American Pie (song): How is Celebrity Culture Personal?

On February 3rd, 1959, the biggest name in rock ‘n’ roll went down in a plane crash with two other stars and an inexperienced pilot. Although all four died, it was Buddy Holly’s face that made it onto the front pages, onto the television news reports, and his death that is the most remembered, with aspects of it passing into folklore – folk song. Don McLean was 13 years old at the time of the crash, a self-described ‘lonely teenage bronckin’ buck’, so deeply affected by the death that over a decade later, in 1971, he released the song that would define the world’s perception of this event, and others. This was ‘the day the music died’, and the song was ‘American Pie’.

I am not so interested in the literal McLean so much as the historical artefact that he created, because, although I do think that the facts of McLean’s life can help us understand the song further, as with any creative work, the perspective is varied and, although at times the line between McLean and his voice is blurred and appears to be the same person, this would be a simplistic reading of the song.

To begin – I discuss the presence of McLean himself in the song. I intend to pull the most obvious references from the song and discuss those, before turning to analyse the more contested to explore the most complex ideas in the song. This reflects what I think McLean’s writing process was: the events that most moved him and the figures who directly represented somebody fell into place first, with the more complex images that potentially represent a number of things being worked into the song as he went on. I do not believe that there is one single interpretation of ‘American Pie’, and so do not intend this as an exhaustive exploration.

Who Is the Poetic Voice?

The song ‘American Pie’ is widely perceived as being written in Don McLean’s voice. The artist is singing about a decade-long span of history for which he was present, and he gives an account clearly influenced by his own experiences and emotions. This does not mean, however, that the speaker of the song is McLean himself, and in fact makes it harder for us to unravel where McLean is letting himself speak and where he puts forth a persona in his writing. Our biggest clue that the song’s voice and McLean diverge is Altamont. It is clearly discussed after the fourth chorus, and the speaker appears to have been present at the event: “as I watched him on the stage / my hands were clenched in fists of rage”. McLean himself was not at Altamont, so the first-person perspective of the event should automatically be read as the voice of a character rather than the writer himself. Alongside this simple fact, the anger that McLean writes indicate, to me, a shifting perspective: to go from an internal rage to “break[ing] that satan’s spell” show that he is rapidly shifting between the Altamont-attendee-persona and benefit-of-hindsight-persona without explicitly signalling it to his listener. McLean might even be writing as the hell’s angel who killed the black Stones fan Meredith Hunter at the event, exploring all perspectives of the generation-defining event within the song.

The clues that McLean is not the sole voice are peppered throughout ‘American Pie’. On the one hand, we have a seemingly literal passage through what could be McLean’s adolescence and young adulthood, but, simultaneously it is not possible to view all of the events in the song as happening to the same person. Accepting that McLean was the ‘broncking buck’ shifts the entire timescale of the song because, at 12 (the age he was when ‘The Book of Love’ and ‘A White Sport Coat and a Pink Carnation’ were released), he could not have been driving a pickup truck. The voice of ‘American Pie’ appears to be a young adult throughout the song, and whilst this may be simply because this is the stage of life McLean was at whilst writing and therefore the lens he was currently viewing these events through, it imbues the song with the qualities of a saga and allows the listener to experience this period of history as though they themselves were part of the “generation lost in space”. In this way, McLean positions himself and his audience not as mere observers of celebrity, but as people affected by the major cultural events he is writing about.

The Jester

McLean’s lyrics are, in places, clear to anybody with even a little knowledge:

“helter skelter in the summer swelter” couldn’t be anything other than the Manson killings, and referencing ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’, ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ and the hell’s angels together makes it very clear that McLean is thinking of Altamont. But even when his intentions are clear, McLean gives his listener a nuanced take that requires some interpretation – as is the case with ‘the jester’.

It is widely accepted that ‘the jester’ of American Pie is Dylan. That he stole rock n roll from ‘the king’ Elvis Presley, that “the coat he borrowed from James Dean” is what he wore on the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, and that his being “on the sidelines in a cast” refers to the motorcycle accident Dylan had in 1966 and his subsequent absence from public life until the end of the decade. With these images, McLean paints a clear, if obfuscated, picture of Dylan, but the power of the image is why he chooses it.

What are the connotations of a jester? An entertainer, a fool, a fraud. Perhaps, if you know your Shakespeare, you might see the jester as a confidante, a person whose public-facing persona belies their wisdom. One could read Bob Dylan as any and all of these, and McLean does not explicitly say any of them. McLean uses biblical references in his story of Dylan, suggesting that “the jester stole [the] thorny crown”, and this too can be read in a number of ways – that rock n roll belongs with Elvis and Dylan belongs with folk; that Dylan was a pretender to rock n roll; that when he went electric Dylan martyred himself, caused himself pain, and was not understood. The power of how McLean writes about Dylan is a microcosm of how the whole of ‘American Pie’ is powerful: he brings in images that remind the listener of something, but can be interpreted in many ways. The “coat he borrowed from James Dean” – why bring Dean into it? Is McLean painting Dylan as a ‘rebel without a cause’? As a heartthrob? As a poseur, too aware of his own image? The listener brings their own preconceived ideas to the song, but also takes on McLean’s presentation of this character and develops a nuanced image of the jester in the narrative of the song.

The jester both is and isn’t Dylan. He is an image that represents Dylan, but he is a metaphor that doesn’t necessarily mean that Dylan is a jester, is like James Dean, or is even definitively Dylan at all. The jester shows the power of McLean’s allegorical writing for the listener whilst contributing to the easily unravelled, but not easily understood, mystery of the song as a whole.

Miss American Pie

Miss American Pie joins the song at the moment it becomes a rip-roaring, rock & roll song. Her entry into the song is contradictory: upbeat, yet lyrically McLean waves “bye bye” to her. This in itself articulates complex emotions: the image of Miss American Pie is often taken to represent the 50s, or, more generically, the past, in much the same way as “Miss Atomic Bomb” does to The Killers. If we accept that reading, we see that although McLean is sad to see the past go, he is also carried by the momentum into the future, and he tells us through tempo and style that, although the lyrics suggest that he is worried, this is not necessarily bad.

McLean himself is coy about this image. When asked what ‘American Pie’ means, he answered that he “never has to work again”. This wry response is perhaps an indicator that the image articulates complex feelings, which McLean feels speaks more eloquently than an explanation could. Alongside this is the fact that McLean chose to title the song after this one esoteric lyric, when so many of the song’s lyrics would have made an effective title, and so ‘Miss American Pie’ deserves a closer look. McLean choosing to title the song ‘American Pie’ shows us that the image is central to the theme of the song. This supports the traditional reading, that ‘Miss American Pie’ is the past, in a song which discusses feelings about the past. This, however, does not allow that the song might have been titled with any number of lyrics which articulate this more clearly. What does this particular image contain that other key lyrics of the song do not?

‘Miss American Pie’ could be an avatar for McLean himself: a beauty queen is considered shallow, and can only work for a short period of time. As a folk singer in a world more focussed on rock ‘n’ roll or, increasingly, soul and pop music, McLean was likely considered a relic by his record company and the industry more widely. McLean’s subconscious may have been searching for an analogue for a folk musician in a 70s world, and found that remembering a 1950s beauty queen created the same image in his mind as he felt that his record label or audience may have had of him. It is unclear if McLean is speaking to ‘Miss American Pie’ directly; this may be because his messages to her were addressed to a mirror. McLean uses ambiguous imagery to represent any number of musicians in the song – why would his own self simply be that “lonely teenag[er]” – especially as the passage of time in the song is clear.

In addition, ‘Miss American Pie’ is not merely a beauty queen, she represents American values through being ‘as American as apple pie’. We could read her, therefore, as representative of American society, and her passage through the song as the passage of America as these events unfold. If we are choosing to see her as an aspect of McLean himself, however, then this focus on Americana could be representative of music: McLean belongs to the American folk tradition, and at the point he wrote the song it was 6 years since America’s most prominent folk musician, Bob Dylan, controversially went electric. McLean might have been waving goodbye to the café folk culture that inspired him, a reading which is supported by the sudden tempo shift of the chorus and the references to music and musical figures throughout the song.

The truth of ‘Miss American Pie’ probably lies in between these readings, and the power of the song is that the image can be interpreted all these ways and more, or simply enjoyed on the surface level as a beauty queen. McLean offers his listener a world to interpret, but allows them not to and instead enjoy a pop song if they choose.

Vincent and Parasocial Relationships

When we read the song as a chapter in the album ‘American Pie’ – albeit one which blazes above the rest of the collection – we can understand McLean’s poetic voice better and use that to develop a deeper understanding of the song. The rest of the album is more clearly folk-influenced, with folk standard ‘Waters of Babylon’ closing the record and the explicitly political ‘Everybody Loves Me, Baby’ as the only other song in the pop/rock genre. ‘Everybody…’ is a clear example of McLean writing as a persona, but the other single from the album, ‘Vincent’, is perhaps the most elucidating in regards to McLean’s relationship with ‘American Pie’.

Directly addressed to the painter Vincent van Gough, on the track McLean is speaking from a 20th century perspective about both Vincent’s life (“how you suffered for your sanity”) and art (“colours on the snowy linen land”). From this, we can see that McLean is exploring his own emotions through the art he is engaging with, and that he considers the art and the artist to be intertwined and their effect on him to be tantamount to an invitation to engage. By addressing Vincent directly throughout the song, as though they are friends, McLean is showing us a parasocial relationship – that is, a one-sided relationship with a celebrity, much more common in the internet age than in 1971.

McLean shows in both ‘Vincent’ and ‘American Pie’ that he is one of the earliest adopters of ‘celebrity culture’, and his writing about how both the art and identity of a public figure affected him is part of the power of both songs. At a time when people’s relationship with media figures was burgeoning into the behemoth ‘celebrity culture’ we have today, McLean showed empathy for his hero’s “widowed bride” and suggested that “the music wouldn’t play” if the artist was removed from the equation. His writing ‘American Pie’ was among the first evidence that people connect to celebrities as humans, as friends, and in itself has become something listeners connect to and understand, as well as a powerful artefact for nostalgia.

Conclusion

Ultimately, much of the power of American Pie is, like all poetry, in the multiple possible interpretations. It’s probable that McLean himself didn’t have just one person in mind for each character, because that isn’t how writing works: it’s an oblique process which accesses feelings as much as facts. Don McLean’s writing is so modern because it details early encounters with celebrity culture and developing parasocial relationships alongside traditional poetic techniques and musical prowess.

Buddy Holly was just 22 years old when he died. He’d be 85 years old in 2021, and it’s entirely possible he may have still been alive – Betty White is older than he was. His pregnant wife miscarried hearing the news, which came from sensationalist media, and many of those close to him suffered survivor’s guilt. ‘American Pie’ is evidence of a parasocial relationship that anticipates the importance of celebrity culture in the 20th century. By defining his own life experiences in terms of ones shared en masse, McLean has given his audience something to latch on to and created something greater than himself. ‘American Pie’ is his most popular song by a wide margin, a singalong that has become an icon. This song has lived more than twice the life span of Holly himself, and is more well known than even Holly’s most famous songs. In analysing this one work we can understand one dominant perspective from the 20th century, but we can also see the human side of major events and relate, as humans, to the loss of figures whose art looms large in our life.

To-Do:

· Intro for reading group

· Respond to fb messages

· Organise box of gym kit

Today’s Culture:

· Of course Buddy Holly – this is probably my favourite song of his, but do yourself a favour and find a playlist if you don’t already know his work

· Anybody who is missing the context of the 1960s should listen to this podcast (yes I will shill for Karina Longworth until I die) and this song for more info

· This underrated song from the American Pie album

The Original, Cut Paragraph 2 Which I’d Like To Share Because I Don’t Like Billy Joel, Even If It’s Irrelevant To This

Like Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’, McLean’s song ‘American Pie’ rattles through 20th century history for its listener, but unlike Joel’s efforts at imitation, McLean’s oblique lyrics and editorial voice have given the song a mystique. Despite being widely considered a better song (including by the Recording Industry Association of America and Joel himself, who says that his has “no melody”), ‘American Pie’ is not referenced in pop culture as the same kind of catalogue of events as ‘… Fire’, despite playing the same function, and I refuse to believe it’s just age: ‘American Pie’ is a cultural touchstone to the extent of defining a Madonna era and being the title of a series of genre-defining crass movies. People know the words to ‘American Pie’ better than they know ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’, and many of the events in both mean just as much (or, just as little) to the casual listener – is the execution of the Rosenbergs more widely known than Altamont? Not unless you’re a Sylvia Plath fan. In both songs you have to know what the references are to in order to understand the lyrics. So why is ‘American Pie’ a singalong which feels like it has meaning to the listener and ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ a meme? I always turn to poetic techniques to answer.

I could write a literal dissertation on this song so please let me know if you want to hear more.