Don McLean scored more than a hit when he released “American Pie” as a single in 1971. He created an iconic song that has continued to resonate with the public some 55 years later.
The song offers a kaleidoscopic journey through the social upheaval that transformed America in the 1960s. For years, McLean famously declined to explain its enigmatic lyrics, preferring to let the mystery endure.
Even so, “American Pie” remained the centerpiece of his live performances, a showstopper that had audiences singing every word.
McLean — who recorded “American Pie” with a Martin D-28 acoustic guitar — has said the lyrics sprang from a deep sense that something precious had been lost in the decade they chronicle.
“Basically in ‘American Pie,’ things are heading in the wrong direction,” he said in a 2015 interview with Christie’s, when his handwritten 18-page manuscript of the song’s lyrics sold for $1.2 million. “Life is becoming less idyllic. I don’t know whether you consider that wrong or right, but it is a morality song in a sense.”
He expanded on that in an interview with People that same year, noting, “There is no poetry and very little romance in anything anymore, so it is really like the last phase of ‘American Pie.’”
Life is becoming less idyllic. I don’t know whether you consider that wrong or right, but it is a morality song in a sense.”
— Don McLean
Although McLean generally avoided discussing the song’s meaning — or spoke only in broad terms about its themes — he has become more forthcoming in recent years. In a 2022 documentary and subsequent interviews, he connected the song to the end of the “happy 1950s,” the turbulence of the 1960s and the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper, whose 1958 hit “Chantilly Lace” made him one of rock and roll’s earliest stars.
In the documentary, McLean explained his reluctance to be explicit about the characters in his lyrics. For example, he pointed to his mention of James Dean, telling Forbes it was evidence that he wasn’t being entirely opaque.
“I said James Dean in the song,” he explained. “If I meant Elvis or Bob Dylan, I would have said their names.”
He also said the “thorny crown” worn by the king in his song should make it plain that he wasn’t referring to Presley.
“If you want to think the king is Elvis you can, but the king in my song has a thorny crown. That’s Jesus Christ.”
Elsewhere, he uses wordplay, writing “Lenin read a book on Marx” as a reference to John Lennon, whom he noted had read Marx and “wanted socialism.”
But “American Pie” is also deeply, and tragically, personal. McLean has said its emotional core emanates from an early grief concealed within the song’s opening verse about the death of Holly and “his widowed bride.”
I wanted to capture and say something that was almost unspeakable. It’s indescribable.”
— Don McLean
At the age of 15, McLean had a premonition that his father was going to die. He told his grandmother, who asked why he said that. “Because it’s going to happen,” he replied.
A few days later, his father passed away, “right in front of me,” he told The Guardian. “I cried for two years. I blamed myself.”
That grief, he has said, was one reason he refused for decades to explain “American Pie.” The song carried the weight of everything he felt had been lost, both in his own life and in America.
“I wanted to capture and say something that was almost unspeakable,” he told the newspaper. “It’s indescribable.”
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