ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, February 15, 1997 TAG: 9702190045
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 12 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: DAVID BROWNE N.Y. TIMES NEWS SERVICE
Twenty-five years ago this month, Don McLean's ``American Pie'' ended a four-week run as the No. 1 song in the country. It was McLean's first and biggest hit, it galloped on for eight and a half minutes, and it sold more than a million copies.
Those are the facts, but the legacy of ``American Pie'' is much greater and more lasting. ``American Pie'' took over the airwaves and the consciousness in a way that few records had done before or since.
Whenever it was played, everyone seemed to listen. Like much '70s singer-songwriter rock, this behemoth was an earnest slice of unplugged folk-pop with a sing-along chorus. But its allure wasn't merely attributable to a musical hook. Here was a pop phenomenon that grabbed the public's attention not so much with chords as with words.
Those words were plentiful. For those born too late or too early to remember, ``American Pie'' was an allegory about the end of rock's innocence, tracing the music from '50s sock hops through the Rolling Stones' death-stained Altamont concert. At the time, it wasn't so obvious.
Listening intently, transistor radios pressed to our preteen ears, my friends and I struggled to decipher the clues. The ``day the music died'' was easy: a reference to the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly.
But who was ``the jester on the sidelines in a cast''? (Bob Dylan.) Or the ``king'' from whom the jester stole his ``thorny crown''? (Elvis?) ``Jack Flash on a candlestick''? (Simple - Mick Jagger.) And we argued over a line in the second verse: was McLean singing ``I saw you dancing in the gym'' or the more risque ``I saw you dancing chin to chin''? ``American Pie'' was as much a mystery as its singer, a folkie from New Rochelle, N.Y.
Reading the lyrics now, it's easy to wince at the heavy-handed, often overwrought imagery that invited such critical scorn at the time. Lines like ``And in the streets the children screamed/The lovers cried and the poets dreamed'' reek of a college course on the poetry of rock. The more important chords that ``American Pie'' struck were ones of tone and mood.
In mourning the end of rock's Brylcreem era and its first counterculture, ``American Pie'' set the tone for the remainder of the '70s: it implied that the best of rock and the best of times were over. By mythologizing an era that had just ended, it also presaged the instant nostalgia of '90s pop culture, and it was the first song to ask if rock was dead - a question that continues to be mulled, most recently with the suicide of Kurt Cobain.
For McLean, the impact of ``American Pie'' was so overwhelming that for a time he refused to play the song in concert. On the stark black-and-white cover of his next album, he is seen hunched over, staring grimly; its songs bemoaned his fame, making him the Eddie Vedder of his day.
Although he had a few minor hits after ``American Pie,'' McLean's other lasting contribution is inspiring the songwriters Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox to write ``Killing Me Softly With His Song'' (popularized in 1973 by Roberta Flack and again last year by the Fugees) about McLean's live performances.
Given the current talk about the death of grunge and hardcore rap, perhaps the time is right for a faithful, yet updated, remake of ``American Pie'' - by, say, the Fugees?
LENGTH: Medium: 62 linesby CNB