Donald McLean III ( ; born October 2, 1945) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. Known as the "American Troubadour" or "King of the Trail", he is best known for his 1971 hit "American Pie", an eight-and-a-half-minute folk rock song that has been referred to as a "cultural touchstone". His other hit singles include "Vincent", "Dreidel", "Castles in the Air", and "Wonderful Baby", as well as renditions of Roy Orbison's "Crying" and the Skyliners' "Since I Don't Have You".
McLean's song "And I Love You So" has been recorded by Elvis Presley, Perry Como, Helen Reddy, Glen Campbell, and others. In 2000, Madonna had a hit with a rendition of "American Pie". In 2004, McLean was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In January 2018, BMI certified that "American Pie" had reached five million airplays and "Vincent" three million. Though most of McLean's music is in the folk rock genre, he has experimented with easy listening, country, and other genres as well.
Early life McLean's grandfather and father, both also named Donald McLean, were of Scottish origin. McLean's mother, Elizabeth Bucci, was of Italian origin; her parents originated from Abruzzo in central Italy. McLean grew up in New Rochelle, New York, where he delivered newspapers as a boy.
Musical roots Though some of his early musical influences included Frank Sinatra and Buddy Holly, as a teenager McLean became interested in folk music, particularly the Weavers' 1955 recording The Weavers at Carnegie Hall. He often missed long periods of school because of childhood asthma and although he slipped in his studies his love of music was allowed to flourish. By age 16 he had bought his first guitar and begun making contacts in the music business, becoming friends with the folk singers Erik Darling and Fred Hellerman of the Weavers. Hellerman said, "He called me one day and said, 'I'd like to come and visit you', and that's what he did! We became good friends – he has the most remarkable music memory of anyone I've ever known."
When McLean was 15 his father died. Fulfilling his father's request, McLean graduated from Iona Preparatory School in 1963, and briefly attended Villanova University, dropping out after four months. After leaving Villanova McLean became associated with folk music agent Harold Leventhal for several months before teaming up with his personal manager, Herb Gart. For the next six years he performed at venues and events including The Bitter End and the Gaslight Cafe in New York, the Newport Folk Festival, the Cellar Door in Washington, D.C., and the Troubadour in Los Angeles. Gart's 18-year tenure as McLean's manager ended acrimoniously in the 1980s. Following Gart's death"Herb Gart Facebook", Retrieved on January 1, 2019. Archived at ghostarchive.org in September 2018, McLean wrote:
McLean attended night school at Iona College and received a bachelor's degree in business administration in 1968. He turned down a scholarship to Columbia University Graduate School in favor of pursuing a career as a singer-songwriter, performing at such venues as Caffè Lena in Saratoga Springs, New York, and The Main Point in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.
Later that year, with the help of a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts, McLean began reaching a wider audience, with visits to towns up and down the Hudson River. He learned the art of performing from his friend and mentor Pete Seeger. McLean accompanied Seeger on his Clearwater boat trip up the Hudson River in 1969 to raise awareness of environmental pollution in the river. During this time McLean wrote songs that appeared on his first album Tapestry. McLean co-edited the book Songs and Sketches of the First Clearwater Crew, with sketches by Thomas B. Allen, for which Seeger wrote the foreword. Seeger and McLean sang "Shenandoah" on the 1974 Clearwater album. McLean thought very highly of Seeger and spoke fondly of his experiences working with him: "Hardly a day goes by when I don't think of Pete and how generous and supportive he was. If you could understand his politics and you got to know him, he really was some kind of modern-day saint."
Recording career
Early breakthrough McLean recorded Tapestry in 1969 in Berkeley, California, during the student riots. After being rejected 72 times by labels, the album was released by Mediarts, a label that had not existed when he first started to look for one. He worked on the album for a couple of years before putting it out. It attracted good reviews but little notice outside the folk community, though on the Easy Listening chart "Castles in the Air" was a success, and in 1973 "And I Love You So" became a number 1 Adult Contemporary hit for Perry Como.
McLean's major break came when Mediarts was taken over by United Artists Records, thus securing the promotion of a major label for his second album, American Pie. The album launched two number one hits in the title song and "Vincent". American Pies success made McLean an international star and piqued interest in his first album, which charted more than two years after its initial release.
"American Pie"
McLean's "American Pie" is a song inspired partly by the deaths of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson (The Big Bopper) in a plane crash in 1959, and developments in American youth culture in the subsequent decade. The song popularized the expression "The Day the Music Died" in reference to the crash.
The song was recorded on May 26, 1971, and a month later received its first radio airplay on New York's WNEW-FM and WPLJ-FM to mark the closing of Fillmore East, the famous New York concert hall. "American Pie" reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 from January 15 to February 5, 1972, and remains McLean's most successful single release, being certified six-times Platinum by RIAA. The single also topped the Billboard Easy Listening chart. With a total running time of 8:36 encompassing both sides of the single, it was also the longest song to reach number one until Taylor Swift's "All Too Well" broke the record in 2021. Some stations played only part one of the original split-sided single release.
WCFL DJ Bob Dearborn unraveled the lyrics and first published his interpretation on January 7, 1972, four days after the song reached number 1 on rival station WLS, six days before it reached number 1 on WCFL, and eight days before it reached number 1 nationally (see "Further reading" under "American Pie"). Numerous other interpretations, which together largely converged on Dearborn's interpretation, quickly followed. McLean declined to say anything definitive about the lyrics until 1978.However, Casey Kasem confirmed the main outline of what Dearborn had said and seemed to indicate that McLean agreed with that outline, on the January 15, 1972, edition of American Top 40, when "American Pie" had just ascended to number 1 on the Hot 100. Since then McLean has stated that the lyrics are also somewhat autobiographical and present an abstract story of his life from the mid-1950s until the time he wrote the song in the late 1960s.
Once when asked what the song meant, McLean replied that it meant he would never have to work another day in his life.
The original United Artists Records inner sleeve featured a free verse poem written by McLean about William Boyd, also known as Hopalong Cassidy, along with a picture of Boyd in full Hopalong regalia. This sleeve was removed within a year of the album's release. The words to this poem appear on a plaque at the hospital where Boyd died. The Boyd poem and picture tribute do appear on a special remastered 2003 CD.inner sleeve, 2003 Capitol Records CD remaster (72435-84729-2-9)
In 2001, "American Pie" was voted number 5 in a poll of the 365 Songs of the Century compiled by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the National Endowment for the Arts.
On April 7, 2015, McLean's original working manuscript for "American Pie" sold for $1,205,000 (£809,524/€1,109,182) at Christie's auction rooms in New York City, making it the third highest auction price achieved for an American literary manuscript.
In the sale catalogue notes, McLean explained the meaning in the song's lyrics: "Basically in 'American Pie' things are heading in the wrong direction. ... It [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." The catalogue confirmed some of the better-known references in the song's lyrics, including mentions of Elvis Presley ("the king") and Bob Dylan ("the jester"), and confirmed that the song culminates with a description of the killing of Meredith Hunter at the Altamont Free Concert, ten years after the plane crash that killed Holly, Valens and Richardson, and that the song broadly depicts how the early rock innocence of the 1950s, and a bygone simpler age, had been lost; overtaken by events and changes, which themselves had been overtaken by further changes. However, in the 2022 documentary The Day the Music Died: The Story of Don McLean's American Pie, McLean gave a different account, claiming that Presley was not the king referenced in the song, and Dylan was not the jester, although he is open to other interpretations.
Mike Mills of R.E.M. reflected on the song, that "'American Pie' just made perfect sense to me as a song and that's what impressed me the most. I could say to people this is how to write songs. When you've written at least three songs that can be considered classic that is a very high batting average and if one of those songs happens to be something that a great many people think is one of the greatest songs ever written you've not only hit the top of the mountain but you've stayed high on the mountain for a long time."
When asked about his record being broken by Taylor Swift in a Billboard interview, Don McLean said, "there is something to be said for a great song that has staying power. 'American Pie' remained on top for 50 years and now Taylor Swift has unseated such a historic piece of artistry. Let's face it, nobody ever wants to lose that No. 1 spot, but if I had to lose it to somebody, I sure am glad it was another great singer/songwriter such as Taylor." When Swift broke McLean's record, she sent him flowers and a handwritten note that read "I will never forget that I'm standing on the shoulders of giants".
"Vincent"
"Vincent" is a tribute to the 19th-century Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. The inspiration came to McLean one morning while looking at a book about Van Gogh. As he studied a print of Van Gogh's painting The Starry Night, he realized that a song could be written about the artist through the painting. The song argues that Van Gogh had a psychiatric illness, as opposed to being insane. It reached number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and it proved to be a huge hit worldwide, including reaching number 1 in the UK Singles Chart. Mike Mills of R.E.M. said "You can't change a note in that song". The song was performed by NOFX on their album 45 or 46 Songs That Weren't Good Enough to Go on Our Other Records and appears on the Fat Wreck Chords compilation Survival of the Fattest. "Vincent" was sung by Josh Groban on his 2001 debut album. In 2018, singer-songwriter Ellie Goulding recorded a new, stripped back, acoustic guitar-driven version of the song.
Subsequent recordings
Personnel from the American Pie album sessions were retained for his third album Don McLean, including the producer, Ed Freeman, Rob Rothstein on bass, and Warren Bernhardt on piano. The song "The Pride Parade" provides an insight into McLean's immediate reaction to stardom. McLean told Melody Maker in 1973 that Tapestry was an album by someone previously concerned with external situations. American Pie combines externals with internals, and the resultant success of that album makes the third one (Don McLean) entirely introspective."