American Pie (1971)

As usual, I was contemplating what I was going to write today and this song came on my iPod. Timing, eh? It is THE seminal song of America’s disintegration, for sure. Many people have tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to interpret Don McLean’s allusions. Here’s an extended entry from Wikipedia:

Some commentators have identified the song as outlining the darkening of cultural mood, as over time the cultural vanguard passed from Pete Seeger and Joan Baez (the “King and Queen” of folk music), then from Elvis Presley (known as “the King” of Rock and Roll), to Bob Dylan (“the Jester”) who wore a jacket similar to that worn by cultural icon James Dean (“in a coat he borrowed from James Dean”), was known as “the voice of his generation” (“a voice that came from you and me”), and whose motorcycle accident (“in a cast”) left him in reclusion for many years, recording in studios rather than touring (“on the sidelines”)), to the Beatles (John Lennon, punned with Vladimir Lenin; though it is to be noted that McLean has stated “the Quartet” is not a reference to the Beatles) to the Byrds (who wrote one of the first psychedelic rock songs, “Eight Miles High”, and then “fell fast” – the song was banned, and shortly after, the group declined as it lost members, changed genres, and alienated fans), to the Rolling Stones (who released Their Satanic Majesties Request and the singles “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “Sympathy for the Devil” (“Jack Flash”, “Satan”, “The Devil”), and used the Hells Angels – “Angels born in Hell” – as Altamont event security, with fatal consequences), and to Janis Joplin (the “girl who sang the blues” but just “turned away” – she died of a heroin overdose the following year).

It has also been speculated that the song contains numerous references to post-World War II American political events, such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy (known casually as “Jack”), First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy (“his widowed bride”) and subsequent killing of his assassin (whose courtroom trial obviously ended as a result [“adjourned”]), the Cuban Missile Crisis (“Jack be nimble, Jack be quick”), the murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, and elements of culture such as sock hops (“kicking off shoes” to dance, preventing damage to the varnished floor), cruising with a pickup truck, the rise of the political protest song (“a voice that came from you and me”), drugs and the counterculture, the Manson Family and the Tate–LaBianca murders in the “summer swelter” of 1969 (the Beatles’ song “Helter Skelter”) and much more.

Apparent allusions to notable 50s songs include Don Cornell’s The Bible Tells Me So (“If the Bible tells you so?”), Marty Robbins’s A White Sport Coat, the lonely teenager (“With a pink carnation”) mirroring Robbins’s narrator who is rejected in favor of another man for the prom, and The Monotones’ The Book of Love (“Did you write the book of love”).

Some of those connections were obvious, others, not so much. Here’s McLean’s version of events:

Needless to say, America has gotten quite worse since then.