“I didn’t really enjoy their music and I thought they were out of tune most of the time, and they certainly couldn’t write songs.” “There are only two artists in folk music that I really admired as artists and that was Josh White, and the other were The Weavers, and the rest of them were all kind of amateurs,” said McLean. Though “American Pie” is often considered a folk song, McLean says he never wanted to be a pop singer, a rock singer, or a folk singer. There was all sorts of headwinds against ‘American Pie,’ because of the rock writers who said, ‘Well, he’s not rock and roll,’ but what I turned out to be was Don McLean, and that’s the thing that they’ve had to figure out and realize over the years.” ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine tried to ruin me. “It’s me starting from scratch, and all my travails,” said McLean.

In the film, the viewer follows McLean from the very beginning, from his earlier years through the decade-long journey of American Pie, from getting the album published, to the production of the song, and a breakdown of its lyrics. I wanted to write a big song about America, and when I fused the death of Buddy Holly with these ideas, that’s when that song became what it was, but it took 10 years for me to wait for that moment to do that.” “We were in the middle of a huge upheaval in the United States: drugs, the war in Vietnam, civil rights, cities on fire, bodies coming home every day from the war in Vietnam. “I wanted to write a big song,” McLean shared with American Songwriter. And just like McLean and America’s innocence.The other key moment in the formation of “American Pie” was the state of America at the time. Even though McLean admired three men most, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, it was clear that God had died in the ‘60s. Those hellish flames climbed high, while the church bells were all broken. Especially for those who squandered it on drugs, lost in their own headspace under a satanic spell. Wasting time on drugs, the death of God, and McLean’s Catholicism.

John Lennon was reading from the book of Marx, as The Beatles released songs invoking revolution and even referencing China’s Mao.

Music was no exception to all the politicization. The Helter Skelter murders happened during that sweltering summer, which if not expressly political was certainly ideological. Kennedy was assassinated and the courtroom was adjourned with no verdict, as Lee Harvey Oswald was killed prior to judicial proceedings. Everything gets political, The Beatles, Kennedy, and Helter Skelter.Įverything became more political in the 1960s.

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