“American Pie”, an eight-and-a-half-minute epic ranked among the five most sensible songs of the 20th century through the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts, is considered enigmatic. But Don McLean, the song’s artist, has just announced plans for a feature-length documentary, “The Day The Music Died: The Story Behind Don McLean’s American Pie,” which is sure to be kind to the song. Scheduled for the end of 2021, the documentary will also motivate an upcoming musical in 2022 and a children’s book.
The moment makes sense: next year it will mark the 50th anniversary of the release of “American Pie”, a song that has risen to the most sensible chart in several countries and stayed there for weeks, and has won millions of McLeans since then. .
Sometimes there are accepted references in the song’s six cryptic verses, and McLean sold his annotated manuscript of the song for $1.2 million in 2015, revealing a few others. But a component of the song’s enduring magic, according to documentary producer Spencer Proffer, is that “everyone around the world has made their own interpretation of what words mean to them.” And McLean’s not willing to replace that. “But I’m going to sign up for the song, and I’m sure I’m going to reveal a lot about how it was created and what happened in my life,” he said.
“American Pie” is a fable in a sense about a massive and almost impossible country to pass,” McLean told me. Verse by verse, the song tells the innocence of the 50s, brings the revolutionary feeling of the 60s and the disappointment of the 70s. The documentary and music will go beyond “American Pie” to delve into McLean’s extensive catalogue of hits, adding “Vincent”, “Wonderful Bathrough” and others, whose other styles and messages seek to “reflect the duvet or patchwork that is the United States”.
“I need it to be an uplifting and hard story about a lot of things and the intelligent component of America,” said McLean, who fought for many years before fitting right. “I think it’s an American story. It’s a genuine value, they’re hard paintings and in you and your art.”
McLean was cursed in his determination to turn him into an artist: “I was so thirsty for intelligent fortune and anything he described to me was a smart thing to do. Array… [that] when I discovered the music and composition, I was furious. He lamented how, on the other hand, he feels that the feeling of victimization has been celebrated in the United States today: “In the United States where I grew up, no one would need to be a victim; the concept that you are subject to a number of occasions or a set of circumstances, which was not American. Instead, McLean insisted that his mistakes built his character and led him to paint harder: “We were brought up to be independent and have a sense of fair play, if we lost, we shopped the hand of the boy and said, ‘Fight yourself.'” then time. That’s a vital thing. This is another kind of person. »
While many would say that the same delight has not been true for others in this country, especially women and others of color, in their next documentary, McLean needs to celebrate the America he lived through capitalism, on-going business, and democracy: Americans need the big score, they need their dream.
McLean, who studied at night to graduate in finance and economics, has used his monetary wisdom in his career. In the 1980s, “when things went wrong and the songs didn’t generate that much money, they gave me back all the rights to everything I had,” he recalls. “I brought many other people about to move to courtArray … Now those songs are worth millions and they’ve made millions.” He also used this time to record the word “American Pie,” a lucrative gesture given to the upcoming past fortune of the “American Pie” movie franchise.
At the same time, McLean has a political trend that has been influenced by his roots in folk music and his time with Pete Seeger at Sloop Clearwater, making a song for social and environmental justice. Five decades later, he discovers that many social disorders, such as poverty and environmental degradation, which he spoke about in the 1960s and 1970s on songs such as “Orphans of Wealth” and his album Tapestry, have worsened.
He hopes positive replacement is still possible, describing how well the Irish city of Belfast has been cured, for example, since the 1970s, when he defied violence to play for a combined Protestant-Catholic audience. But he is concerned about the military-industrial complex: “people who need wars, who are in force and who need to pit one user against each other, so that they can enrich themselves.” It’s not good. You see it in the United States right now. »
“Every song I write, I need this concept to be timeless,” McLean said, “so you can hear it in 50 years and it will sound as new and as young as when I did.” However, controversy and cultural replacement have confusing issues, mainly in relation to allegations of domestic violence through his ex-wife Patrisha McLean, who spoke about his appointments in a traveling exposure on domestic violence, “Finding Our Voices.” McLean continues to deny any accusations, however, last year a lifetime musical excellence award was cancelled through the UCLA Alumni Association after learning of his guilty plea in 2016, which he said only to close the family circle.
Referring to this kind of “cancellation culture,” McLean made an unforeseen comparison to the blacklists of the 1950s: “It’s almost the same; once something happens, the spirits close. Pete Seeger has been there, but the appeal is that the United States, when he was involved in the blacklist, [behaved] like a communist country. For McLean, “America is a position where any concept is smart and see if it flies.”
While talking about his upcoming documentary, theater and writing projects, McLean is convinced that his music and vision of America have lasting value: “We want songs that other people can cling to and gain emotional security. They’re not like buildings. Buildings can be destroyed. The statues spin. But the songs live forever. You can ban my song if you want, however, there will be a million other people who will know it from the heart.
I am the founder and artistic director of the Jerusalem Youth Chorus, an Israeli-Palestinian music and debate project. He revered to be part of Forbes 30 Under 30
I am the founder and artistic director of the Jerusalem Youth Chorus, an Israeli-Palestinian music and debate project. I had the honor of being on the Forbes 30 Under 30 music list in 2017 for these paintings on strengthening paintings and conflicts of the music network.
I’m also a founding spouse of Raise Your Voice Labs, a newly created social enterprise that is helping to transform teams to create brave spaces to have the discussions that matter and include new visions of the network in the song.
I graduated from Yale with a bachelor’s degree in music and foreign studies and have been a component of dozens of musical ensembles of global styles, adding the Yale Whiffenpoofs. I’ve been living in Washington, D.C. lately.