{"id":807634,"date":"2020-05-20T07:03:21","date_gmt":"2020-05-20T13:03:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=1002904"},"modified":"2020-05-20T07:03:21","modified_gmt":"2020-05-20T13:03:21","slug":"don-mclean-discusses-legacy-of-american-pie-with-dan-rather","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/don-mclean-discusses-legacy-of-american-pie-with-dan-rather\/","title":{"rendered":"Don McLean Discusses Legacy of \u2018American Pie\u2019 With Dan Rather"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/RCy5VMi46jcEhbdQJohubC-1200-80.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/rollingstone.com\/t\/don-mclean\">Don McLean<\/a> was the guest on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/dan-rather\/\">Dan Rather\u2019s<\/a>&nbsp;<em>The Big Interview<\/em> on AXS TV this week, discussing the legacy of his signature song \u201cAmerican Pie.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The title track from his 1971 second studio album, the song is still widely regarded as a classic after 49 years, but McLean isn\u2019t entirely able to explain its popularity.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know. There are so many aspects to it,\u201d he told Rather. \u201cYou\u2019ll see different parts of it used all over. People use it for parodies, kids sing it, children grow up with it because on a certain level it\u2019s a children\u2019s song\u2026It\u2019s one of these sort of mythical type folk songs. The poetry is a little bit obscure, but it\u2019s not completely unknowable \u2014 it\u2019s pretty understandable. It\u2019s meant to be because it\u2019s really a dream.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Rather suggested to McLean that many saw \u201cAmerican Pie\u201d as a metaphor for the decline of U.S. culture after the Sixties.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was seeing that,\u201d McLean said. \u201cTo me, when Kennedy was killed, all bets were off. It was a much bigger event than 9\/11, which was a huge event. It was the beginning of Americans being in doubt about what they believed in and who they were. That was huge.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The full interview with McLean will be broadcast Wednesday (May 20th) on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.axs.tv\/programs\/the-big-interview\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">AXS TV<\/a> at 8:00 p.m. ET.<\/p>\n<div class=\"pmc-contextual-player\">\n<h3>Popular on Rolling Stone<\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-news\/don-mclean-american-pie-dan-rather-1002904\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Don McLean was the guest on Dan Rather\u2019s&nbsp;The Big Interview on AXS TV this week, discussing the legacy of his signature song \u201cAmerican Pie.\u201d The title track from his 1971 second studio album, the song is still widely regarded as a classic after 49 years, but McLean isn\u2019t entirely able to explain its popularity. \u201cI [&hellip;]<\/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":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-807634","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-10 15:09:41","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":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=807634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807634\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=807634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=807634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=807634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}