The Day The Music Died
Published on Tuesday 30 September 2003
by Spencer Leigh
In their later years, the Beatles filled their songs with unusual imagery, but there is little mystery about them because both John Lennon and Paul McCartney answered reporter's questions. Song writer Don McLean is equally eloquent but he has decided not to answer questions about his most famous composition, "American Pie".
Originally released in 1971, "American Pie" caught the imagination of rock fans on both sides of the Atlantic. It was obvious to most listeners that the song was inspired by the death of Buddy Holly, and that much of the song's symbolism embraced counter-culture heroes like Bob Dylan and the Beatles. But after that, as the song says, we were on our own as McLean retained a dignified silence.
Nearly thirty years later, "American Pie" retains its mystique. The Internet offers endless analysis of the song, though as anyone can put anything they like on the net, dodgy explanations abound. One example combines Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billie Joe" with "American Pie" and has Billie Joe throwing a pink carnation off the Tallahatchie Bridge, which is caught by the drunken McLean wandering on the levee below.
To mark the 40th Anniversary of the event that triggered "American Pie", I've attempted to unravel the secrets of the song - and even if I'm wrong, Don McLean isn't going to say so. All he says about "American Pie" is that "It means I don't have to work if I don't want to". He adds that he may go public on an 0891 number when he is poor and old, but that's unlikely, as the royalties from "American Pie" are a secure pension. It's coincidence, I'm sure, but Fellini's most enigmatic film is 8 ½ and "American Pie" is eight and a half minutes long.
It would be wrong to say that Don McLean has never spoken about "American Pie". He gave this insight to New Musical Express on 18th March 1972, "American Pie was an attempt to use metaphors the best I could to describe a certain loss that I felt in American music. Buddy Holly's death, for me, was a symbolic death that virtually all the characters in the song suffered. The music never dies, though, and all I was saying in the song was that people lack the basic trust to believe the music will happen again." And that, clearly, has to be my starting point.
Don McLean was born in New York in 1945. In the first verse, he is a 13-year-old paper boy, loving rock'n'roll and dreaming of being a performer himself. In February 1959, the headlines tell of the death of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Richie Valens in a plane crash. Holly had only recently been married, hence the reference to a "widowed bride". Some have said that the verse relates to the assassination of the Kennedy brothers, but why should Jackie Kennedy be a "bride" - and besides, would McLean still have been a paper boy when he was 18? The reference in the chorus to "This'll be the day that I die" echoes Holly's own "That'll be the day when I die". McLean himself has recorded several of Holly's tunes including "Everyday", "Fools Paradise" and "Maybe Baby".
In the chorus, the 1971 Don McLean realises that his ideals have been shattered by various aspects of 60s culture - drugs, psychedelia, race riots and the Vietnam War - all of which are referred to in subsequent verses. As John Lennon sang on his first solo album, "The dream is over". McLean wants to return to the innocence of the 50s, which might have continued if Buddy Holly had not died. Today's music is tarnished ("the levee was dry") and he hides his sorrow by drinking.
In 1958 the doo-wop group, the Monotones, sand, "I wonder who, who, who , who wrote the book of love?" McLean refers to that record, obviously one he loves, and then makes a reference to the "God is Dead" debate from late 60s America. He contrasts this with the children's rhyme "Jesus loves me this I know, 'cause the Bible tells me so".
"Do you believe in rock'n'roll" is a nod to the Lovin' Spoonful's "Do you Believe in Magic?", another song praising the glories of the Elvis years. "Can you teach me how to dance real slow?" is McLean wondering how he can enjoy spaced-out pyschedelia music. He returns to 1958 and high school dances - the reference to the "pick carnation" is to Marty Robbins' hit record, "A White Sport Coat (And A Pink Carnation)". "We both kicked off our shoes" refers to the 'sock hops' where kids would dance in their socks to avoid damage to the gym's floor. He describes the exhiliration of rock'n'roll, "but I knew I was out of luck the day the music died."
"For ten years we've been on our own" refers to the decade following Holly's death when, for various reasons, the other rock'n'roll leaders - Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis - also lost their creativity. A rolling stone gathers no moss, "moss grows fat on a rolling stone" - a critical comment about the Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan, who recorded "Like a Rolling Stone", or perhaps a punning reference to them both.
Then, in the third verse, we meet a cast of characters. The Jester is Bob Dylan, who has assumed James Dean's mantle. Many criticised the Rebel with a Cause's singing voice, but his 'protest songs' echoed what 20-somethings were thinking. Elvis, acknowledged as the King of rock'n'roll, was making inconsequential beach movies, but who is the queen? I like to think it is Little Richard. Dylan has stolen Elvis' "thorny crown" - a Christ reference here - and is accused of theft, but McLean can't decide whether or not he has been good for the music. The final section of this verse refers to the Beatles. The quartet practicing in the park may be "Sgt Pepper", but John Lennon has become involved in radical politics - or is reading "a book on Marx".
The fourth verse allows McLean to comment on the late 60s. Charles Manson and his so-called Family committed atrocities and murders, notably of the actress Sharon Tate, in Hollywood, claiming to have been motivated by the hidden messages in the Beatles' "Helter Skelter". The "summer swelter" probably refers to the unrest following the Watts race riots, admittedly in 1965, four years before Manson.
The Byrds, who recorded "Eight Miles High", were at the fore front of psychedelia and many like-minded musicians were busted in possession of marijuana - or, as McLean puts it, "it landed foul on the grass". They looked to Bob Dylan for direction but he suffered a motorcycle accident in 1965 ("on the side-lines in a cast") and returned with songs of domesticity ("Nashville Skyline"). "The half-time air was sweet perfume" is marijuana again, as the Beatles becomes Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The lines could also be about Vietnam and the US hit single "The Ballad of the Green Berets" by S/Sgt Barry Sadler, but I prefer the Beatles interpretation, as they remained on top despite challenges from other groups ("The marching band refused to yield"). The answer to McLean's question, "Do you recall what was revealed the day the music died?" is that music is meant to be entertaining ("We all got up to dance, Ah, we never got the chance"), something forgotten in the late 60s.
Things get worse in the fifth verse, which ends up like Kris Kristofferson's parody song, "Blame it on the Stones", but this time for real. "A generation lost in space" are the 400,000 stoned hippies at the Woodstock festival. In 1966, the Beatles gave their last concert at Candlestick Park, San Francisco, and the Rolling Stones became the greatest touring rock band. Unfortunately for McLean, Mick Jagger ("Jumpin' Jack Flash") had been consumed by devil worship ("Their Satanic Majesties Request", "Sympathy for the devil") and everything culminates in the disastrous Altamont festival, where the Stones ridiculously allowed Hell's Angels ("no angel born in hell") to act as security, only for them to kill Meredith Hunter.
In the final verse, Don McLean runs into Janis Joplin ("a girl who sang the blues"). He tries to re-kindle the music he loves, but he is told that no one is interested. "In the streets the children screamed" probably relates to that appalling picture of kids running away from a napalm bomb in Vietnam, while the returning servicemen were denied a hero's welcome ("The Church bells all were broken"), although this could again refer to the 'God is Dead' controversy.
We then come to the song's final lines, and the "The three men I admire the most". I think McLean is referring to the Kennedy and Luther King assassinations - John (1963), Bobby (1968) and King (1968). It would be inane for him to regard Holly, Valens and the Big Bopper as "the Father, Son and Holy Ghost" - and anyway, why should they be "the three men I admire the most"? "They caught the last train for the coast" harks back to the many gospel songs linking railways to death, although when I heard McLean perform the song in concert he changed the reference to "the last bus".
Where does that leave "American Pie"? Without doubt, it's a negative song about 60s culture, which is probably why Don McLean has chosen no to speak about it. It would hardly improve his street cred to tell the world that he hated everything about the sexiest decade of the 20th century - unless, of course, he did it in a cryptic song.
And he could have kept adding verses to "American Pie" as the years went by. As it turned out, he didn't like the 70s any more than the 60s. Reacting to a bad review in Melody Maker in 1978, he wrote, "Cynical rags like Melody Maker continue to sell the disco junk and glitter trash that make the commercial music scene the perverted cesspool it has become, awash with no-talent clowns who do anything to sell records, except make decent music." Sounds like the start of another verse...
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