And I knew if I had my chance, That I could make those people dance, And maybe they’d be happy for a while. I can still remember how That music used to make me smile. “American Pie” reached #1 in 1972, shortly after it was released. Buddy Holly, unfortunately, died in 1959 while other aspects of the song hint even further back. Little did I know then that the impression it left would be indelible, drawing me decades later to Austin, TX, the live music capital of the world, where the story of Buddy Holly’s impact on Texas music can be found in the Texas History Museum. No longer online, that domain was later replaced with a site I called RareException, an effort also relegated to history when I found myself first employed at Yahoo! As it happens, my passion for this song was imprinted on my life thanks to my young love affair with high school theater as a Junior at Portage Northern High School, the performing artists of the graduating Senior class sang this, a cappella, during their graduating performance.

The republishing, here, is to retain, as an archive, the history of that publishing it was the first of a few music related articles I used in the creation of my first website The Octopus’s Garden. But you better have a lot inside you – because it’s gonna get sucked out.First published in 1996- ish, what follows is an article I wrote out of a passion I had for the tune and lyrics, for a music history class. Writing a song that everyone on Earth knows shouldn’t make you resentful. He said, “All my stuff is about loss – and a certain kind of psychic pain. In conclusion, “American Pie” was a summary of events from McLean’s youth. “You couldn’t talk about her, because you couldn’t tell the truth about what was happening to her,” he shared.

McLean also discussed the “dreadful, ugly secret” of his older sister Betty, who had a hard time with drug and alcohol addiction. ‘American Pie’ is a biographical song,” he said. “That’s why I don’t like talking about the lyrics, because I wanted to capture and say something that was almost unspeakable. It was eventually embedded in the song’s “day the music died” line that most people thought referred to Buddy Holly. He also shared about crying for two years after his father died in front of him, blaming himself at the age of 15 just because he had a premonition of the event. But he would make a damn good jester, wouldn’t he?” He also added that he refused to answer the question when Dylan’s own son, Jacob, asked him about it. In particular, the famous “ And while the king was looking down / The jester stole his thorny crown” rumored to have referenced to Bob Dylan, he responded with: “I can’t tell you.

McLean was wary of revealing too much about the lyrics.

American pie song explained