Holly, Bopper, Valens? Hank Williams, Elvis, Holly? JFK, RFK, ML King? The literal tripartite deity? As for the coast, could be the departure of the music biz for California. The three men I admire most/ The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost/ They caught the last train for the coast: Major mystery. I met a girl who sang the blues/ And I asked her for some happy news/ But she just smiled and turned away: Janis Joplin OD’d October 4, 1970. While sergeants played a marching tune: The Beatles’ “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”Īnd 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: Mick Jagger, Altamont. With the Jester on the sidelines in a cast: On JDylan had a motorcycle accident that kept him laid up for nine months. Elvis and Connie Francis (or Little Richard)? John and Jackie Kennedy? Or Queen Elizabeth and consort, for whom Dylan apparently did play once? Dean’s coat is the famous red windbreaker he wore in Rebel Without a Cause Dylan wore a similar one on “The Freewheeling Bob Dylan” album cover. The Jester sang for the King and Queen in a coat he borrowed from James Dean: ID of K and Q obscure. Them good ole boys were … singing “This’ll be the day that I die”: Holly’s hit “That’ll Be the Day” had a similar line. (I love the Internet.) No room to reprint all the lyrics, which you probably haven’t been able to forget anyway, but herewith the high points:įebruary made me shiver: Holly’s plane crashed February 3, 1959. For the rest we turn to the song’s legion of freelance interpreters, whose thoughts were most recently compiled by Rich Kulawiec into a file that I plucked from the Internet. Not much to go on, but at least it rules out the Christ imagery. And McLean goes on, painting his picture,” blah blah, segue to record. The Stones and the flames in the sky refer to the concert at Altamont, California. The court jester he refers to is Bob Dylan. The most important one is the death of rockabilly singer Buddy Holly in 1959 for McLean, that’s when the music died. But he explained some of the specific references that he makes. Straight Dope musicologist Stefan Daystrom taped the following intro from Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 radio show circa January 1972: “A few days ago we phoned Don McLean for a little help in interpreting his great hit ‘American Pie.’ He was pretty reluctant to give us a straight interpretation of his work he’d rather let it speak for itself. Don McLean has never issued an “answer key” for “American Pie,” undoubtedly on the theory that as long as you can keep ’em guessing, your legend will never die. If you can’t clarify the confused, certainly the pinnacle of literary achievement in my mind, history (e.g., the towering rep of James Joyce) instructs us that your next best bet is to obfuscate the obvious. It takes years and years of being out there on the end of the diving board.” Unfortunately for Caffè Lena or Saratoga Springs – neither of those places can lay claim to anything with regard to ‘American Pie.Now, now, Scott. “We need a lot of those places around the country for people to learn how to perform. Many Saratoga residents claim the song was written and performed at Caffe Lena. She was always out to help me and everybody else for that matter," McLean said. "Lena was my good friend and she was wonderful to me in the '60s when I had no money. He said that of all the places he played in those formative years, Caffè Lena was by far his favorite place, and Lena was the best club owner that he ever worked for. McLean spent a great deal of time hanging out at Caffè Lena in the 1960s and 1970s, absorbing the variety of musical styles he heard there. McLean was one of Caffè Lena's own prodigies, performing regularly at the little second-floor coffeehouse on Phila Street. Shortly after graduating from Iona College in 1968, the singer-songwriter turned down a scholarship to Columbia University Graduate School in favor of becoming resident singer at Caffe Lena in Saratoga, New York. What is fact no one will ever know for sure.ĭon Mclean performing at Caffè Lena in the sixties. Below you will read differing opinions and tales related to that. There is much debate and folklore surrounding both how and where this song was written and what it was about. 1 position, and carving out a place in pop music and Saratoga Springs legacy. Six weeks later, "American Pie" ascended to the top spot in the nation, spending the next month at the No.
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