Throughout the decades, the classic song has been reinterpreted by everyone from Garth Brooks, who is interviewed in the film, along with other renditions by Madonna, Jon Bon Jovi, John Mayer, and Weird “Al” Yankovic. “It was a great place to be but not to spend any long amount of time there because it really wasn’t going anyplace.” He was kicking around Greenwich Village and starting to get attention, writing these great songs, and then became the huge entity that he has become,” said McLean.
He adds, “Dylan came right out of the same thing as I did. “I didn’t really enjoy their music and I thought they were out of tune most of the time, and they certainly couldn’t write songs.” “There are only two artists in folk music that I really admired as artists and that was Josh White, and the other were The Weavers, and the rest of them were all kind of amateurs,” said McLean. Though “American Pie” is often considered a folk song, McLean says he never wanted to be a pop singer, a rock singer, or a folk singer. There was all sorts of headwinds against ‘American Pie,’ because of the rock writers who said, ‘Well, he’s not rock and roll,’ but what I turned out to be was Don McLean, and that’s the thing that they’ve had to figure out and realize over the years.” ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine tried to ruin me. “It’s me starting from scratch, and all my travails,” said McLean. In the film, the viewer follows McLean from the very beginning, from his earlier years through the decade-long journey of American Pie, from getting the album published, to the production of the song, and a breakdown of its lyrics. I wanted to write a big song about America, and when I fused the death of Buddy Holly with these ideas, that’s when that song became what it was, but it took 10 years for me to wait for that moment to do that.” “We were in the middle of a huge upheaval in the United States: drugs, the war in Vietnam, civil rights, cities on fire, bodies coming home every day from the war in Vietnam.
“I wanted to write a big song,” McLean shared with American Songwriter.
The other key moment in the formation of “American Pie” was the state of America at the time.
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