But Don McLean says similar ominous things in a pop language that a mainstream listener could understand. Bob Dylan talked to the counterculture in dense, cryptic, apocalyptic terms. ‘ American Pie is the accessible farewell to the Fifties and Sixties. The day the music died: a newspaper reports the death of Buddy HollyĪlexis Petridis, Chief Music Critic, the Guardian The death of Buddy Holly absolutely was the end of youth for them.’ The whole song depends on complexity of ideas with Fifties guys. The use of language is wonderful, like the simple opposition of Dylan as the Jester up against a King in decline, the Elvis figure. ‘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.
I love that when people ask McLean what it means, he says ‘It means I never have to work again’.’ 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.
But the beauty is that you don’t need to unravel the riddle to love it. Over the years I started to detect the Stones and Beatles and Byrds allusions. I was five years old and I was just entranced by American Pie. Rob Sheffield, chief critic, Rolling Stone 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 For Don McLean, the writing of American Pie was a means of examining the American zeitgeist.
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