Let’s taste that ‘American Pie’

Through the eight decades of my life, many songs have placed themselves permanently in my brain. My first record purchase was a con job by my sister who thought I should have that 45 of Elvis Presley’s “Don’t be Cruel.” My 90 cents were spent and I basically lost control of my record. But I was far from done.

Over the years I listened to quite a few artists, bought my share of singles and albums, and went to my share of concerts. But I missed ever seeing one of my favorites in person, Don McLean.

On one occasion, I was in a nightclub where the singer/guitarist was killing us with his collection of songs. I took the chance at a break to ask him if he would play “American Pie."

He looked at me and said, “Lord, man, that is eight and a half minutes long. I would lose most of the audience.”

The song never seemed that long to me, just a stream of enjoyment. I shrugged and said thanks anyway.

But let’s look at that mammoth hit and the many words we all stumbled to figure out in that classic. McLean admits that the basis of the song was the loss of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper in that small plane crash on their way to their concert in Moorhead, Minnesota. America was shocked. All three had made substantial names for themselves.

He said that it was a comparison of the times and the music between the ’60s and the ’70s. But what else influenced this incredible song? McLean was but 13-years-old, delivering papers on his route, when he opened the bundle to first see the headlines about Holly. The song would not be finished until 1971 amid some very changing times in our country and the world. These were also reflected in his words.

The back of the album lists a dedication to Buddy Holly. McLean has said that he wanted to “write a big song about America and about politics.” He starts his song “Long, long time ago, I can still remember how the music used to make me smile.”

Holly’s death was a personal tragedy to McLean who had suffered through many hardships of his own. Those included the death of his father when he was 15, and a failed marriage by that time. He was often suffering from his own personal depression.

Then came the chorus singing ”Bye, bye, Miss American Pie” McLean equated this to Nero watching Rome burning while he just played his fiddle. The world did not seem to care of Holly’s loss as he did.

Later comes the part with the jester wearing a coat he borrowed from James Dean and sitting on the sidelines in a cast. These words came from Dylan’s cover photo on The Freewheeling Bob Dylan. The coat was truly borrowed, and his cast came from a motorcycle accident in 1966.

When McLean wrote “And while the king was looking down, the jester stole his thorny crown,” most believed he was saying that Dylan took Elvis’ place as the No. 1 performer of American music.

Even more interesting is the line, “The birds flew off with a fallout shelter. Eight miles high and falling fast.” According to some, this was a reference to The Byrds’ “Eight Miles High.” A fallout shelter was a term for a drug rehab center in the 1960s, and one of the Byrds had checked into a rehab facility after being caught with drugs in early 1970.

There is so much more. “I met a girl who sang the blues, and I asked her for some happy news, but she just smiled and turned away,” Janis Joplin?

Another part that is left undefined is “And while Lenin/Lennon read a book on Marx.” Is this Vladimir Lenin, the communist dictator who led the Russian Revolution, or John Lennon whose songs often reflected a very communistic theology? Listen to his “Imagine” carefully some time.

McLean was Catholic. So, did lines like, “Did you write the book of love?” or the part “The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost, they caught the last train for the coast” have some religious meaning? Does “The quartet practiced in the park, and we sang dirges in the dark, the day the music died” have some reference to all the protests taking place in the parks across America?

He also adds “Helter Skelter in a summer swelter.” The Manson attack on Sharon Tate and others? That became the title of a book about those crimes. Yes, these were the times of his writing.

McLean said in the months it took him to write the complete song, he realized that it had to go forward from 1957 and everything that had happened. He sure tried. Many of the references to The Rolling Stones, Beatles and other stars of that period are touched in the song, often unclear to the listener without some music history fans to help.

Later in 1971, a singer named Lori Lieberman saw McLean perform and was so moved that she wrote a song entitled “Killing Me Softly With His Song” that became a huge hit for Roberta Flack in 1973. The song was followed with similar interest in the movie “American Graffiti" and later the movie “The Buddy Holly Story."

Going back to old times makes one compare then to now with some anguish. So, let’s let the singers and writers create those tunes that lift our hearts at times and break them at others. His is pretty good even if it takes eight and a half minutes to partially cover the topic.

Thank you, Don McLean. I love that song even though I still don’t understand all the lines. But then again, when is it bad that something makes us think?