LISTENING IN: A long, long time ago, I can still remember…

Do you remember when listening to “American Pie” on a jukebox required not just one, but two, quarters – the song hived in half because it was so long? We won’t ask you for two bits this week, but be forewarned that this version of the Don McLean epic clocks in at around nine minutes. But then again, it’s worth it. Admit it, you know every word, even if, as we reveal here, you never really knew what they meant.

Indeed, McLean say he has listened for decades as people belted out his classic song at last call or at karaoke – or at his concerts, which he still performs over 50 years after the song’s release (51 to be precise).

“I’ve heard whole bars burst into this song when I’ve been across the room,” McLean told The Associated Press. “And they’re so happy singing it that I realized, ‘You don’t really have to worry about how well you sing this song anymore. Even sung badly, people are really happy with it.’”

Happy, in fact, might be a bit of an understatement. “American Pie” is considered a masterpiece, voted among the top five Songs of the Century compiled by the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Now McLean – and his singular tune about “the day the music died” – are now the subject of a full-length feature documentary, “The Day the Music Died: The Story of Don McLean’s ‘American Pie,’” released this week Paramount+.

It’s mandatory viewing for McLean fans or anyone who has marvelled at his sonic treasure. It also represents an elegant film blueprint for future deep dives into a song and its wider cultural relevance.

For those fans who have wondered about the lyrics they are singing loudly in bars and cars, McLean shares the secrets. “That was the fun of writing the song,” he says. “I was up at night, smiling and thinking about what I’m going to do with this.”

The documentary starts when a single-engine plane carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and Jiles Perry Richardson, the “Big Bopper,” plunged into a cornfield north of Clear Lake, Iowa, on Feb. 3, 1959, killing the three stars and their pilot.

McLean was 13, living in a suburban, middle-class home in New Rochelle, NY, when the crash occurred. He had bronchial asthma, prompting the description of him in “American Pie” as “a lonely teenage broncin’ buck.” The “sacred store” he sings about was the House of Music on Main Street, where he bought records and his first guitar.

Young McLean was a paperboy ¬¬– “every paper I’d deliver” – and adored Elvis, Gene Vincent, Bo Diddley, but especially Holly, whose death deeply affected him. “I was in absolute shock. I may have actually cried,” he says in the film. “You can’t intellectualize it. It hurt me.”

Years later, McLean would plumb that pain in “American Pie,” baking in his own grief at his father’s passing and writing a eulogy for the American dream. He was creating his second album in 1971 while the US was racked by assassinations, anti-war protests, and civil right marches. He thought he “needed a big song about America.” The first verse and melody seemed to just tumble out. “A long, long, time ago…”

It climaxed in the huge sing-along-chorus: “We were singin’, ‘Bye-bye, Miss American pie’/ Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry/ Them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey ‘n rye/ And singin’, ‘This’ll be the day that I die.’”

“I said, ‘Wow, that is something. I don’t know what it is, but it’s exactly what I’ve been wanting to try to get a hold of – that feeling about Buddy Holly – for all these years and that plane crash,” McLean says. “I always feel a tug inside me whenever I think about Buddy.”

However, initially, radio stations balked at playing the song because it was over eight minute long, and McLean’s record label, Media Arts, went bust just as it was to release the album “American Pie.”

Eventually, the song made it to air and the rest is history.

Packed with cultural references, from Chevrolet to nursey rhymes, while namechecking The Byrds, John Lennon, Charles Manson, and James Dean, the lyrics – dreamlike and impressionistic – have been pored over for decades, dissected for meaning.

The documentary answers some questions, but not all. McLean reveals that his oblique references to a king and a jester have nothing to do with Elvis or Bob Dylan, but he’s open to other interpretations. He explains that the “marching band” means the military-industrial complex and “sweet perfume” is tear gas.

The line in the chorus “This’ll be the day that I die” comes from the John Wayne film “The Searchers” and the farewell is a riff off “Bye Bye, My Roseanna,” a song his friend Pete Seeger sang. McLean was going to use “Miss American apple pie” but dropped the fruit.

The end of the song asks for “happy news” – an echo of the first verse – but there is none. The three men McLean admires most – the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost – “caught the last train for the coast,” meaning Los Angeles. “Even god has been corrupted,” McLean says in the film.

For McLean, the song is a blueprint of his mind at the time and a homage to his musical influences, but also a roadmap for future students of history:

“If it starts young people thinking about Buddy Holly, about rock ‘n’ roll and that music, and then it teaches them maybe about what else happened in the country, maybe look at a little history, maybe ask why John Kennedy was shot and who did it, maybe ask why all our leaders were shot in the 1960s and who did it, maybe start to look at war and the stupidity of it – if that can happen, then the song really is serving a wonderful purpose and a positive purpose.”

Lyrics

A long long time ago
I can still remember how
That music used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And maybe they’d be happy for a while

But February made me shiver
With every paper I’d deliver
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn’t take one more step

I can’t remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
Something touched me deep inside
The day the music died
So

Bye, bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
And them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye
Singin’ this’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die

Did you write the book of love
And do you have faith in God above
If the Bible tells you so?
Now, do you believe in rock and roll?
Can music save your mortal soul?
And can you teach me how to dance real slow?

Well, I know that you’re in love with him
‘Cause I saw you dancin’ in the gym
You both kicked off your shoes
Man, I dig those rhythm and blues

I was a lonely teenage broncin’ buck
With a pink carnation and a pickup truck
But I knew I was out of luck
The day the music died
I started singin’

Bye, bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
Them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye
And singin’ this’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die

Now, for ten years we’ve been on our own
And moss grows fat on a rolling stone
But, that’s not how it used to be

When the jester sang for the king and queen
In a coat he borrowed from James Dean
And a voice that came from you and me

Oh, and while the king was looking down
The jester stole his thorny crown
The courtroom was adjourned
No verdict was returned

And while Lennon read a book on Marx
The quartet practiced in the park
And we sang dirges in the dark
The day the music died
We were singin’

Helter skelter in a summer swelter
The birds flew off with a fallout shelter
Eight miles high and falling fast

It landed foul on the grass
The players tried for a forward pass
With the jester on the sidelines in a cast

Now the half-time air was sweet perfume
While the sergeants played a marching tune
We all got up to dance
Oh, but we never got the chance

‘Cause the players tried to take the field
The marching band refused to yield
Do you recall what was revealed
The day the music died?
We started singin’

Oh, and there we were all in one place
A generation lost in space
With no time left to start again

So come on Jack be nimble, Jack be quick
Jack Flash sat on a candlestick
‘Cause fire is the devil’s only friend

Oh, and as I watched him on the stage
My hands were clenched in fists of rage
No angel born in Hell
Could break that Satan’s spell

And as the flames climbed high into the night
To light the sacrificial rite
I saw Satan laughing with delight
The day the music died
He was singin’

Bye, bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
Them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye
Singin’ this’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die

I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news
But she just smiled and turned away

I went down to the sacred store
Where I’d heard the music years before
But the man there said the music wouldn’t play

And in the streets the children screamed
The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed
But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken

And the three men I admire most
The Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died
And they were singing

They were singing
Bye, bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
Them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye
Singin’ this’ll be the day that I die