{"id":481734,"date":"2019-02-03T07:00:19","date_gmt":"2019-02-03T14:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=786825"},"modified":"2019-02-03T07:00:19","modified_gmt":"2019-02-03T14:00:19","slug":"flashback-don-mclean-plays-a-stirring-american-pie-in-1972","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/music-news\/flashback-don-mclean-plays-a-stirring-american-pie-in-1972\/","title":{"rendered":"Flashback: Don McLean Plays a Stirring \u2018American Pie\u2019 in 1972"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A long, long time ago \u2014 60 years ago today, to be exact \u2014 Buddy Holly<\/a>, J.P. \u201cThe Big Bopper\u201d Richardson and Richie Valens plummeted to their deaths as their plane crashed in the fields of Clear Lake, Iowa. Eleven years later, a singer-songwriter in Cold Springs, New York, poignantly wrote about the tragedy in the intro to his magnum opus \u201cAmerican Pie<\/a>,\u201d dubbing it \u201cThe Day the Music Died.\u201d<\/p>\n

A 13-year-old paperboy at the time of the plane crash (\u201cBut February made me shiver\/With every paper I\u2019d deliver\u201d), Don McLean<\/a> was devastated over Holly\u2019s death; he\u00a0later said<\/a>\u00a0that the fallout from the event \u201ccreated a sense of grief that lived inside of me, until I was able to exorcize it with the opening verse of \u2018American Pie.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Though McLean has always claimed that except for the first verse of \u201cAmerican Pie,\u201d the rest of the song\u2019s lyrics are pure poetry, references to the 1960s<\/a> are blatantly obvious, from allusions to icons like Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin to dark events like Altamont\u00a0and the\u00a0Charles Manson murders\u00a0that signified the end of the era. Released only two years after the decade had ended, \u201cAmerican Pie\u201d marks the first inkling of 1960s nostalgia, paving the way for Happy Days, American Graffiti<\/em> and Grease<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In the above video, McLean performs the nearly nine-minute song live at the BBC in 1972. \u201cYou can sing all the words with me all the way through if you want, I don\u2019t care,\u201d he tells the crowd, but he doesn\u2019t have to: The attendees, the women in their headbands and turtlenecks and the men in their mustaches and shag haircuts, are already game. McLean guides them through all six verses, happily singing and strumming along.<\/p>\n

McLean never expected \u201cAmerican Pie\u201d to turn into the iconic hit that it became. \u201c\u2019American Pie\u2019 will self-destruct in a number of months as if it has never been there before,\u201d he predicted to Rolling Stone<\/em> in 1972. \u201cThere might even be a considerable backlash from putting that chorus in millions of people\u2019s heads.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are four handwritten copies of the handwritten lyrics to \u201cAmerican Pie.\u201d In April 2015, one copy \u2014 237 lines of manuscript \u2014 sold for $1.2 million at an auction. \u201cI have two children and a wife, and none of them seem to have the mercantile instinct,\u201d he said<\/a>. \u201cI want to\u00a0get the best deal that I can for them. It\u2019s time.\u201d A second copy sold for $100,000 in August 2017.<\/p>\n

Last week, McLean announced a tour to commemorate the 60th\u00a0anniversary of \u201cThe Day the Music Died.\u201d He\u2019s scheduled to appear at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles on March 25th, where he\u2019ll perform and conduct a Q&A. Odds are high that his set will include \u201cAmerican Pie.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A long, long time ago \u2014 60 years ago today, to be exact \u2014 Buddy Holly, J.P. \u201cThe Big Bopper\u201d Richardson and Richie Valens plummeted to their deaths as their plane crashed in the fields of Clear Lake, Iowa. Eleven years later, a singer-songwriter in Cold Springs, New York, poignantly wrote about the tragedy in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-481734","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-13 13:23:30","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KQZR - The Reel","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481734\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}