A long, long time ago:
The meaning of American Pie

For Don McLean, the writing of American Pie was a means of examining the American zeitgeist. But what do his lyrics really mean? On the eve of the sale of McLean’s original manuscript for the song, Andrew Harrison asked seven leading music writers for their opinions

‘This is the first 45 I ever owned. I was five years old and I was just entranced by American Pie. Over the years I started to detect the Stones and Beatles and Byrds allusions. But the beauty is that you don’t need to unravel the riddle to love it. It’s an absolute one-of-a-kind shared experience and way more popular than most of the Dylan songs that are supposed to be its artistic superior. I love that when people ask McLean what it means, he says ‘It means I never have to work again’.’

‘It's an incredibly insightful and incisive song, a love letter, a history and an elegy for the original rock‘n’roll era, from the optimism of the mid-Fifties through to the darkness of the late Sixties. The use of language is wonderful, like the simple opposition of Dylan as the Jester up against a King in decline, the Elvis figure. The whole song depends on complexity of ideas with Fifties guys. The death of Buddy Holly absolutely was the end of youth for them.’

‘American Pie is the accessible farewell to the Fifties and Sixties. Bob Dylan talked to the counterculture in dense, cryptic, apocalyptic terms. But Don McLean says similar ominous things in a pop language that a mainstream listener could understand. The chorus is so good that it lets you wallow in the confusion and wistfulness of that moment, and be comforted at the same time. It’s bubblegum Dylan, really. And it’s pretty much impossible to cover. Look at Madonna’s version. American Pie makes no sense unless you’re actually singing it in 1972, in that very moment.”

‘Mike Mills of R.E.M. said that it’s impossible to change a single syllable of American Pie and he’s absolutely right. It’s a classic, highly-charged epic for an era when people actively wanted to decode songs, sung —Fifties high school dances. Over the following decades this death knell for an era has detached itself from the Fifties and become a universal shorthand for life’s cruelty and unfairness. To sing it is to say, ‘I, too, have depth and a poetic soul’.’

‘This is pop starting to consider its own history for the first time, and yet musically it isn’t particularly avant-garde. It’s very discreet and palatable, just acoustic guitars and pianos, no folk-rock electric guitars. It’s actually a ‘rocker ballad’ like Buddy Holly himself would have made. But it absolutely hit its moment. McLean has seen pop culture change at a terrifyingly fast rate. The difference between 1959 when Holly died and Altamont in 1969 was enormous, far greater than a 10-year period now. The irony is that this nostalgic song actually created nostalgia for nostalgia itself. It made people miss a time they’d never personally experienced.’

‘It’s a complex song and McLean had struggled with it for a long time. They spent months working on it in the studio and it was sounding terrible until Ed Freeman the producer brought in Bob Dylan’s pianist Paul Griffin, and he got a bit of a groove going. But when they assembled the same band to play American Pie on the David Frost show after it was a hit, it sounded terrible. So the record captures an unrepeatable moment.’

‘There are many reasons to admire American Pie but I’m always struck by the different ways he evokes what it’s like to be young: ‘February made me shiver/With all the papers I delivered’. With Bob Dylan you always sense that he’s cleverer than you, but Don McLean is much more genial. On the radio it radiates this gorgeous enigmatic quality, yet it’s so listenable. Like Hotel California, woe betide you if you fade it out before the end. You’ll get angry calls.’

Don McLean’s original lyrics for American Pie will be auctioned on 7 April at Christie’s in New York

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