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McLean's "American Pie" |
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A
long long time ago[i] Refrain: Did
you write the Book of Love {Refrain} Now
for ten years we've been on our own[x] {Refrain} Helter
Skelter in a summer swelter[xviii] {Refrain}
Oh,
and there we were all in one place[xxiii] {Refrain}
I
met a girl who sang the blues {Refrain} They
were singing bye-bye, Miss American Pie |
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[i] The plane crash occurred on February 3, 1959—about ten years before McLean wrote the song [ii] At the time McLean was 13, and a paperboy in New York [iii] Buddy Holly’s marriage to Maria Elena Santiago, a Puerto Rican woman 6 ½ months earlier was kept from the public because of the race difference and general public skepticism of rock marriages, especially after Jerry Lee Lewis married his 14-year old cousin. Maria Elena was pregnant with his baby, but suffered a miscarriage shortly after the plane crash. [iv] With the death of Buddy Holly, Richie Valenz, and The Big Bopper, the day was referred to as the day the music died; one of Holly’s hits was “That’ll be the Day” with the line “That’ll be the day that I die.” [v] American Pie was the name of the plane [vi] 1955: Don Cornell’s song “The Bible Tells Me So”; 1958: The Monotones’ song “The Book of Love” [vii] Dancing partners in the 1950s were not readily exchanged, for slow dancing was an expression of love and commitment [viii] Reference to the sock hops of the 1950s [ix] Marty Robbins’ 1957 hit “A White Sport Coat (And a Pink Carnation)”; pickup trucks have been a symbol of sexual independence [x] “American Pie” was written about ten years after the fatal plane crash [xi] Three references to the rolling stone: Bob Dylan’s first major hit “Like a Rolling Stone”, the aphorism “A rolling stone gathers no moss, and the group The Rolling Stones [xii] The Jester is Bob Dylan, the King and Queen have a few possibilities, but the most likely one is Elvis as the king and Little Richard as the Queen [xiii] On the cover of Bob Dylan’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” he is wearing a red windbreaker, which looks a lot like the one James Dean wore in Rebel Without a Cause. [xiv] Elvis was forced into military service and Dylan took over, but the line also reminds us of Elvis’ religious upbringings [xv] Although Dylan hoped to become as famous as Elvis, there is no true king of rock during the early 1960s [xvi] A pun of John Lennon to Vladimir Lenin and their beliefs in communism [xvii] The Beatles practiced in Europe with hits but it was just practice because America was the arena, and where they would change rock music forever [xviii] The Beatles’ “Helter Skelter” from their White album, apparently inspired Charles Manson to lead his followers into the Tate-LaBianca murders [xix] The Byrds’ “Eight Miles High” was on their 1966 album Fifth Dimension, and was one of the first to be widely banned because of its supposed drug-oriented lyrics. The next line discusses the busting of one of the Byrds for possession of marijuana [xx] The players are the Rolling Stones waiting for an opening which didn’t really happen until the Beatles broke up [xxi] On July 29, 1966 Dylan crashed his motorcycle and spent nine months in seclusion recuperating from the accident [xxii] The Beatles’ 1966 Candlestick Park concert lasted only 35 minutes [xxiii] Woodstock, 1969, where the “Lost Generation” gathered, and they were all high [xxiv] Jack is Mick Jagger, and the following lines refer to the concert at the Altamont Speedway in 1968. During their song “Sympathy for the Devil,” the security—Hell’s Angels—beat and stabbed a young man named Meredith Hunter (the sacrifice) to death [xxv] Janis Joplin, as the girl, died of an accidental heroin overdose on October 4, 1970 [xxvi] The “Flower Children” were beaten by police and National Guard troops, most likely during the People’s Park riots in Berkeley in 1969 and 1970. They were also lovers and poets. The trend shifted towards psychedelic music in the late 1960s also [xxvii] Most likely Holly, The Big Bopper, and Valens, but could also be Hank Williams, Presley, and Holly, OR JFK, Martin Luther King, and RFK, OR simply the Catholic aspects of the deity. [xxviii] Another way to say they have died (in western culture “went west” was a synonym for dying). |
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