American pie who is it about

He also spent time on the Clearwater, Seeger's Hudson River sloop, which influenced the environmental themes behind Tapestry' s title track. McLean recorded his debut album, Tapestry , in while student riots at Berkeley were raging. McLean's debut album was released on the minuscule indie label Mediarts after being rejected, as the legend has it, by 72 others.

A young McLean was on his newspaper route when he found out about the tragic plane crash in Iowa that took the life of his beloved idol. That's why I don't talk about the lyrics — I want people to come up with their own interpretations.

I'm more of an inventor. I don't even know how I do this. McLean gave permission for the parody, and has admitted to nearly singing Yankovic's lyrics in live performance because his children played it so often. Spotify shows McLean garnered million streams for his music from 92 countries last year. You can't be earthbound. Cast yourself in your own movie and one day you'll wake up as the star in that film.

That was my job. An edit for AM radio cut it to four minutes, while FM insisted on playing the full version. More problematic was how to press it on a seven-inch vinyl record. And still we had a , returns on forty-fives, because the needle did skip! Oh my god, it was a fucking nightmare. But none of that stopped the rollicking tune from becoming a monster hit.

But it was the riddles in the lyrics that turned it into a water-cooler sensation. But if you think the case is closed on the true meanings in this third verse, think again - "no verdict" has been returned.

Whichever way you peer at it, "the world [McLean] once knew is changing," concludes Fann. As the 60s reach their turbulent climax in verse four, and nuclear tensions rising, the Beatles have become the "sergeants" leading the march of counter-culture, leaving Dylan behind as "the jester on the sidelines in a cast" after his near-fatal motorbike crash.

But just at the peak of the sweetly marijuana-perfumed Summer of Love in , the tension boils over into civil unrest. He looks on as the "players try to take the field; But the marching band refused to yield". There are almost as many theories for this line as the single has sold copies more than three million in its first year.

One has the marching band as the police blocking civil rights protesters, another as the Beatles preaching non-violence with their hit "All You Need Is Love". This could be the song's most ambiguous line of all. Some suggest it refers to a John Lennon and Yoko Ono album cover. Another popular theory is the Miss America contest of where feminist protesters had supposedly "burned their bras".

But the most likely reference, Fann believes, is the riot at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where police brutally cracked down on demonstrators. What was revealed? But perhaps "what was revealed" has nothing really to do with any of these events, and is really a harbinger for the tragedy that follows in the fifth verse A giant gathering of people, all high on drugs.

It has to be Woodstock, right? Not so, say Pie connoisseurs. The lyrics more closely match the tragic concert at Altamont Speedway in December , where "Jack Flash sat on a candlestick".

The Stones' frontman Mick Jagger really did appear on stage that night dressed in a flowing red cape, singing lyrics inciting fire and rebellion. Meanwhile at the stage perimeter members of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang - hired as security - engaged in bloody clashes with the rioting audience.

Jagger was later accused of failing to halt the performance, infuriating McLean's narrator: "I saw Satan laughing with delight; The day the music died". Just as Woodstock was heralded as the landmark of the counterculture movement, "Altamont was the event that signalled its demise.

In almost every verse he delivers the poetry and power of rock and roll, as well as the flip-side, the obsessional danger inherent in that poetic power, when in the wrong hands or mind.

He took on a new aspect of modern pop music, which is that these songs filled with often-surreal and drug-inspired imagery, while benign in intention, were often and easily misinterpreted as galvanic prophecies of impending disaster needing some action.

But none of it would have mattered if not for a key ingredient that came straight from the heart of this gifted songwriter: A great melody. But that melody on the chorus of this complex song is beautifully simple and sweet. This songwriting tour-de-force was remarkable, but to then transform this sprawling story into a modern pop song — a radio hit — is another whole achievement, and one perhaps more unlikely than the writing of the song. That achievement, as Don says in the following, was one he shared gratefully with the producer, Ed Freeman, and his concept for its dynamic, multi-tempo arrangement.

When Madonna covered it many years later, her version also went to number one. Since it first emerged, people have been hungry to understand each line, and Don was forever beseeched with questions about its meaning. He did seem to indicate, at one point, that the jester wearing a borrowed coat from James Dean was meant to be Dylan. Generally, if Bob Dylan offers advice on any subject related to songwriting, it makes sense to take it to heart. So we went to the source, to Don McLean, to get all the answers about this singular song.

So there were lines in there that were dream-like almost in order to connect other concepts that I had that were semi-real. But it was a dream, and the idea came from the idea that politics and music flow parallel to one and other. I wanted to write a song that summed up everything I felt about America and music, and I did it, and it turned out beyond my wildest dreams. The body of the song was written pretty quickly, once I got the gist of where I was going. Then I decided to speed it up and change it.

So I found a way to do it.