"In a sense, American Pie was a very despairing song. In another, though, it was very hopeful. Pete Seeger told me he saw it as a song in which people were saying something. They'd been fooled, they'd been hurt, and it wasn't going to happen again. That's a good way to look at it—a hopeful way."
As American culture was transformed through the decade of the 1960s, the popular entertainment of the day registered these changes as well. But more than any other idiom, American Pie found in it a way to describe the dislocating sense of loss and change the nation was feeling during the sixties.
"That song didn't just happen," said Don. "It grew out of my experiences. American Pie was part of my process of self-awakening; a mystical trip into my past."
Don called his song a complicated parable, open to different interpretations. "People ask me if I left the lyrics open to ambiguity. Of course I did. I wanted to make a whole series of complex statements. The lyrics had to do with the state of society at the time."
In the late sixties and early seventies, Don was obsessed with what he called "the death of America" —the loss of many things he believed in while growing up. " He watched several staples of what he viewed as American culture fade away. The change of American politics, music, and youth inspired the song, on top of sorrow radiated from Bob Holley's death.
In identifying its frequently overlooked theme of America’s lost innocence, the meaning of American Pie becomes more evident, as its words of an altering country are better placed in their historical and cultural context. Bob Mclean wrote the song from his perspective, capturing America's changes as an average citizen. It's strong lyrics personify the nation, bringing metaphors to many of the major problems facing America. But it is also this ambiguity that has generated so much debate, and that has kept American Pie on the pop culture map these many years.
(Image-http://mediaculturefear.blogspot.com/2012/02/analysis-of-night-of-living-dead.html)
"That song didn't just happen," said Don. "It grew out of my experiences. American Pie was part of my process of self-awakening; a mystical trip into my past."
Don called his song a complicated parable, open to different interpretations. "People ask me if I left the lyrics open to ambiguity. Of course I did. I wanted to make a whole series of complex statements. The lyrics had to do with the state of society at the time."
In the late sixties and early seventies, Don was obsessed with what he called "the death of America" —the loss of many things he believed in while growing up. " He watched several staples of what he viewed as American culture fade away. The change of American politics, music, and youth inspired the song, on top of sorrow radiated from Bob Holley's death.
In identifying its frequently overlooked theme of America’s lost innocence, the meaning of American Pie becomes more evident, as its words of an altering country are better placed in their historical and cultural context. Bob Mclean wrote the song from his perspective, capturing America's changes as an average citizen. It's strong lyrics personify the nation, bringing metaphors to many of the major problems facing America. But it is also this ambiguity that has generated so much debate, and that has kept American Pie on the pop culture map these many years.
(Image-http://mediaculturefear.blogspot.com/2012/02/analysis-of-night-of-living-dead.html)