Story Behind the Song: Don McLean's 'American Pie'

"A long, long time ago," Don McLean began writing a rock epic with those words. 

It's now been 50 years since "American Pie" — all eight and a half cryptic minutes of it— took hold of the airwaves in 1971, and it's safe to say there's never been another song like it.

In honor of the song's 50th anniversary, McLean talked about its mysterious inspiration and legacy with Bart Herbison of Nashville Songwriters Association International.

Bart Herbison: "American Pie." I could argue that it’s the greatest song ever written, and I would love to have that argument. It is certainly in an elite handful. I will tell you this. Everyone says, “What’s it about?” I know what it’s about — absolutely, definitively know what it’s about

Don McLean: That’s good. You can tell me.

BH: I will tell you. It’s about our generation. It’s about the times. It’s about the culture, how important music was, socio-historically to our culture and you weave it brilliantly.

Everyone wants to know about "The Joker" or "Jack Flash" but I think we can all understand who they are and who we want them to be. But Don, you put these moments in the song that stand alone, yet in aggregate, they paint a picture of those times and I don’t think any song has ever done it more brilliantly than that one. So that’s what it’s about to me.

DM: First of all, America was much more volatile than it is at the moment. We didn’t have a pandemic, but cities were burning. People in the street. We’d had enough of LBJ and Nixon. This was the kind of volatile world we were in then. The Vietnam War was breathing down everybody’s back.

BH: It was the first time we were seeing body bags on the evening news!

DM: We should see them again, because maybe we wouldn’t have these wars that are invisible, because this is not good. That’s another story. I still maintain that even though my politics have changed a lot since 1970, I’m still against all this, anything spiritually bad for the nation. Part of what "American Pie" is, is a spiritual song, about the spirit of the country and what was happening to it. And the music represents that. And this was the theory of "American Pie." And it was just one of my ideas. 

I had no idea it would take root and I’d have to talk about it all these years. 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’ll start to sing into the recorder. I don’t write the lyrics down. I don’t write the melody down. I can’t read music. But I’ll just start singing a song, an idea. 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. Maybe they’d be happy for a while.” 

BH: You sang it like that?

DM: Oh yeah! "...but something touched me deep inside, the day the music died." I said, “What the heck was that?” And I had it on the machine.

BH: I am stunned in this moment. Wow! It was flowing.

'The form of this song is different from almost any song you would hear'

DM: Writing songs is a lonely thing. It’s where you get into yourself, and I had that (song) in my mind for a couple of months. I had the second album going and didn’t have a name for it. It was the one that would follow "Tapestry." It was in flux...It was (then going to be) a ballad record and I didn’t want that. 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."

BH: Where’d that come from? 

DM: I don’t know.  

BH: Because it couldn’t have been anything else, really. 

DM: There’s a lot of little things in there. There’s the ‘Jack be nimble, Jack be quick’. These children’s nursery rhymes are woven into the song. My thumb is up like I just pulled it out of the pie. I had so many creative people around me, like the guy that did the cover, George Whiteman. He heard the song and I went to his studio and he told me he was going to paint my thumb. I said, "OK." He painted my thumb. I’m looking down the guitar.

'Like having two hits at once'

BH: By the way, one of the greatest album covers ever! I knew about you a little bit. I was a DJ at the time, but if I’m telling you the truth, I bought the album because of the cover and I got to discover what was in it. I probably bought five copies of the vinyl because I wore it out. 

DM: Everybody picked up on this. The producer understood what I was doing. The guy that did the cover understood what I was doing. I didn’t, but they did. So off we went. We put this together. The cover was tremendous. I loved it. It was so simple and still looks great. 

BH: Let me ask a couple specific questions about the song. I was a 16-year-old DJ in a rural town when that song came out. I went and bought the album at the record store because of your thumb and put it on. Pretty soon, we got a shipment of an edited version that was a little over four minutes long. How did that make you feel?

DM: I didn’t feel anything at that point. I was grappling with everything that was going on, and I didn’t control the record company.

BH: I didn’t play the edited version. I always played the long version.

DM: There must have been a lot of that because people started to hear the long version and clammer for it. So they had to go out and buy the album so it wasn’t too bad. It just kept going. When it got played, you got double from BMI.

BH: To explain that, (when a song is) over a certain length of time, the songwriter gets twice the rate.

DM: So it’s like having two hits at once. If you put it in the jukebox, it had two sides so it was two hits there.

BH: And two hits because you didn’t have a co-writer. You wrote it.

DM: I didn’t have a co-writer. I’ve never had a co-writer. They put that thing out and it starts right in with, ‘Bye Bye Miss American Pie’ and two or three songs and the chorus 20 times at the end, going to the hook. It went to No. 1.

'It didn’t seem like I was on some golden pathway to stardom'

BH: You mentioned this earlier but there is a lesson for today’s generation of songwriters, which is arrangement, tempo and modulation. You let that song tell you how to sing it. A song is supposed to make us feel something, and you change your tempo and you change your emotional delivery three or four times where you should in that song. It is just a knife twister in the most excellent way... Did any of the characters that are supposedly in the song, Dylan, Roger McGuinn, Jagger, did they ever ask you about it personally?” 

DM: Dylan’s son asked me about it once. I said, “Yeah, I never talk about the lyrics, but your father would make a good jester though!”

BH: Even after all these years, and I say this with respect so take it that way, do you even get how important this song is, Don?

DM: I try not to be prideful. If I started to think about the things people say about me these days, the introductions I get, the things they tell me about...And I think, "Lord have mercy, all I did was put one foot in front of the other." If a door opened, I walked through it. It seemed like an uphill struggle to me. It didn’t seem like I was on some golden pathway to stardom. It seems like I was always fighting with somebody: a record label, a producer or an agent or whatever. It’s been a battle.

BH:  ...I went back and listened to it a couple times this week, knowing we would do this interview. What it did to me all those years ago, it still does, It makes me think. I look at (the lyrics). I listen. I appreciate it on so many levels. I may cry a little bit here — I’m serious because it’s this moving. Let me tell you what it did to me last night. It said, “Bart, get off your (rear-end). You've still got things to do socially to make this world a better place." That’s what this song did to me last night. Thank you Don McLean for "American Pie."

DM: Thank you for saying that. I’m happy I did this with my life. You don’t know how this has picked me up. The things that people say to me and the stories, and I know all kinds of performers hear these stories-it’s not unique to me. I’m just happy that I didn’t go into business and wear a suit, what my father wanted me to do.

About the series

In partnership with Nashville Songwriters Association International, the "Story Behind the Song" video interview series features Nashville-connected songwriters discussing one of their compositions. For full video interviews with all of our subjects, visit www.tennessean.com/music.