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51. ‘American Pie’ (Song) - Don McLean (1971)
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Episode 51 - ‘American Pie’ (Song) - Don McLean (1971)
‘The Day The Music Thrived’
From the album of the same name, Don McLean released ‘American Pie’ - a song about the loss of culture, American values and innocence across a 10 year period throughout America.
Concerning the death of a musician, the change in popular music style, the ever-changing political landscape of the USA and the Vietnam War, Don takes us on a rollercoaster of emotions and feelings through this 8 and a half minute epic that is, arguably, one of the most famous songs in Rock ‘N’ Roll history.
Laz & Felipe, in a special episode, focus solely on this song and analyse/breakdown the lyrics of each verse and what they could mean/represent.
- American Pie Full Lyric Explanation: https://www.musicgrotto.com/american-pie-song-meaning-don-mclean/
- American Pie Full Lyric Analysis: https://web.archive.org/web/20200118091344/http://understandingamericanpie.com/index.htm
LONG LIVE ROCK ‘N’ ROLL
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- Podcast Music by GeriArt, NaturesEye, astrofreq, Twisterium from Pixabay
- Podcast Art by Ross Davidson (@ross_feelshame)
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Transcript
Introduction and Dedication
00:00:03
Speaker
Hello there and welcome back to another episode of the Long Live Rock and Roll Podcast with your hosts, Laz and Felipe. We're both sweating here today, aren't we bro? Man, it's so hot in London. How is it in the country? Yeah, it's everywhere, about 28 degrees Celsius for our foreign listeners. It is sweltering, isn't it?
00:00:25
Speaker
And for the sake of good sound quality, we haven't got any fans going. So if you're watching on YouTube and you see us wipe our heads, that's why. But it's been lovely weather, isn't it? I mean, the sun's been shining. It must be beautiful in SoHo, right? Oh, yeah, man. Yeah. I walked to Hyde Park the other day. I spend most of the day in the park. So every time I need to do some work.
00:00:45
Speaker
uh that you know doesn't require me being behind the drum kit i'll do it from the park now it's like lovely weather yeah and uh yeah so so we're gonna crack on and today we're doing things a little differently um we came prepared to do an album but one of the songs on this album you know i build it up like like they don't know like i'm building the tension of what we're gonna do but they can see what we're gonna do so i'm gonna tell them
00:01:10
Speaker
We're doing American Pie by Don McLean and we prepared to do this album and we were listening to a whole album making our notes doing our research and then an hour before we came on I said to Felipe, I said bro
00:01:22
Speaker
American Pie as a song is just too good. It's too long. The lyrics are too deep for us to just spend like 20 minutes of a one hour episode on. Should we do one episode just about the song American Pie? And then we'll do the rest of the album two weeks later. And we agreed that we said that was what we're going to do because it's such a good song. So that's going to be the structure for today. We're going to talk about the song American Pie from the album American Pie.
00:01:49
Speaker
and then the rest of the album will be done on the next episode. So just some album information before we get stuck into the song.
Album Insights and Influences
00:01:56
Speaker
The name of the album is American Pie by artist Don McLean, released on October 24th, 1971 and recorded between May and June, 1971 in the Record Plant Studios, New York City, clocking in at 36 and a half minutes. It is a folk rock slash folk album produced by Ed Freeman. Yeah, I think it's the...
00:02:19
Speaker
Is that the first folk album we're reviewing? Is that it? Because I don't remember doing anything as folk as this one. No, we haven't done any. I mean, I think, you know, Yes had a bit of folk in one of their albums. Genesis did as well, didn't they? But they're not. Yeah, so it's the first pretty much is the first folk or proper folk album we're covering. And yeah, it's it came out in a in a
00:02:47
Speaker
in a time that loads of bands were doing amazing albums. And that transition from the 60s to the 70s, there was so much great music being produced at the time. And this one reached number one on Billboard, which it's a hell of an achievement for the time. It was produced by Ed Freeman, I think you've mentioned. And yeah.
00:03:13
Speaker
I was just going to say that the thing was going on a lot this time is especially going from the end of the sixties into the seventies is you had a lot of solo musicians coming through especially that singer songwriter type you know the Beatles have broken up John Lennon was doing his all of them were doing their own thing.
00:03:28
Speaker
and you had solo singer-songwriters like James Taylor, Carole King, Neil Young in America, and you had Cat Stevens and Elton John doing their thing in the UK. So the rise of this kind of folky acoustic singer-songwriter thing was happening, and at the same time, Don McLean was doing his thing. Yeah, and I think there's an element that separates this song from the rest of the album.
Song Significance and Collaboration
00:03:51
Speaker
I was listening to the whole album and always going back to this song and keep digging deeper into the song. It's endless. The more you read about it, the more you find this one line about something you would never imagine.
00:04:12
Speaker
It's almost like an entity in itself, isn't it? The song is almost like an entity in itself. It is. It is completely separate from the album, although it sets the tone for the album. He wanted to do something like 7 Peppers. He mentioned that, so he wanted to do something like a concept album. He wanted to capture the whole feeling and the whole
00:04:36
Speaker
The concept of that time and all about 10 years in American history from 1959 to 1970. She's capturing the atmosphere of that time and trying to turn into a whole album maybe, but most of the song. But what makes a song different for me is the one song in the album that relies on the band
00:05:01
Speaker
uh uh like relies heavily on on on the performance of of the other musicians not only going to it's a long song it is a long time to keep the audience interested yeah but apart if you notice for the rest of the album apart from um the art like piano and and strings arrangement it could have been performed by just his voice and his guitar and nothing else but this song no this song really relies on on all the musical elements in it
00:05:29
Speaker
does.
Creation and Inspiration of 'American Pie'
00:05:30
Speaker
And the funny thing is that it was the last song written for the album. He had all the others written. And he just he said he was sitting in his in his boathouse on the Hudson Lake surrounded by artists and poets and musicians. And he just wanted to write a song, a big song about America. And one thing I think is hugely impressive in the song is the piano.
00:05:54
Speaker
I love the piano part because you've just got, it's kind of like a mix of everything, isn't it? It's like gospelly, it's like honky tonk, it's like Americano, it's kind of R&B. And the gentleman, what's he called? Paul Griffin. Paul Griffin, who played the piano on this track.
00:06:09
Speaker
And it carries the song, doesn't it? It just gives it that up-tempo vibe. Even though the song isn't necessarily upbeat itself, it's not necessarily a wholly positive song. No, it isn't. But that's how I find the arrangements interesting. That's why I like it. Because the first time the chorus comes in right at the beginning, it's sad. It's really sad. But when they speed it up,
00:06:36
Speaker
and play the acoustic. When the acoustic guitar is being played like very rhythmically from the second time, you can hear the chorus. So from that part onwards, the chorus doesn't sound as sad anymore, in my opinion. It's weird. They turn this kind of sad melody into an uplifting vibe by just changing the tempo and the instruments. So that's why I like about the song. There's loads of
00:07:02
Speaker
tempo changes and arrangement changes and instruments taking the lead. So the first time, the piano is the boss. It's piano and vocals. And then when the acoustic guitar enters the song, it's like the piano gets out of the way. It's still there, but it's like, okay, let the guitar shine now. And later on, yeah, and later on the song, the bass line gets busier.
00:07:29
Speaker
So I love the fact that it feels like every instrument had their specific time in the song to take the lead and to enhance a certain element of the arrangement. Yeah, that's a great point. What did you say about the... Oh yeah, there's a song by Bob Dylan, which really reminded me, which is called Hurricane. And it has the same kind of thing. It's a long song. It's about eight and a half minutes.
00:07:54
Speaker
And the vibe is very similar to this, very upbeat, very agreeable, very happy, but actually the lyrics play much more of an important part.
00:08:03
Speaker
because it's about the story of a man who was wrongly accused of something or went to jail or something. And we know Dylan is a lyricist and a poet ahead of sort of like a singer, if we're being honest. And I just thought that was really interesting. It's a long song. It's eight and a half minutes long. And if you look at other singles that came out that are really long in the 60s, although this was 1971, you got Like a Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan. You got Hey Jude.
00:08:30
Speaker
by the Beatles so very unusual to have a song of this length be the lead single but I was watching a classic albums episode where they did this album and they said that without a doubt all of them said this is the single. Interesting. Yeah they didn't choose anything else. And I have the feeling they worked hard on this song. Do you know a fun fact about it is they rehearsed the song for two weeks. Really?
00:08:54
Speaker
Yeah, so they booked the rehearsal studio and rehearsed just the song for two weeks to make sure the band would nail their arrangement. And it's played live. Yes, yes, it is. Incredible, isn't it? Incredible. That's what you rehearsed two weeks for, isn't it? Exactly. So they wanted to nail the song. Yeah. As we spoke, as we said, we're doing the whole, we're just focusing on this song today because I am actually, do you know what, I've got a Lazarnisht. Oh, already?
00:09:24
Speaker
And it was unleashed for the listeners who have listened to the past 50 episodes. They normally associate Laz Unleashed with a negative thing, but Laz Unleashed could still be positive. And this is a positive Laz Unleashed. American Pie might be one of the greatest songs ever written.
00:09:40
Speaker
That's a powerful statement. I agree. I'll die on that hill. What it does, as we're going to go through now, we're going to go through the lyrics because as a huge fan of the song, I have loved this song for decades.
00:09:57
Speaker
I remember hearing it and my friends singing the chorus in the car. We weren't American. We didn't love Don McLean. It's just such a catchy chorus. They heard it somewhere and they were singing it in the car. And I was like, that's it. I want to know what that song is. And so I went and listened. And ever since I was like six or seven years old, that song's been in my head. It's one of those songs that I will listen to anytime, anywhere.
00:10:17
Speaker
I am a heavy metal fan, but some days I don't want to sit and listen to a Metallica instrumental as much as I love it on other days. You know, I also love classical music, but there's some days I don't want to sit and listen to my favorite piece. This is a song and there's a very few of them. There's maybe five to 10 songs in my life where in my, you know, in my list where I will listen to it anytime, anywhere, any place for the whole song. And this is one of them.
00:10:42
Speaker
something that I've always been fascinated by is the lyrics and what they meant because there's so many metaphors, there's so many references, there's so many analogies and when I finally put this album on the list
00:10:53
Speaker
And I finally got to the researching and found out what it meant. I just thought, man, this is too good. And this is why I said to Felipe, I was like, bro, we got to do a whole episode. We can't just spend 10 minutes on this and sort of move on to the next song.
American History and Cultural Shifts
00:11:06
Speaker
So we're going to go lyric sort of, yeah, verse by verse and talk about different interpretations of what these are meant because it is important, isn't it? It is a journey through America. The whole idea of the song is the day the music died by the Holly's death.
00:11:23
Speaker
February 3rd I think, I've got it here February, yeah February 3rd 1959 Buddy Holly, Richie Violins and JP Richardson also known as Big Bopper died in a plane crash whilst they were on tour and that is the day that Don McLean is referring to as the music dying but it was not, this song is not just about the death of Buddy Holly it is looking back over the 10 years that followed and seeing the decline
00:11:47
Speaker
of American ideals, of love and peace and war coming in various forms throughout government, throughout American citizens. And that's why it's such a fantastic song, isn't it? It is an interesting that he starts
00:12:02
Speaker
specifically in 1959 and he named that day as the day the music died. So imagine when you love someone, you love a songwriter so much that you believe that person's part of your life and they are actually the
00:12:18
Speaker
they actually represent what music is for you. So if that songwriter dies, that's the end of music for you. That's how he felt. I think he was 13 years old and he was a paperboy. He was delivering newspapers around town. And when he got the newspapers for the day and he saw the headlines,
00:12:39
Speaker
And he was crushed by the terrible news of Buddy Hall's death. And I think we all have a musician in our lives that we can look up to like that, can't we? Yeah, exactly. What I noticed in some of Don McLean interviews is he's talking a lot about the fact that the relationship people have with music and musicians and songwriters changed to the point that
00:13:06
Speaker
according to him in the past people were just like yeah you know I like listening to this music but I don't even care who calls the writer and if the writer dies no one would notice to the point that according to him it became a religion so music and rock musics and special became like a religion for for American people specifically and and those rock stars would be like not only celebrities but like
00:13:34
Speaker
like gods for people so people would follow everything they do and maybe that has lost a bit of that impact nowadays I think. It's not that cool to put those people in
00:13:51
Speaker
in an impossible position to be, you know, I don't know, to be the most important thing of your life or something like that. Yeah. But it's interesting, like he picks that one moment, you know, my favorite songwriter died. So that's the beginning of that story. What happened in the 10 years after that? It's interesting to notice that 1950 or the whole actually the whole decade in 1950s were a moment of like,
00:14:21
Speaker
economic prosperity for America after the war. So America was doing a lot better than Europe and most places in the world and everyone had money to spare, everyone was buying cars and having a good time. So the rock and roll music at the time was about that and Buddy Holly symbolized that amongst other
00:14:42
Speaker
or the icons like Elvis and, you know, and even even Bob Dylan, I would say. But yeah, so so when he died, that was that was huge for loads of people, but specifically for Don McLean, because he was Buddy Holly gets the gets the
00:14:59
Speaker
I say the fame, the attention in this thing, but Richie Valens was a great guitarist, wasn't he? And Big Opera as well. I mean, I don't actually know any of his music. I'll find something to put in the playlist. Just to note for the playlist, guys, what we'll do is we'll do one big playlist for both of these episodes, because we're only doing American Pie today. There'll be some songs in the lyrical breakdown that will also be in the playlist.
00:15:21
Speaker
so we'll put American Pie the song in any songs that we mention in this episode then the rest of the album for next week's episode and then any other subsequent songs afterwards but yeah a trio of musicians very famous at the time very
00:15:36
Speaker
very accomplished in their field, dying instantaneously in a plane crash disaster. Yeah, it's shocking, isn't it? It's one of those things and that kind of tragedy happens all the time in music. And one thing he says about the album or about the song specifically is, I'm going to quote exactly what he said, American Pie is about loss in a whole lot of different ways.
00:16:00
Speaker
Yeah, because the problem with his music is people would interpret in a million different ways. And apparently back in the day, McLean wasn't keen to deliver the message in a
00:16:17
Speaker
in a direct way. He wanted people to interpret the songs in any way he wanted. He still doesn't. He still never come out and said, yes, I meant that the jester is this person. He's never come out and given explanations. He still remained very cryptic and very sort of like, you know, mysterious about who is what and what the lyrics mean. And I love that, isn't it?
00:16:37
Speaker
And yeah, and it's amazing because it's so open to interpretation that at the same time, he knew exactly what he was doing. And on the lyrics have a meaning for him that probably no one else can understand. I agreed. I imagine that there is one lyric that he's written that he goes, well, this guy wrote that about it. This guy wrote that about it. This guy wrote that about it. None of them are right.
00:17:04
Speaker
Anyway, do you want to talk anything else before we crack on with the lyric thing. Yeah, I just I just want to mention this, the element of loss and pain that he mentions in the song, I think, just going more into a philosophical interpretation of this is
00:17:18
Speaker
The beauty of writing songs with a story that no one is going to understand is that the feeling generated by that story can resonate with anyone. That is the beauty of it. If you're telling a story about someone that you lost, but obviously the person listening to the song
00:17:42
Speaker
doesn't know who you're talking about but they can relate to the feeling of loss and if you're talking about love you might be talking about one specific woman but the person listening to it might be thinking about their wives or husbands or girlfriends or boyfriends or someone they just fell in love with so it's a different kind of love but it's still
00:18:02
Speaker
It can still be named in the same way, still love. So love, pain, anger, some people can write very generic songs about it and some people can write deeply about those themes and I think he was great at that. Well that's going to come up next week actually when we do one of the songs because one of the songs on the rest of the album had a deep profound impact on a singer-songwriter
00:18:24
Speaker
and then that song went on to become famous through another group, but we'll get there next week. Bro, anything else? Yeah, okay. One more quote from him. Pain is a very important part of art.
00:18:41
Speaker
So that's it. Pain is actually the first motivation behind the song, isn't it? And he started writing the song with a tape recorder, as he usually did at the time. And he said, like, I think a couple of verses came straight away. He said, just like the genie came out of the bottle like that.
00:19:01
Speaker
So, OK, go on now. I mean, listen, I'm going to be the one talking most because I'm reading the lyrics and I've got written down what a lot of what a consensus of the lyrics mean. But, bro, by all means, jump in. Tell me your thoughts if you thought it meant something different. So I just want to credit the people who have who I've read this for, because it's a lot of work that they've done. I mean, what we'll do is we'll also put the links in the show notes of the articles we've read, because it is incredible.
00:19:31
Speaker
These interpretations are a mix of by Bob Dearborn, Jim Fann and Liam Flynn. So thank you to those of you for providing this. So we start the verse off in the 1970s with him looking back at the end of the 1950s.
00:19:47
Speaker
I said a long long time ago I can still remember how that music used to make me smile and I knew if I had my chance that I could make the people dance and maybe they'd be happy for a while. So this is the nostalgia isn't it? This is the nostalgia of him looking back at simpler times when he was a teenager
00:20:05
Speaker
when the music was simple and America, as you said, was prospering. You had simple music like Buddy Holly, just making everyone happy, talking about romance, dancing, buying a new car, you know, all that stuff. And yeah, just a time of happiness. But February made me shiver with every paper I'd deliver. Bad news on the doorstep. I couldn't take one more step.
00:20:27
Speaker
I can't remember if I cried when I read about his widowed bride, but something touched me deep inside the day the music died. Now we know, as you said, February made me shiver. That was the February 3rd is the day the Buddy Holly died. And we know that he left behind a wife. So this is kind of almost sort of saying, yes, this is Buddy Holly. Now we get into the chorus, which is obviously the most repeated one. It's the most American chorus of them all, isn't it? So bye bye Miss American Pie.
00:20:54
Speaker
American pie, you might think it was a metaphor or maybe a movie or something like that, but it's talking about American pies because pies are synonymous with America, aren't they? Yeah, exactly. I think there's an expression as American as an apple pie. Exactly. That's exactly it. And so although the words American pie will take on a different form throughout the, you know, in the verses, I think it is almost literally American pie.
00:21:20
Speaker
drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry. Now this comes from an advert from Chevrolet, an American car company, and they had their own song that went with the advert and it said, I'm making this up, but it's something along the lines of, you know, going to drive off in my Chevy, then another line, taking it on down to the levee, something like that. So that was taken from an advert. And then you've got the end of the course, which is then good old boys drinking whiskey and rising, and this will be the day that I die.
00:21:49
Speaker
An interesting thing here is that there is a Buddy Holly song called That'll Be the Day, where Buddy Holly thinks of dying after his girlfriend leaves him. And he says, because that'll be the day that I die.
00:22:02
Speaker
And in this chorus, you have the narrator's love, not a romantic love, but a love for this gentleman's music dying. So this will be the day that Don McLean dies because his buddy Holly died. Just, I mean, we're just in the chorus. This is so emotional, isn't it? Right to the beginning. And the first time, as I said before, the first time the chorus comes up,
00:22:22
Speaker
it's just really slow and probably intentionally depressing. So it's really sad when it comes for the first time. It's not quite a pleasant experience to listen to that chorus for the first time. It just really makes it sad. And I think the first verse and the chorus, they are probably the most
00:22:43
Speaker
I know there are the easiest parts to interpret in the song because the message is more clear. I don't think there's any yeah I don't think there's any anything
00:22:55
Speaker
that hasn't been said about, yeah, anything cryptic about those two parts, of course, because he mentioned, he dedicated the album to Buddy Holly. So that's a fact. He was a paper boy. So he's talking specifically about that time when he was delivering the newspapers and saw the news. So that's not, yeah, there's not much interpretation to those verses yet. And I think it gets deeper after that.
00:23:20
Speaker
So verse two, did you write the Book of Love? Do you have faith in God above if the Bible tells you so? Do you believe in rock and roll? Can music save your mortal soul? Can you teach me how to dance real slow? The Book of Love, that's a reference to 1957 with a band called the Monotones who wrote the song Book of Love.
00:23:39
Speaker
um well i know that you're in love with him because i saw you dancing in the gym you both kicked off your shoes then i dig those rhythm and blues this is about naivety as a teenager finding love finding romance he tries romancing a girl at a high school dance in the gym but she chooses another man um
00:23:59
Speaker
I was a lonely teenage broncing buck with a pink carnation and a pickup truck. Now that's funny because there's a Marty Robbins song called A White Sport Coat, where he talks about being left at a high school dance wearing a white coat and a pink carnation, which is a flower.
00:24:15
Speaker
And so Don McLean has literally sort of copied that lyric because he's been left. He's just we're in verse two and he's already taking the best aspects of American culture from the fifties. Buddy Holly, the monotones and a Marty Robbins song. Just brilliant. And driving a pickup truck. When you see that, you think America, don't you? That's a Chevy. A Chevy, exactly. Yeah.
00:24:38
Speaker
So I knew I was out of luck the day the music died. And this is literally, I started singing Bye Bye Miss American Pie. Well, this is a proverbial Miss American Pie.
00:24:49
Speaker
This is his Miss American Pie. And although he is saying goodbye to the innocence and the naivety and the lost faith of passing values in America as a metaphor for this lady. In verses three, we've got, now for 10 years we've been on our own and moss grows fat on a rolling stone, but that's not how it used to be.
00:25:12
Speaker
when the jester sang for the king and queen in a coat he borrowed from James Dean and a voice that came from you and me. Now this is interesting, the jester is Bob Dylan, who is widely considered to be Bob Dylan, because there is a photo of Bob Dylan wearing James Dean's famous coat. So that's kind of a bit inarguable. And the 10 years we've been on our own is from 59 to 70. Yeah, that's it. So that's exactly the time frame we're talking about.
00:25:41
Speaker
And the other evidence that it's Bob Dylan is that a voice that came from you and me. Well, that could mean two things. It could mean, one, that Bob Dylan was a voice of the people instigating political change. And also, it could be that Bob Dylan doesn't have a great voice. You know, you couldn't call Freddie Mercury a voice that came from you and me, could you? Exactly. With Bob Dylan, I could sing Bob Dylan songs maybe as good as him. You know, no slight on Dylan, but we know he's not the best.
00:26:11
Speaker
Then the next part. Oh, and while the king was looking down, the jester stole his thorny crown. Oh, sorry, I didn't mention the king and queen. The king is Elvis Presley. I thought so. And the queen supposedly. There's a bit of debate. Some people think it's Aretha Franklin. Someone thinks it's a lady. Oh, damn, I forgot her name. I think she's called Connie Frank, who were like the R&B singers of that time.
00:26:33
Speaker
And the interesting part about this is from the next lyric. While the king was looking down, the jester stole his thorny crown, the courtroom was adjourned, no verdict was returned. There's a kind of metaphor here because the jester, Bob Dylan, is challenging the king, Elvis, to take over music. Now, not a literal challenge, but the rise of Bob Dylan's political music started declining. Elvis Presley's music about love and dancing and
00:26:59
Speaker
Yeah, Elvis music was more naive and more uplifting and a bit silly in a good way, while Dylan was trying to make people think and question politics and social issues and stuff like that. So that's the literal musical thing you can take from these lyrics, but as a metaphor,
00:27:23
Speaker
As well as the music changing, you've got America changing, the culture and revolution changing as well. You've got young people starting to rise up the same way Dylan was and the old traditions of America starting to bow down under the pressures of revolution and social reform. No verdict was returned. We know that not everyone was on board with the political changes in America. Yeah.
00:27:48
Speaker
So the jury was adjourned, no verdict was returned because you know I've been watching a documentary on the Vietnam War which has been fascinating and you see how there was such a divide some people who were like and they happened to be mostly young people who were sat there saying no to the Vietnam War
00:28:03
Speaker
that you've got a lot of old traditional Americans who said, well, we've got to do what's right for the world. We've got to help the world. And so you've got this battle. And I'm liking this battle and this metaphor in these lyrics, Dylan. I've seen a lot of it with McLean that he actually.
00:28:19
Speaker
talks a lot about his love for America and the fact that America is not perfect and there's a lot of debate and he literally says there's a lot of insanity and it's messy and it's not organized and you know it's not perfect but
00:28:37
Speaker
they've done great things, they've done awful things. But I think he is one of those guys who doesn't have a limited narrow kind of view on what America is. He's like, this is my country, I love my country, but there's elements of it that I dislike, and I'm going to talk about the good and the bad things in one song. Why not?
00:28:59
Speaker
So moving on to, well, I call it verse four, but it's kind of like the end of it. While Lenin read a book of Marx, the quartet practiced in the park. Now, this is funny because obviously you've got Lenin and Marx. Do you want to just talk about them quickly as political figures? Who were they?
00:29:15
Speaker
Well, yeah, it's actually talking about Lennon. Well, that's what I'm saying about... Yeah, not Lennon. You have got the play on words. It could be interpreted as Lennon, because I've seen some lyrics that say Lennon and some lyrics that say Lennon. Yeah, I've seen it as what I noticed. That's one thing I want to talk about, because there is a... Yeah, it's hard to get that from the song, isn't it? It could be both. Let me just finish what I was going to say, which is, if it's John Lennon,
00:29:43
Speaker
while Lennon read a book of marks the quartet practiced in the park that is a reference to the Beatles rising up so you've got Elvis and Aretha if it's Aretha had their time in the 50s now kind of bound down to the new acts like Dylan and the Beatles go ahead bro you said you want to talk about Lennon no yeah yeah obviously like uh the interesting thing about
00:30:02
Speaker
Lennon being the brain of the Beatles, he was the guy interested in bringing culture and philosophy politics into the lyrics and the other stuff.
Influences of Lennon and 1960s Movements
00:30:14
Speaker
So he was not
00:30:18
Speaker
the only guy responsible for it. But he was responsible for changing the direction of the Beatles in that sense. And his solo career is very political as well. And there's always questioning politics and religion, which is an interesting and beliefs in general. And obviously, he was always reading and tried to learn from
00:30:39
Speaker
uh from from books and gurus and everything so yeah so he's reading a book on marks and and the band is practicing the park for me so that's my interpretation right it's like John Lennon himself if it's him in the lyrics yeah he is uh isolated from his bandmates
00:31:02
Speaker
know, although to be a quartet, they need him. But yes, like they are in the park and he's reading, he's the brain, they are the band. So in two lyrics, he's made a philosophical, deep statement about the Beatles. Yeah, but it isn't. And when you're talking about the changes in American culture, it's like, like, well, the Beatles
00:31:26
Speaker
they went from being a band to being four independent artists, like four solo acts that came out of one band. So that was one big change in the 70s, wasn't it? Worldwide, yeah. Then the final two lines of that were, and we sang dirges in the dark the day the music died. Now,
00:31:48
Speaker
Durges are, I believe, songs that are of a minor and sad element. And so some people think this reflects JFK's assassination in 1964. So people singing Durges for Jed to mourn, John F. Kennedy. I should have mentioned as well that whole verse is supposedly spanning 1963 to 1966, just for note. Now verse five spans 1966 to 1969.
00:32:15
Speaker
Helter Skelter, in the summer swelter, the birds flew off with a fallout shelter, eight miles high and falling fast. A few things to pick out here. Helter Skelter, a Beatles song, taking over as the birds. Again, I've seen some lyrics with birds as in flying birds and other lyrics as the birds, the band. So again, the birds, the band declining, the Beatles with Helter Skelter ascending. The birds have a song called Eight Miles High,
00:32:46
Speaker
But the lyric says, eight miles high and falling fast. For those watching on YouTube, I'm putting my hand up eight miles high and falling to the ground. Well, what else was falling in the mid 60s? Napalm bombs on Vietnam. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's a common interpretation.
00:33:05
Speaker
It landed foul on the grass. The players tried for a forward pass with the jester on the sidelines in the cast. Now that's the football field is a cool metaphor because it's representative of a battlefield.
00:33:20
Speaker
literally and metaphorically, because you've got, you know, on a football field, you've got two teams playing each other. And in this scenario, you've got protesters versus the government, you've got USA versus Vietnam, you've got Beatles versus Bob Dylan, you know, for a rise of who's going to be the next big star. Because in this time in the mid 60s is when radical the radical 60s really began, where you have counterculture beginning and ensuing the protests, you've got Black Panthers, you've got the weatherman, you've got anti Vietnam,
00:33:49
Speaker
You know, all of these movements and political groups rising up. Do you want to talk about that for a bit?
00:33:53
Speaker
I think that's a reflection of what he said in the interview I mentioned that America is not, it's a place of debate and every time something becomes the establishment, some people are going to go against it and then there's going to be people defending what the establishment is and people complain about what it is and the fact that as he says messy and disorganized,
00:34:19
Speaker
I think this is the hardest verse in the song for me to actually understand line by line and the sports and the sports metaphor is kind of great because it's like it's one game
00:34:35
Speaker
and you have two clear sides and they have the same objective, they want to win and it's usually not easy. So I think that was a really good metaphor for debate in general because everyone thinks their idea is the best but it's not that easy to win, it's not that easy to convince the millions of people on the other side that your idea is the best one. And further evidence that the jester is Bob Dylan is
00:35:02
Speaker
with the jester on the sidelines in a cast and that's because Bob Dylan had a motorcycle accident in the mid 60s and this is supposedly a reference. Now the halftime air was sweet perfume while the sergeants played a marching tune. We all got up to dance but we never got the chance. Now the Summer of Love is exactly halfway through the radical 60s
00:35:25
Speaker
And some people think the sweet perfume is the smell of marijuana coming at half time. So halfway through the radical 60s was the summer of love with lots of marijuana, whilst the sergeants played a marching tune. Hold on, let me see the loops. Yeah, so the sergeants is also a reference to Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hurd Arts Club Band.
00:35:46
Speaker
Oh, look at that. Which came out in 1967. Whilst the sergeants played a marching tune, there's another sort of interpretation that the sergeants are the authoritative figures, you know, the armies trying to repress protesters and stuff like that. But I like that this is the summer of luck, it all adds up 1967 radical 60s, marijuana, Sergeant Pepper, you know, kind of makes sense.
00:36:09
Speaker
Because the players tried to take the field, the marching band refused to yield. Now this, we can interpret the players as being the protesters, but the marching band being the authorities refusing to yield. Yeah, that's a very military thing, isn't it? Yes, and we know that in the protests, especially with Vietnam, there was a lot of casualties with protests. They killed several students, didn't they? The American military. I don't want to get it wrong. It was literally in the last episode of the Vietnam thing I watched. But yeah, protests got nasty.
00:36:37
Speaker
be it about Vietnam or other social reform, racism against police office racism and stuff like that. Lots of protests and a lot of change of culture and counterculture happening in the sixties. Lots of protests, lots of riots. And in several of those occasions, the authorities took a very aggressive stance, leading to deaths of protesters.
00:37:01
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that the way it relates to, um, to, to sports, like, like he's doing is like, uh, you want to score a goal, you know, so you need to be stronger than the other side. That's good. There's going to be a fight for that. So that's what it is. So you want to change something. You want to achieve something.
00:37:19
Speaker
especially in a place like America. So that's going to require a lot of effort. And unfortunately, sometimes it turns to violence. And I think it's very clear in the lyrics here, although there's loads of nuances in that verse, it's very clear that he's talking about actual violence. Yeah. Especially with a marching band like a military, isn't it? Yeah.
00:37:39
Speaker
And then the final lines of this verse, do you recall what was revealed the day the music died? Now, this, according to all three of these sources, I've read is the most debated lyric because people really don't know what it means. But the one that I liked the most was that he literally because he's a bit tongue in cheek in places, although this is a serious song about some serious events, there is elements of humor here and there.
00:38:01
Speaker
And I like, in 1968, the Miss America pageant was protested by feminists who didn't want, you know, women to be sex objects and just there for men to look at and vote on who was the prettiest. So they threw things like eyelashes, hair curlers, makeup, wigs into a big bonfire, and they all took their bras off as well. So do you know what was revealed when they take their bras off or what's revealed the day the music died? And the good thing about this is
00:38:31
Speaker
Again, it's another hint back to the old America dying. Now, whether this is a good thing or not, whether you agree with it or not, old America loved pageants. They loved Miss America. They loved these kind of things. Well, now it's dying again. We're losing, or Don McLean is feeling the sense of loss from old style. Do you know what I think, what I perceive from those two lines as well?
00:38:57
Speaker
When something big happens, like the day the music died, specifically talking about the death of a famous artist, so that's the headlines. What else happened? What else didn't you notice on that day? What important event was going on whilst you're looking at the headlines?
00:39:13
Speaker
Brilliant, well done. I think that's one thing I got from it which I haven't found in any other source but so that's Felipe's interpretation of those lines. I don't care if I'm wrong because a songwriter allows me to think whatever I want. It's at least exactly it man, like literally we're sat here and all I'm doing, honestly I told you I've read three different articles on this
00:39:35
Speaker
And I've taken the ones that I like the most. And in some places, some of the things you've heard are what I think. So in essence, you're getting a brand new article, because I am taking some opinions from the others, but I'm also factoring in our own as well, which is just really cool, because that's what music is, man. It's subjective, isn't it? It's like, do what you want with it. You take the lyrics how you want, which is exactly what you said at the start, because he's never offered an explanation. He's never said,
00:40:02
Speaker
Dylan is the jester Elvis is the king he hints it but he never says it it's just so good man this song um and onto the penultimate verse and i i do know what this verse is about because i had no idea oh i had no i this this is the one you still don't know well i got my my ideas of it but i want to hear yours first i want to hear yours
00:40:32
Speaker
Because this is apparently the most definitive one. I think when it says a generation lost in space with no time left to start again, I think lost in space has a lot to do with the moon landing, am I the wrong? Because literally lost in space. So people are concerned about
00:40:56
Speaker
technology and conquering this space and all that stuff, but with no time left to start again. Whenever there are changes in society and you are at the end of that period, you might not be young enough to fight for the things you want. Maybe you are at the end of a revolution, a cultural revolution, and things changed
00:41:20
Speaker
And there will be more changes, but then you're not there anymore. You might not have the chance to live in the way you wanted to live or in the way you used to live when you were younger, because the new revolution is going to take a bit too long to come again. So that's one interpretation, I think. But that's my own.
00:41:38
Speaker
you're absolutely right with the second half of what you said and I listen I'm not going to say you're wrong with the space thing because as we just said it is open to interpretation you take from it whatever you want but the general consensus about this verse let me I'm going to read the whole verse and tell you the story okay there we were all in one place a generation lost in space with no time left to start again so come on jack be nimble jack be quick jack flash sat on a candlestick because fire is the devil's only friend
00:42:09
Speaker
And 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. And as the flames climbed high into the night to light the sacrificial rite, I saw Satan laughing with delight the day the music died. So I have to do with the Rolling Stones concert where the Hell's Angels were doing security for them. Yes. So what happened is this. In Altamont, which is a place in America, 300,000 people
00:42:37
Speaker
who were basically trying to regenerate the Woodstock feeling. The feeling of Woodstock in the 60s, it was one of unity, it was one of everyone here together for a single cause, single piece, happiness, you know, all that stuff. But by the time this concert came around, there were so many different movements.
00:42:58
Speaker
so many different political groups so many different opinions that a whole generation had become lost in space because they agreed with this movement but this movement was against this movement but they also liked the ideas of that movement that ah everyone just gets lost because there's so much going on the the simplicity of America had been lost at this point
00:43:21
Speaker
it's not simple enough anymore as just being an American. Do you know what I mean? I find that I didn't say that really well. Yeah, no, no, I think and I think that it's when you said the change from Elvis to Bob Dylan, that's what it is. Yeah. Bob Dylan is not as simple and and an objective in that way, like.
00:43:45
Speaker
it's pretty much what was happening like rock and roll was becoming the past already very quickly. Rock and roll took over and it was already in decline in a certain way or I wouldn't say in decline because rock and roll is still around but it changed into something completely different. It became political, it became a way of questioning.
00:44:06
Speaker
And to further this, Jumping Jack Flash was a Rolling Stones song that took their music, that was the start of their music that went more darker, more nihilistic. You know, they had songs like Sympathy for the Devil, Gimme Shelter, about these real life issues.
00:44:21
Speaker
I actually thought that the Satan in that part is because of the song simple for the devil, because I think we'll get to that, but it kind of is. Yeah. Jagger, according to McLean, again, these guys just I don't think we've said it. These are all opinions. There is no fact about this. OK, so just take this with a pinch of salt that this is widely what these lyrics are considered to be. Jagger is a symbol of pushing unorthodox un-American ideals of protest and rebellion onto the youth.
00:44:48
Speaker
So Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack flash on the candlestick because fire is the devil's only friend. So what happened in this gig is that there was a black man who was a part of a movement, I believe, who pulled a gun out and the security of this gig was the biker gang Hell's Angels.
00:45:08
Speaker
And the Hells Angels, I can't remember the guy's name, Kenny Cassano or something, he stabbed this gentleman who was carrying the gun. But there's arguments, there's so many back and forths that the Hells Angels, the one who hit him first, the guy pulled the gun out first, no one really knows what happened. It's one of those things no one will ever know. No, exactly. Exactly what happened because I don't think there's footage of that.
00:45:32
Speaker
and there was four deaths and I don't know where the other deaths came. I don't know if someone was shot or anything but this was the main event where this violence erupted and apparently there's footage where you can see two people trying to get the Rolling Stones to stop
00:45:47
Speaker
and they didn't stop playing. Now there's arguments that they didn't know what was happening but you've got two people at the front who were begging Jagger to stop and Jagger could have stopped the show and ended the violence because riots then ensued but the Stones carried on playing and Don McLean says and I watched him on the stage my hands were clenched with fists of rage
00:46:06
Speaker
No angel born in hell, hell's angels, could break that spell. And as the flames climbed high into the night to light the sacrificial rite. Well, you know, when you think of Aztec sacrificing, it's stabbing.
00:46:18
Speaker
and the Hell's Angels stabbing the man, I saw Satan laughing with delight. Now, a lot of people think Jagger is the metaphorical Satan here because he's tearing down the final piece of America, of the America that Don McLean knew and loved, dividing people based on songs like Sympathy for the Devil, Gimme Shelter, too many groups, too much division, too many movements, and America is now too divided. So they think that I saw Satan laughing with delight.
00:46:46
Speaker
And he's not blaming Jagger for the demise of America, but he's saying this is like the final, the straw that broke the camel's back. Jagger is here doing things that many other people are doing, but this evidence of this gig, this divisiveness, potentially through lyrics in songs, has led to the death of people within their concert.
Cultural Chaos and Constant Human Behaviors
00:47:05
Speaker
So a very dark verse compared to the rest of it. Yeah, very, very dark. And it kind of reflects a time when no one knew exactly what was going on. Yeah. To be fair to everyone there, like this cultural revolution, rock and roll becoming heavier and more political and people clashing over their ideas.
00:47:28
Speaker
who knows what actually happened on that day but definitely no one wants to see that level of violence and it's weird like what do you do in that situation? Do you carry on playing and the gig? Do you say something on the microphone? It's a really dark part of the song and it's
00:47:52
Speaker
Especially if you see the footage of that show like it's crowded and messy and such a heavy environment. It must have been horrible to be part of but even before I realized what it was I just remember hearing those lyrics and thinking Jesus Christ like Satan laughing with delight the day the music died and it's so different now thinking you know as I just said I won't go and pee myself but
00:48:17
Speaker
Jagger is the metaphorical Satan because although he's only doing his job, he's breaking down that final piece of what America was. It's now gone. America that Don McLean loved has now gone the day the music died, which is just crazy. Anyway, on to the final verse. This is where the song comes down. Now it's just him, his vocals and his piano again. And he's back in the 70s. We're back in 1970 now.
00:48:41
Speaker
And he says, I met a girl who sang the blues and I asked her for some happy news, but she just smiled and turned away. And this I found really interesting. It's kind of like representative of the failure of the hippie movement that began in the mid sixties. So many people tried to protest and bring about change and ultimately it didn't lead anywhere. The government won most times.
00:49:07
Speaker
We have special occasions like Martin Luther King demanding, you know, sharing with us his dream. We have the protests about Vietnam that obviously were brilliant in essence and attitude, but didn't lead to anything. And this is signified with, supposedly the girl who sang the blues is Janice Joplin.
00:49:26
Speaker
Yeah I knew about that. You also got Hendrix, Morrison and Joplin dying in the same year, all right at the start of the 70s. And it's funny because he's expecting happy news but she died as well. Yeah exactly, literally. I went down to the sacred store where I'd heard the music years before but the man there said the music wouldn't play.
00:49:47
Speaker
Now the sacred store could literally be a record store because in the fifties, they'd let you play the music in the booths. So you can go and take a vinyl play and have a listen to it. But they didn't do that when 1970s came around. It could more cynically, it could be that music has not been about love and happiness and simplicity of life for some time. Throughout the whole of the sixties, it became more politicized, more angry, more violent, more political.
00:50:12
Speaker
so it's not it's not sacred anymore it's not like you buy an album you know you're just gonna have fun listening to it no it's gonna be it's gonna be yeah deeper than that yeah so the music wouldn't play because there's no more happy music anymore it's just about the point it's crazy man such good lyrics interesting now uh and in the streets the children screamed the lovers cried and the poets dreamed but not a word was spoken the church bells all were broken
00:50:39
Speaker
The old religion culture of America was dead and the church bells were broken. No one spoke anymore. No, not to each other, but you know what I mean? Like the old barriers of what America once was at the end of the fifties is now descended into something completely different. That's something I find interesting about this point here, which is the children screamed, the lovers cried and the poets dreamed. Well, isn't that what they usually do? So in that sense, yeah.
00:51:08
Speaker
regardless of all the radical changes that you see, you know, in front of you. There's still a hint of older. Yeah, but what the essence of what humans are doesn't necessarily change. You know, really, poets are going to dream, children are going to scream, and lovers are going to cry. Yeah. And it's regardless, it's like it's like your life as a human, and your personal emotions
00:51:35
Speaker
are not necessarily connected to the world outside. That's how I see that verse. Brilliant. And to finish off the final lines of the verse, the three men I admire the most, the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost, they caught the last train for the coast the day the music died. Now there's some debate as to who the
00:51:57
Speaker
But option one, which is Richie Valens, Buddy Holly and Big Bopper, that would seem obvious because obviously those three men are what the crux of the song is about. More politically, more cynically, could be JFK, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. Three men who represented the strength and courage of America who were all assassinated.
00:52:22
Speaker
and killed. So the loss and decline of America values brought down with their deaths gone to the coast. And then the third one is the three remaining band members from Buddy Holly's original band called The Crickets. I don't know if they did retire but you know what made them good and then this isn't an offence to them but what made them good was Buddy Holly because they were the crickets.
00:52:48
Speaker
And now they call the train to the coast because that's the, you know, the day the music died was supposedly the day the crickets died. I'll give you a more literal interpretation of that maybe. I'll tell you what, can I read a quote? Because I think what we're gonna say might be so this is the quote, and this is taken straight from the article I read. And I thought this was just a fantastic way. And this is the last paragraph of the whole of this guy's 20 page summary of American pie. So
00:53:17
Speaker
Talking about the three men, these religious figures hold an even greater symbolic importance in the wake of this decade's disillusioning cynicism and fragmentation
00:53:27
Speaker
The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost represent a faith in America that had once permeated American life, and that, hope against hope, might still redeem the disorder that had befallen America. But the Holy Trinity, finding no sympathetic hearing and resigning themselves to the inevitable, pack up their bags and retire to the coast. The believers had lost faith in their gods, and the gods can only retreat.
00:53:52
Speaker
Interesting. Fantastic. What a paragraph. So he's literally saying, you know, America has suffered so much and so many people's faith has been questioned. Imagine a man. Imagine what goes on through your mind when you see your president assassinated. Imagine when you see riots in the streets. Imagine when you see students shot by the military. Imagine when you see your people, you know, going over to Vietnam being killed for a war that didn't need to happen. How much has actually changed?
00:54:22
Speaker
Well, exactly. It was the 60s, not the first time we saw changes in America. And to just think and question that people are questioning their faith and the gods are saying, well, we're so sorry, but there's nothing we can do if you've lost faith enough. Sorry, if you've lost faith in us.
00:54:38
Speaker
we're going to pack our bags and go to the coast on the last day. Yeah, I think that's that feeling of, you know, you're praying and you're expecting a miracle and you're expecting God to deliver the changes you need and it might not happen. So I
00:54:59
Speaker
To me, that means he felt betrayed by his own faith. So I wanted things to get better and I expected some divine intervention, but it never happened. So it is almost like God packed up and I'm just like, okay, I'm leaving. Does that align with what you were going to say?
00:55:20
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. There's a lot of religious elements in the song and in the album, which we're going to talk about next week.
00:55:33
Speaker
In one of his interviews, he's talking about the fact that God gives and takes away. So he says that, he is literally using the religious meaning of those words. And he says a phrase that's really, really nice that always says in the interview, no matter how much you have, you're gonna lose it. And he's talking about death.
00:55:59
Speaker
Because you might think you're not going to lose anything. Well, the day you die, you lose everything. That's basically what he's saying. The Lord gives and takes away. He's basically saying, you know, you're going to achieve things in life. You know, it might be a success. We might have loads of money. You might have loads of people around you, but you will lose it all. And the song is.
00:56:19
Speaker
essentially about loss. And I think this is the end, isn't it, pretty much. And when he's talking about the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost just leaving, that's the ultimate loss.
00:56:35
Speaker
You don't have anything, you don't have anyone, you don't have your faith anymore. That's it. That's the end. But I believe that the part I just mentioned about poets still dreaming, which means like, yeah, some things don't change. So this song for me, it's so emotional and deep because
Emotional Impact and Authentic Expression
00:56:53
Speaker
It takes you on a journey that makes you feel happy and sad and alternate those feelings throughout the whole song and the instruments and the tempo changes and the starts and stops. They really enhance that feeling throughout the song. Every time I listen to it, I'm like.
00:57:12
Speaker
I feel like I'm in an emotional Holocaust. It just doesn't stop. It's ups and downs, ups and downs, ups and downs. And it's absolutely amazing, the song. It really is. It is. It's an absolute masterpiece. Like I said at the start with Glazz Unleashed, one of the greatest songs ever written, I think.
00:57:33
Speaker
And an iconic song, everyone knows it. Like I said, whether you're with me six years old in a car because you heard it on the radio, just singing it along because it's catchy, or whether this song has shaped your adulthood. Because imagine there must be someone who was 18 years old when this song came out and thought, look at how the world of America has changed when I went from being eight years old to 18. And it must have been so much for so many different people.
00:58:03
Speaker
Probably this song can make anyone think about a kind of important moment in their lives, one important loss. And it's interesting that he could be talking about anything else, but the fact that he chooses one of his idols. Isn't it so authentic? Because you could have done a general thing and written about
00:58:29
Speaker
if you have your father who died or a lover who left you but he's gone for something so personal that how do we know it's so personal how do we know it's Buddy Holly because the evidence is there in the lyrics and on the album sleeve he's written dedicated to Buddy Holly but I mean you know just just to repeat myself think how many artists you have who
00:58:50
Speaker
emotionally and correctly and still do it justice, write about a dead relative, a dead parent, a wife or a partner they've broken up with, the loss of a child, something that's obvious. But how many times obviously does someone write about their musical hero who died and wrote a song so intensely about that?
00:59:11
Speaker
obviously factoring in things like the decline of American ideals and American culture over that 10 year period. But it's just such an authentic song. You can tell he's singing it 100% from the heart. And it seems to me like, yeah, it seems to me like he didn't want to leave anything out of the song. Yeah.
00:59:32
Speaker
Yeah, I think I think he made a point. I'm not quite sure if he's accepted those words exactly. But I think he said something about he had loads of ideas for the song and he didn't want to like.
00:59:46
Speaker
limit the song to a certain length. So it's like, oh, you can't, you know, if you want, if one of this should be a single, it can't be more than five minutes, whatever. It was just like writing, writing, writing, having an idea after idea. And he kept adding them onto the song. And isn't that what rock and roll is all about? You do whatever you want to do. If you want to have like another verse, another instrumental section, another tempo change, why not? Add it on exactly.
01:00:13
Speaker
Oh man, what a song. I mean, I told you at the start how much I love this song. Do you love it? Do you like it a lot? Do you think it's just okay? No, no, I agree with you. It's one of the most important songs ever written, even though some people might not think it's one of the best songs ever written. I think it is one of the best.
01:00:34
Speaker
is also, it has all the elements of American folk music. And there's history, culture, love, loss, pain, happiness. It's all those feelings, one after another.
01:00:52
Speaker
non-stop until the end of the song. I think it's absolutely brilliant. I can't get a smile off my face. It's just such a good song. Before we finish, I just want to say to everyone who's listening.
01:01:08
Speaker
I imagine most people listening to this are familiar with Madonna's version of this song, and Lass never heard it. You've never listened to that version, have you? I'll go listen to it now, but no, I never have, because why would I? Why would I do that when the original is there for me? Seriously, though, is it good cover? Is it OK? Now you tell me when we do the second part of this, so we're going to start from this. OK, yeah, that's fine. So when we come back and do the next one, we'll start with Madonna's one. But anyway, right, let's wrap it up here.
01:01:36
Speaker
I never thought we'd do a whole episode about one song, but it's perfect that this is the song, isn't it? Because it is worth doing an hour on. But anyway, guys, thank you for joining us for this special one-off, long live rock and roll podcast episode because we had just focused on the legendary American Pie by Don McLean. The rest of the album review, including maybe a few more little bits on American Pie, in terms of when he was writing it, which part of
01:02:02
Speaker
the album, the process of recording etc and of course Madonna's one. The rest of that will be available for the second part of this sort of two-part American Pie episode in two weeks time so look forward to seeing you and joining us then. So keep on rocking everyone and as usual take care and long live Rocking.