There’s general agreement that the song is about the cultural and political decline of the US in the 1960s, a farewell to the American dream after the assassination of President Kennedy. That’s a lot of fuss for one song: McLean’s moment, perhaps, to tell the world once and for all what the lyrics actually mean. A Broadway show is planned for 2022, and even a children’s book. McLean wrote it half a century ago, at the age of 24 – and to mark the anniversary, a new documentary, inevitably titled The Day the Music Died, will be released. The Recording Industry Association of America has the song in its top five, behind Over the Rainbow and White Christmas it’s been covered by everyone from Madonna to Tyson Fury, who sang it after knocking out Deontay Wilder earlier this year and the original handwritten lyrics sold in 2015 for $1.2m (£800,000), the third highest auction price ever for an American literary manuscript. We’re meeting, though, to talk about his era-spanning epic: that rollicking eight-and-a-half minute run-through of the 1960s after the decade closed. And just like McLean and America’s innocence.‘The day the music died’ … the 1959 plane crash that killed Buddy Holly is thought to be one of the song’s references – but McLean hints it could be about his father’s death. Even though McLean admired three men most, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, it was clear that God had died in the ‘60s. Those hellish flames climbed high, while the church bells were all broken.

Especially for those who squandered it on drugs, lost in their own headspace under a satanic spell. Wasting time on drugs, the death of God, and McLean’s Catholicism. John Lennon was reading from the book of Marx, as The Beatles released songs invoking revolution and even referencing China’s Mao. Music was no exception to all the politicization. The Helter Skelter murders happened during that sweltering summer, which if not expressly political was certainly ideological. Kennedy was assassinated and the courtroom was adjourned with no verdict, as Lee Harvey Oswald was killed prior to judicial proceedings. Everything gets political, The Beatles, Kennedy, and Helter Skelter.Įverything became more political in the 1960s.

Song american pie explained