Who is bye bye ms american pie about

Mostly the mission becomes about working within the form, and the challenge of discovering something new within this limited space.

Which is no small feat: there are so many disparate aspects to songwriting one must master before gaining the knowhow, power and ability to write any song well, so it makes perfect sense. Even those undisputed geniuses of song, from Gershwin, Stephen Foster, Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams to Dylan and The Beatles, Paul Simon and beyond, all had to master the form itself before doing their greatest work.

None of them invented a new form. Sure, Bob Dylan had written multiverse songs that blew our minds with expansive, poetic lyrics before this. He picked up old forms common in folk music both Irish and American, which in turn echoed traditions of romantic poetry: long, rhymed epics that tell compelling, often dark, spiritual, and mysterious narratives which gain momentum in meter, with slowly unfolding force.

Released in from the album of the same name, it went to number one in America, where it stayed for four weeks. And did the same around the world. Always a great vocalist, he became a inspired interpreter of folk songs, learning the delicate art of transforming history into song. But like Bob Dylan, who also started by learning folk songs before ever attempting to write his own, Don McLean started by establishing his own formidable folk music foundation, from which he could reach new realms.

Soon his focus and passion was not about mastering songs of the past, but creating his own new ones. And in this cataclysmic tale of American rock and roll turning so suddenly tragic, he found a way to piece together many disparate pieces, to create a song unlike any other. It was the music of the youth in this young country, the first one before all others to leave the planet to touch the moon, and then return.

This song came less than two years since the moon-landing. The song is filled to over-capacity with references to the momentous musicians who delivered this mystic music, as well as musical events of our time, and resonated precisely because it celebrated, and elaborated, on these touchstones. It sang of a generation united and empowered by a new religion, one based on youth as well as spirituality and sacred song.

But it also reflected in each verse and the chorus the dark side of this thing. But just at the peak of the sweetly marijuana-perfumed Summer of Love in , the tension boils over into civil unrest.

He looks on as the "players try to take the field; But the marching band refused to yield". There are almost as many theories for this line as the single has sold copies more than three million in its first year. One has the marching band as the police blocking civil rights protesters, another as the Beatles preaching non-violence with their hit "All You Need Is Love". This could be the song's most ambiguous line of all. Some suggest it refers to a John Lennon and Yoko Ono album cover.

Another popular theory is the Miss America contest of where feminist protesters had supposedly "burned their bras". But the most likely reference, Fann believes, is the riot at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where police brutally cracked down on demonstrators. What was revealed? But perhaps "what was revealed" has nothing really to do with any of these events, and is really a harbinger for the tragedy that follows in the fifth verse A giant gathering of people, all high on drugs.

It has to be Woodstock, right? Not so, say Pie connoisseurs. The lyrics more closely match the tragic concert at Altamont Speedway in December , where "Jack Flash sat on a candlestick". The Stones' frontman Mick Jagger really did appear on stage that night dressed in a flowing red cape, singing lyrics inciting fire and rebellion. Meanwhile at the stage perimeter members of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang - hired as security - engaged in bloody clashes with the rioting audience.

Jagger was later accused of failing to halt the performance, infuriating McLean's narrator: "I saw Satan laughing with delight; The day the music died". Just as Woodstock was heralded as the landmark of the counterculture movement, "Altamont was the event that signalled its demise. Reality steps in," says Fann. The tragedy served to finally "burst the bubble of youth culture's illusions about itself," wrote Todd Gitlin, an eyewitness, in his book The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage.

And in the final verse of McLean's parable, when he "goes down to the sacred store, where I'd heard the music years before" he finds that sadly:. Membership My Account. Rewards for Good. Share with facebook. Share with twitter. Share with linkedin. Share using email. His career began in chaos McLean recorded his debut album, Tapestry , in while student riots at Berkeley were raging. Leaving AARP. Got it! Please don't show me this again for 90 days. Cancel Continue.

DM: First of all, America was much more volatile than it is at the moment. People in the street. This was the kind of volatile world we were in then. Part of what "American Pie" is, is a spiritual song, about the spirit of the country and what was happening to it.

And the music represents that. And this was the theory of "American Pie. But I am happy to talk about it, because it leads me into a discussion of the country which I am very interested in and love. I was in my little room where I used to write songs.

What I do is I put a tape recorder on. I even did it on my last album, "Botanical Gardens. I had the tape recorder on and I just sang, "A long, long time ago, I can still remember how the music made me smile.

And I knew if I had my chance, I could make those people dance. DM: Oh yeah! DM: Writing songs is a lonely thing. It was the one that would follow "Tapestry.

I needed to come up with a chorus that was crazy and rip it, rather than lay there with it. This is how the form of the song established itself. I kept the first verse slow. Later on, three months later, I wrote five more verses of the same length, following forward with this idea, almost in a rock dream kind of idea.

Then I slowed down the fifth verse so it starts slow, rocks in the middle and slows at the end. The form of this song is different from almost any song you would hear.