American Pie-An Anthem of a Generation

At 8 minutes and 36 seconds, it is still the longest song  to top the Billboard Hot 100…ever. It has six verses. In a survey of the Greatest songs of the 20th Century, it came in at number 5 (behind “This Land is Your Land”, “Respect” “(I’m Dreaming) Of a White Christmas” and the number one Greatest Song of the 20th Century, “Somewhere over the Rainbow”).

Don McLean, who penned and sang the song does admit it is a tribute to Buddy Holly, but that is about it.

“As you can imagine, over the years I’ve been asked many times to discuss and explain my song ‘American Pie,'” McLean wrote in an open letter to fans in 1993. “I have never discussed the lyrics, but have admitted to the [Buddy] Holly reference in the opening stanzas. I dedicated the album American Pie to Buddy Holly as well in order to connect the entire statement to Holly in hopes of bringing about an interest in him, which subsequently did occur… You will find many ‘interpretations’ of my lyrics but none of them by me. Isn’t this fun? Sorry to leave you all on your own like this but long ago I realized that songwriters should make their statements and move on, maintaining a dignified silence.”

So what did I find out? The first verse is about Holly, no doubt.  He mentions “February”, which is the month Buddy Holly died and his wife he left behind, the “widowed bride”. It was also during this time Don McLean was delivering papers “February made me shiver/with every paper I’d deliver”.

There is a song mentioned in “American Pie”, the 1957 hit by The Monotones, The Book of Love. He is telling about a woman whom he has feelings for, but is spurned.  A picture of a sock hop from the fifties—when high school gyms were used as venues for school dances, where the students danced in their socks to preserve the polished wood floors. We see the narrator being rejected here, as the object of his affection finds comfort dancing with another. She has stood him up, leaving him behind with his flower and his truck: she has moved on beyond this era (the pink carnation and the pickup truck), leaving the narrator alone and stranded. Bye bye Miss American Pie.

Now, for ten years we’ve been on our own
And moss grows fat on a rolling stone
But, that’s not how it used to be
When the jester sang for the king and queen
In a coat he borrowed from James Dean
And a voice that came from you and me
Oh and while the king was looking down
The jester stole his thorny crown

We now move up to the 70’s, a little over 10 years since Holly died. What was unconventional has now become conventional. Bob Dylan is surpassing “The King”, Elvis. The reference to James Dean’s coat comes from Bob Dylan wearing a Red Coat on his album cover, “The Free Wheeling, Bob Dylan”  Also, the reference to “King and Queen” is, to some, Bob Dylan singing to Mr. and Mrs. JFK.

And while Lenin read a book on Marx <–The shadow of Communism
The quartet practiced in the park <—- The rise of the Beatles

So as the sixties revolution starts coming to a head during these chaotic years, the battle lines are drawn and the inevitable bloody conflicts come to pass. And the youth culture players themselves grow increasingly diverse, all vying for a voice in the American cultural dialogue; but of all of them, it is the Counterculture that speaks the loudest. And the Beatles, embodying in their music much of the Counterculture’s idealism and collective harmony, emerge as the dominant symbols of this period’s revolutionary euphoria: all you need is love.

So come on Jack be nimble, Jack be quick
Jack Flash sat on a candlestick
Cause fire is the devil’s only friend
And as I watched him on the stage
My hands were clenched in fists of rage
No angel born in Hell
Could break that Satan’s spell
And as the flames climbed high into the night
To light the sacrificial rite
I saw Satan laughing with delight
The day the music died

This verse was about the Rolling Stones, especially the reference to “Jumping Jack Flash“. The rest is in reference to the Altamont Speedway debacle in which 300,000 people showed up to a concert whose security was provided by the Hell’s Angels. People have said things would not of gotten out of hand if Jagger had left the stage, but he didn’t. Thus, “As I watched him on the stage“. This was the watershed moment which told the Children of Flower Power, the dream was over. Time for reality to set in.

I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news
But she just smiled and turned away

To me, and others, the girl mentioned here is none other than Janis Joplin. At one time, the only album she had ever smiled on, was “Pearl”. After she released that album, she was dead of a Heroin overdose.

The Three Men? Some say it was Richie Valens, The Big Bopper and Buddy Holly. Others say it was assassinations of the 1960s—John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King—whose violent deaths shook the foundations of American optimism and naiveté during these years.

But these religious figures hold an even greater symbolic importance: in the wake of this decade’s disillusioning cynicism and fragmentation, the “Father, Son and the Holy Ghost” represent a faith in America that had once permeated American life, and that—hope against hope—might still redeem the disorder that had befallen us. But the holy trinity, finding no sympathetic hearing and resigning themselves to the inevitable (having held out for “the last train”), pack up their bags and retire to the coast: the believers had lost faith in their gods, and the gods can only retreat.

And they were singin’…

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