![]() ![]() These children’s nursery rhymes are woven into the song. ![]() There’s the ‘Jack be nimble, Jack be quick’. I love the title, "American Pie."īH: Because it couldn’t have been anything else, really.ĭM: There’s a lot of little things in there. The form of this song is different from almost any song you would hear. Then I slowed down the fifth verse so it starts slow, rocks in the middle and slows at the end. Later on, three months later, I wrote five more verses of the same length, following forward with this idea, almost in a rock dream kind of idea. This is how the form of the song established itself. I needed to come up with a chorus that was crazy and rip it, rather than lay there with it. It was the one that would follow "Tapestry." It was in flux.It was (then going to be) a ballad record and I didn’t want that. I had the second album going and didn’t have a name for it. It’s where you get into yourself, and I had that (song) in my mind for a couple of months. 'The form of this song is different from almost any song you would hear'ĭM: Writing songs is a lonely thing. But I’ll just start singing a song, an idea. I had the tape recorder on and I just sang, "A long, long time ago, I can still remember how the music made me smile. And I knew if I had my chance, I could make those people dance. Maybe they’d be happy for a while.”ĭM: Oh yeah! ".but something touched me deep inside, the day the music died." I said, “What the heck was that?” And I had it on the machine.īH: I am stunned in this moment. I even did it on my last album, "Botanical Gardens." I’ll start to sing into the recorder. I don’t write the lyrics down. I don’t write the melody down. I can’t read music. I was in my little room where I used to write songs. What I do is I put a tape recorder on. I had no idea it would take root and I’d have to talk about it all these years. But I am happy to talk about it, because it leads me into a discussion of the country which I am very interested in and love. And the music represents that. And this was the theory of "American Pie." And it was just one of my ideas. Part of what "American Pie" is, is a spiritual song, about the spirit of the country and what was happening to it. I still maintain that even though my politics have changed a lot since 1970, I’m still against all this, anything spiritually bad for the nation. ![]() The Vietnam War was breathing down everybody’s back.īH: It was the first time we were seeing body bags on the evening news!ĭM: We should see them again, because maybe we wouldn’t have these wars that are invisible, because this is not good. This was the kind of volatile world we were in then. We didn’t have a pandemic, but cities were burning. So that’s what it’s about to me.ĭM: First of all, America was much more volatile than it is at the moment. But Don, you put these moments in the song that stand alone, yet in aggregate, they paint a picture of those times and I don’t think any song has ever done it more brilliantly than that one. ![]() It’s about the culture, how important music was, socio-historically to our culture and you weave it brilliantly.Įveryone wants to know about "The Joker" or "Jack Flash" but I think we can all understand who they are and who we want them to be. Everyone says, “What’s it about?” I know what it’s about - absolutely, definitively know what it’s aboutĭon McLean: That’s good. In honor of the song's 50th anniversary, McLean talked about its mysterious inspiration and legacy with Bart Herbison of Nashville Songwriters Association International.īart Herbison: "American Pie." I could argue that it’s the greatest song ever written, and I would love to have that argument. It's now been 50 years since "American Pie" - all eight and a half cryptic minutes of it- took hold of the airwaves in 1971, and it's safe to say there's never been another song like it. "A long, long time ago," Don McLean began writing a rock epic with those words. Watch Video: Story Behind the Song: 'American Pie' ![]()
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