Don McLean
Mention the name Don McLean and many will ask “Who’s that?” but the more musically savvy will nod and say, “Yeah, he’s sang ‘bye, bye miss American pie.’” For better or worse, he’ll always be known as the guy that wrote and sang the Grammy Hall of Fame song “American Pie,” an eight-and-a-half-minute, 870-word musical and lyrical tome that captures the history of rock ’n’ roll during the ‘50s and the death of innocence in Clear Lake, Iowa in the early morning hours of February 3, 1959.
At a 2019 concert, everyone in the small-but-enthusiastic audience seemed to know the opening line – “A long, long time ago…” – and they joined in on that now-famous chorus in a unified voice, showing McLean how powerfully the nearly 50-year-old tune still resonates. McLean wrote the iconic song based on the memory that stuck with him as a 13-year-old newspaper delivery boy who saw the headline about the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, J.P. Richardson (“the Big Bopper”) and pilot Roger Peterson on February 4, 1959. Twelve years after the fact, he penned the intro many know by heart: “But February made me shiver / With every paper I’d deliver / Bad news on the doorstep / I couldn’t take one more step / I can’t remember if I cried / When I read about his widowed bride / Something touched me deep inside / The day the music died.” In March 2017, “American Pie” was designated as an “aural treasure” by the Library of Congress and included in the National Recording Registry.
CAREER BEGINNINGS, DEBUT ALBUM, AMERICAN PIE
So what else is there to know about Don McLean? Born in in 1945 in New Rochelle, New York, he’s lived on a 300-acre estate in Camden, Maine since 1984. He earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration in 1968 and turned down a scholarship to Columbia University’s graduate school in favor of pursuing a career as a singer-songwriter, performing at venues like Caffè Lena in Saratoga Springs and the Main Point in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. In 2001, Iona University in New Rochelle awarded him an honorary doctorate.
McLean learned the art of performing from his friend and mentor Pete Seeger and accompanied the folk legend on a boat trip up and down the Hudson River in 1969 to raise awareness about environmental pollution. During that time, he wrote the songs that appeared on his first album, Tapestry, which little-known label Mediarts issued in 1970; at that time, McLean was barely noticed outside of the folk community. Everything changed dramatically with his second LP, American Pie, which United Artists released in October 1971 (after acquiring Mediarts earlier that year. The album hit #1 in the Billboard 200, the title track topped the Billboard Hot 100 and went to #2 in the UK Singles chart and the song “Vincent” made it to #1 on the UK Singles chart and #2 in the Hot 100. The instant success made McLean an international star practically overnight and piqued interest in his first album, which reached #16 in the UK Albums chart, #22 in Australia and #111 in the Billboard 200 more than two years after it was originally released.
OTHER ALBUMS, “THE LEGEND OF ANDREW MCCREW”
McLean has recorded 21 studio albums, four live LPs and 16 singles, and while nothing has come close to matching the commercial success of American Pie, he remains a major draw in the US, the UK and dozens of other countries. His live shows include standards, particularly ones popularized by Buddy Holly and Frank Sinatra, and the years he spent playing in tiny venues and coffeehouses have paid off with appearances at venues as prestigious as Carnegie Hall and London’s Albert Hall.
One rather intriguing but far lesser-known McLean composition is “The Legend of Andrew McCrew” from his 1974 album Homeless Brother, which highlights his lifelong interest in social commentary. According to The New York Times, the song is about a Black man in Dallas who was killed when jumping off a moving train. No one claimed his body, so a carnival took it, mummified it and toured all over the South with the corpse, calling him “The Famous Mummy Man.”
The story inspired radio station WGN in Chicago to put the tune into heavy rotation to raise money for a headstone for McCrew’s grave. The campaign was successful, and McCrew’s body was exhumed and buried in the Lincoln Cemetery in Dallas. Inscribed on the tombstone are the lyrics from the fourth verse of McLean’s song: “What a way to live a life, and what a way to die / Left to live a living death with no one left to cry / A petrified amazement, a wonder beyond worth /A man who found more life in death than life gave him at birth.”
BILLBOARD DIGITAL #6, CURRENT ACTIVITY
In July 2017, “American Pie” hit #6 on the Billboard Rock Digital Songs chart, near 46 years after its original release. After a 2018 performance at the London Palladium, The Times published a glowing review of the song and the show. “His masterpiece remains one of the great achievements of the singer-songwriter era,” it read. “Eight and a half minutes of allegory, reflection and melody documenting the history of rock ’n’ roll and the death of 1950s innocence. He played [“American Pie”], of course, and brilliantly, getting everyone creaking on to their feet and singing along. Before that came almost two hours of well-worn rock ’n’ roll and acoustic folk that placed McLean somewhere between a straight-up entertainer and a poetic maverick.”
These days, McLean can be seen rather frequently in several of New England’s more contemporary music venues including City Winery in Boston, the Cabot Performing Arts Center in Beverly, Tupelo Musical Hall in Derry, New Hampshire and the Greenwich Odeum in East Greenwich, Rhode Island.
(by Karl Sharicz)
