McLean conveys the feeling he had as a paperboy and seeing the news on the headlines. McLean’s sentimental disillusionment aside, it was an objectively bad day for rock/pop music now that these three were gone, who was left? Elvis had been drafted, Chuck Berry was in hot water over a prostitute, and Little Richard had changed his tune, getting away from rock music. On February 3, 1959, a plane crash took the lives of Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Richie Valenz. “I still remember this light going off in my head as I was sitting up in my little room writing my songs and thinking about Buddy Holly and just how sad that was and how much I loved that guy, and how much I loved his music and how much I felt for him… I started to write this ‘A long, long time ago’ about how it felt when I was a paperboy and I opened up these papers… and this whole fantasy came out and the song was written” In an interview with BBC Radio 2 (November 4th, 1993) he commented: I can still remember how that music used to make me smileĭon McLean reflects back on the days of innocence. But let’s take a stab at it line by line…
The song has been endlessly analyzed it’s intentionally ambiguous and the meanings are still up for debate. Don McLean captured this loss of innocence perfectly in “American Pie”.
From sock hops to Manson, Hell’s Angels and the Stones…. You can’t help but look at those intervening years with astonishment at how times had changed. Ten years after the plane crash which killed Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Richie Valens, the Rolling Stones performed at the Altamont Speedway.
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