The Soundtrack to My Life
POSTED:Wed, December 26, 2007 @ 7:53PM
A Decade of Metaphors
Have you ever wondered what the stories were behind your favorite songs? I decided to take a closer listen to the song “American Pie”, written by Don McLean. Even though McLean has never spoken about the meaning of the song, I decided to examine the lyrics and research the decade the song was written in. These are all my own interpretations; the more I read over the lyrics, the deeper the meaning became for me.
McLean published “American Pie” in 1971, but I believe it was written about how music changed over the time periods of 1959 through 1969. The song draws you in from the beginning with a remembrance of how music “used to make me smile” and how it would “make those people dance…maybe they’d be happy for a while.”
The next verse takes you to February; this was the day that “the music died.” In February of 1959 a tragic plane crash killed Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper. McLean was a teenager, delivering papers when the headline “touched him deep inside.” The chorus is about McLean’s innocence before this tragic day; the title “American Pie,” referring back throughout the song to the loss of innocence. Coincidently, the last line in the chorus, “this’ll be the day that I die,” is a reference back to the Buddy Holly song, “That’ll be the Day.” This is the first of the many metaphors that McLean makes about music throughout the decade that follows.
In the next verse McLean is remembering his teenage years in the 1950’s, when you would “dance real slow” and “kick off your shoes.” Before the loss of innocence that McLean sings about later in the song, he has to tell us what the music was like before “the day the music died.”
For me, the metaphors start after the second chorus. These next two verses are singing specifically about Bob Dylan, who is the “jester”. In 1963, Dylan released his second folk record titled, Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. On the cover of the record, Dylan is wearing a coat that James Dean wore in the movie, Rebel Without a Cause, which explains the line “in a coat he borrowed from James Dean.” The “king” and “queen” that McLean is saying the “jester” sang for could be Woody Guthrie and Joan Baez, who at the time were the king and queen of folk music. Another interpretation, by Saul Levitt, is that the “king” and “queen” are John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie (http://www.levitt.co.uk/interpret.html). Dylan went on to speak for a generation, which is “a voice that came from you and me.”
McLean now starts to write about the music going political with the line “while Lenin read a book on Marx.” This could be a reference to John Lennon, specifically, when the Beatles started to get political with the White Album. It could also refer to Lenin, who was a Russian Communist revolutionary leader from 1917-1924. He was inspired by Karl Marx, who was a German philosopher, economist, and socialist in the middle 1800’s, and formed the basis of all communist theories. The next line, “the quartet practiced in the park,” validates this theory for me, that it is alluding the Beatles.
After the third chorus, McLean is now alluding back to the Beatles again, with the line, “Helter Skelter in a summer swelter.” “Helter Skelter,” is a song by the Beatles that appears on their White Album, which was released in 1968. According to the dictionary, helter skelter means confusion, which could refer to how the music had changed in the previous nine years. Helter Skelter was also what was painted on the wall in one of the Manson murders in 1969.
In the next few lines, McLean sings about the band The Byrds, who had a hit song in 1966 titled “Eight Miles High.” At the time, it was banned from most radio stations because it was thought to reference drugs. McLean sings, “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.” In 1965 The Byrds recorded Dylan’s song “Mr. Tambourine Man” before he officially released it. Dylan was in a motorcycle accident in 1966, after which he reinvented his music and went from acoustic guitar to electric.
McLean ends this stanza with a question, “Do you recall what was revealed the day the music died?” He is referring back to the day when he saw the headline splashed across the newspaper, realizing that his heroes were gone. His childhood innocence was forever changed, “the day the music died.”
The next sets of lyrics are referencing two big concert events that occurred in 1969. McLean sings, “there we were all in one place, a generation lost in space,” which is referring to Woodstock.
Another concert, dubbed “Woodstock West,” was held in San Francisco in December of 1969. It featured many top performers of the period, including the Rolling Stones. A documentary titled Gimme Shelter, released in 1970, included footage of the brutal killing of a young man during the Rolling Stones performance. McLean makes many allusions to the Rolling Stones, specifically lead singer, Mick Jagger. He sings about “jack be nimble, jack be quick” which alludes to the Stones’ song “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” He also sings about “Satan” and “the Devil” which refer to the Stones' song, “Sympathy for the Devil.” The security at the concert was provided by an outlaw motorcycle club called “Hell’s Angels.” McLean sings, “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.” McLean writes this stanza as if he is at the concert, watching Jagger prance around onstage, while the man is stabbed to death by a member of the Hell’s Angels. This concert marked the end of the peace and love generation of the hippies.
The last metaphor in the song is in the lines, “I met a girl who sang the blues and I asked her for some happy news, but she just smiled and turned away.” This is an allusion to the blues singer, Janis Joplin, who died of a heroin overdose in 1970.
McLean ends the song by singing “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.” The father, son, and holy ghost are referring, again, to Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper, all of whom died together in the 1959 plane crash, “the day the music died.”
McLean has never gone on record to speak on the meaning behind his lyrics. I think if you look into the song, you can find your own meaning. This is what connects us, the listeners, to the song. I have always loved this song, and turn it up when it comes on the radio, but I had never actually studied the lyrics. It’s more than just a catchy tune passing you by as you go about your day. It not only speaks about the loss of innocence that is associated with death, but it also examines a turning point in the history of music. What do you think McLean was singing about when he wrote “American Pie?”
Lyrics courtesy of Don McLean’s official website: www.don-mclean.com
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