Don McLean (born October 2, 1945) is an American singer-songwriter. He is most famous for the 1971 album American Pie, containing the songs “American Pie” and “Vincent”. “At his core Don is an American individualist – he does things his own way. . . . Don is a poet like a Byron or a Keats in that regard for having a pop sensibility mixed with folk music and rock ’n’ roll. . . . I think for centuries to come you’ll hear people doing cover versions of his songs.” (Douglas Brinkley). (More from Wikipedia)
Still, in 1959, this kind of loss was a new experience (particularly for young people). In his moving 1971 epic of the American landscape of the 1960’s, “American Pie”, Don McLean immortalized this event as “The Day the Music Died”. Rich with imagery worthy of a Bob Dylan song, McLean has refused to discuss the meaning of the cryptic lyrics over the years, though the main theme is clearly the loss of innocence.
In 2009 (on the 50th anniversary of the airplane crash), Don McLean wrote an editorial for CNN.com that told of his learning of it the following morning: “Buddy [Holly]’s death, for me, an impressionable 13-year-old, delivering papers, was an enormous tragedy. The cover photo of the posthumously released [The] Buddy Holly Story and The Buddy Holly Story, Vol. 2, coupled with liner notes written by his widow, Maria [Santiago-Holly], created a sense of grief that lived inside of me, until I was able to exorcize it with the opening verse of ‘American Pie’.”
(June 2013/1)
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Items: Don McLean
