The song was inspired, first and foremost, by the deaths of musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J. McLean was a year-old paperboy at the time and mourned their deaths greatly. But the rest of the song is a maelstrom of social, cultural and political allusions. And the music represents that. And this was the theory of "American Pie. 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. I was in my little room where I used to write songs.
What I do is I put a tape recorder on. I even did it on my last album, "Botanical Gardens. 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. DM: Oh yeah! DM: Writing songs is a lonely thing. It was the one that would follow "Tapestry. I needed to come up with a chorus that was crazy and rip it, rather than lay there with it.
This is how the form of the song established itself. I kept the first verse slow. 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.
Then I slowed down the fifth verse so it starts slow, rocks in the middle and slows at the end. The form of this song is different from almost any song you would hear. I love that. I thought it was great. I love the title, "American Pie. My thumb is up like I just pulled it out of the pie. Elvis never wrote songs, while Buddy composed a huge number. Gershwin or Berlin would have marveled at these compositions.
His electric guitars were raw, but controlled like bullwhips. Aside from his geek image and his sudden and cruel death, his music is a wonder which still contains the potency of its original magic. Buddy was a genuine original. He was a genius. Music is about many things which music critics and historians can discuss forever, but what I think interests an audience about any form of music is its excitement.
Opera excites some people not me. Rock is all about excitement on a sonic, as well a fashion and musical, level. Pop music carries a kind of emotional impact, and, in its day, folk music had a political and intellectual excitement. I have tried, without really knowing it, to practice my craft in all these areas at once.
Buddy Holly did the same thing without the politics. Two months went by before any further progress was made. In fact, there is no truth to the story. Buddy and his friends were in a chartered plane. Like much of the song, McLean says the chorus is about America. But McLean hated growing up in what he describes as a small house in an upper middle class neighbourhood of New Rochelle, in New York. People discriminated about everything, he says. I hated those fuckers.
The opening of American Pie is largely accepted as mourning Buddy Holly, who died in a plane crash in The cultural allusions are, he continues, his own in-jokes, poking fun at some of the big acts of the day. I was making fun of it all. Ask him. So I ask him. McLean likes to be in charge. He admits that. Perhaps unravelling the mystery of American Pie would mean losing control of that too.
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