of the city that never sleeps. Thus, it was important to provide for the sheer number of people who would frequent it.
There were food stalls and vendors surrounding the plaza. Countless public transport links nearby for the many, many workers who lived out of the city. Above all, there was music. A set of speakers constantly floating a tasteful, relaxing set of muzak numbers over the constant rush of activity that surrounded the plaza. A few of them were original numbers, but the majority of them were glossy, inoffensive instrumental jazz covers of everyone from The Bee-Gees to Johann Pachabel.
Whenever there was music playing at the Austin J Tobin plaza, there were people there. That is, until the very last moments of its existence, when the plaza was vacant save for a few dazed onlookers watching and recording one of the most terrifying and world-shaking things to ever happen to New York City. Yet, the music played on. Soothing and melodic, while all around it, the world seemingly ended.
Which Billy Joel song played during 9/11?
It leads to one of the most harrowing things you can find on YouTube. A site where no small amount of harrowing things live. A video taken of the plaza at around midday on September 11th, 2001, after the attacks on WTC 1 and 2 had taken place, but before the towers had fully fallen. Surrounded by destruction, the cameraman, Jack Talierco simply films the ensuing chaos, accompanied by an older New Yorker whose face we don’t see.
The footage is harrowing until we get to the truly nightmarish part, where a man tries to climb out of the Trade Centre from high above Talierco, but loses his footing and falls. All the two men can say is “Did you get it?” and “Yeah, yeah, I got it”. With utter desolation in their voice as a twinkling version of Billy Joel‘s ‘She’s Always A Woman’ floats in the air around it, much like ‘Nearer My God To Thee’ must have hung around the deck of the sinking Titanic.
Within hours, the plaza was finally buried under around a billion tons of debris from the towers’ collapsing. That was what it took to stop the music at Austin J Tobin Plaza. Yet the music of that day wouldn’t be forgotten. There’s a concentrated effort online from a generation barely old enough to remember 9/11 to collect that music together, under the banner of the World Trade Centre Muzak Community.
Music played at Austin J Tobin Plaza. That music may have been a relic of a different time, but it’s one we should hold on to as much as we can, as the world veers into the kind of dark days that 9/11 portended.