When Brisbane Lions easily won an Australian Football match in front of their home crowd this week, thousands of people sang Bye Bye Miss American Pie joyfully, each time their team kicked a goal! I don’t barrack for Brisbane, but this song was one of my favourites anyhow and the 35,000 fans sounded fantastic. There is one reference to American football in the lyrics, so perhaps Australians felt the song relevant to our football matches as well. Only one issue stayed in my mind… why did a song about loss celebrate football success?
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Don McLean on his Australian and NZ tour
Tamworth Regional Council, 2023.
American Pie is a song by American singer and songwriter Don Mclean (b1945). "I first found out about the plane crash in Iowa because I was a 13-year-old newspaper delivery boy in New Rochelle New York, and I was carrying the bundle of the local Standard-Star papers that were bound in twine, and when I cut it open with a knife, there the crash was on the front page”.
So the familiar phrase The Day The Music Died referred back to the plane crash in 1959 that killed early rock-and-roll stars Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens, ending the era of early rock and roll. The theme of the song went beyond mourning McLean's childhood music heroes, reflecting the deep cultural changes and profound disillusion and loss of innocence of his generation, the early rock and roll generation, taking place in the 1960s.
McLean was 24 when he wrote the song. But it wasn’t easy. What he noticed was that he had to fight so many battles to get this thing done. He’d been fighting everybody his whole life. He wasn’t difficult. He just want things the way he want them. For McLean, the song was a blueprint of his mind then and a homage to his musical influences, plus a roadmap for future students of history
Released in Dec 1971 the single became the #1 US hit in Jan 1972, soon after being the US Billboard charts. The song also topped the charts in Australia, Canada and New Zealand, and in the UK it reached #2. The song was listed as the #5 song on the RIAA project Songs of the Century, described as one of the most successful and debated ballads about the deterioration of U.S teenage culture.
The song's 8.5 minute length meant it could not fit on one side of the 45 RPM record, so United Artists had it recorded on both sides. Cash Box called it folk-rock's most ambitious and successful epic endeavour since Alice's Restaurant, a monumental accomplishment of lyric writing.
The meaning of the other lyrics, which probably referred to many of the jarring events and social changes experienced during that era, have been debated for decades. [Sadness wasn’t only in the song. Don was married twice, with both marriages ending in divorce. Was he replicating the misery of his own life in the parental home? Was he thinking of his endless bronchial asthma?]
For years McLean never explained the symbolism behind the people and events mentioned. Only years later did he release his song writing notes to accompany the original manuscript when it was sold in 2015, explaining many of these. And he further elaborated on the lyrical meaning in a 2022 interview-documentary marking the song's 50th anniversary, stating the song was driven by impressionism, not the symbols that others debated.
In 2017, McLean's original recording was selected for the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being culturally, historically or artistically significant. In 2018, McLean went on a world tour with concerts in North America, UK, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Israel, Norway and Finland. His concert at the London Palladium was brilliant. To mark the song’s 50th anniversary, McLean had a successful 35-date tour across Europe in 2022.
Read McLean’s own homepage and listen to You Tube.
A long, long time ago, I can still remember
How that music used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And maybe they'd be happy for a while
But February made me shiver
With every paper I'd deliver
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn't take one more step
I can't remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died
So, bye, bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to The Levee, but The Levee was dry
And them good old boys were drinkin' whiskey in Rye
Singin', "This'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die"
So the familiar phrase The Day The Music Died referred back to the plane crash in 1959 that killed early rock-and-roll stars Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens, ending the era of early rock and roll. The theme of the song went beyond mourning McLean's childhood music heroes, reflecting the deep cultural changes and profound disillusion and loss of innocence of his generation, the early rock and roll generation, taking place in the 1960s.
McLean was 24 when he wrote the song. But it wasn’t easy. What he noticed was that he had to fight so many battles to get this thing done. He’d been fighting everybody his whole life. He wasn’t difficult. He just want things the way he want them. For McLean, the song was a blueprint of his mind then and a homage to his musical influences, plus a roadmap for future students of history
Released in Dec 1971 the single became the #1 US hit in Jan 1972, soon after being the US Billboard charts. The song also topped the charts in Australia, Canada and New Zealand, and in the UK it reached #2. The song was listed as the #5 song on the RIAA project Songs of the Century, described as one of the most successful and debated ballads about the deterioration of U.S teenage culture.
The song's 8.5 minute length meant it could not fit on one side of the 45 RPM record, so United Artists had it recorded on both sides. Cash Box called it folk-rock's most ambitious and successful epic endeavour since Alice's Restaurant, a monumental accomplishment of lyric writing.
The meaning of the other lyrics, which probably referred to many of the jarring events and social changes experienced during that era, have been debated for decades. [Sadness wasn’t only in the song. Don was married twice, with both marriages ending in divorce. Was he replicating the misery of his own life in the parental home? Was he thinking of his endless bronchial asthma?]
For years McLean never explained the symbolism behind the people and events mentioned. Only years later did he release his song writing notes to accompany the original manuscript when it was sold in 2015, explaining many of these. And he further elaborated on the lyrical meaning in a 2022 interview-documentary marking the song's 50th anniversary, stating the song was driven by impressionism, not the symbols that others debated.
In 2017, McLean's original recording was selected for the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being culturally, historically or artistically significant. In 2018, McLean went on a world tour with concerts in North America, UK, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Israel, Norway and Finland. His concert at the London Palladium was brilliant. To mark the song’s 50th anniversary, McLean had a successful 35-date tour across Europe in 2022.
Read McLean’s own homepage and listen to You Tube.
A long, long time ago, I can still remember
How that music used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And maybe they'd be happy for a while
But February made me shiver
With every paper I'd deliver
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn't take one more step
I can't remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died
So, bye, bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to The Levee, but The Levee was dry
And them good old boys were drinkin' whiskey in Rye
Singin', "This'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die"