American Pie (2)

       Madonna's cover (done so only under the pressure from her label) is so horrifyingly awful that it physically hurts to sit through all of it (personal fun fact: hearing this song playing at a 'friends' house when I was nine was the first time I decided that covers sucked ass and the original artists really deserved the recognition for their gorgeous music [this cover is that bad]).

       For the purpose of lumping together artists, these lyric lines are scattered around and a bit out of order from their original; to see all of the lyrics before I get to the last "American Pie" post, head here. 

       The song goes on to reference a lot of The Beatles' influence in America over the decade and the 1960's in general. "While Lennon read a book on Marx, a quartet practiced in the park" alludes to the move from their pop sing-along hits to their more thought provoking lyrics of later albums and "while sergeants played a marching tune" makes a distinct connection to their Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album and leads to their dominance of record sales in the music scene with "the players tried to take the field, but the marching band refused to yield" (this line may reference The Beach Boys attempt to break in to the scene with Pet Sounds in 1966, but Sgt. Pepper, released in 1967, far outsold them).

       The song starts to move towards it's darker segment with the introduction of "we all got up to dance, but we never got the chance" meaning that you could no longer dance to good rock music because the mid sixties brought on experimental sounds and compositions that were not easy to dance along to. The song delves even further into 'darkening times' with "'Helter Skelter' in a summer swelter" which references Charles Manson, who massacred a family in the summer of 1968 and wrote The Beatles' song title "Helter Skelter" (The Beatles/The White Album) on the wall in blood, as he believed the song to have instructed him to commit those murders. 

       All the while, the verse is intermittently mentioning that the sixties were a changing of the simpler times to a growing unrest with the lines "the halftime air was sweet perfume" (which ties in to the idea of marijuana use and the drug induced lyrics/composition of The Byrds  "Eight Miles High" [referencing lines: "the birds flew off with the fallout shelter, eight miles high and falling fast, it landed on the foul grass"]) and "there we were all in one place, a generation lost in space, with no time left to start again" referencing Woodstock and a generation that had wasted the past decade of their lives on drugs.

       The song then moves onto a couple of verses that bash The Rolling Stones, leading to an anarchic sound in this segment of the song with lines "come on Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack Flash sat on a candlestick" referencing "Jumpin' Jack Flash" by The Rolling Stones and bringing us to "'cause fire is the devil's only friend" which alludes to the fact that the Stones sold out by writing music with titles like "Sympathy for the Devil" which showed their desperation; they needed to sell records to compete with the public's ongoing love for The Beatles' music so they pandered to the growing tension of those of the counterculture by writing something that sounded angry/anti-authority. Basically, The Beatles preached non-violence while The Stones are quoted as stating "war, children, it's just a shot away" and this move towards The Stones and away from The Beatles shows a growing unrest and the secure presence of the new counterculture (no longer the anti-war flower children of the early days [counterculture, for those who don't remember from history class, was basically the original term for 'hispter'; they wanted change, they wanted it now, and they wanted everyone to know that they were cool enough to have thought of this change before anyone else]).
"American Pie" Madonna

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American Pie (1)

       The Jonas Brothers' cover of the song makes me feel like I'm throwing up unicorns and happiness and everything sparkly and it's completely cringe-worthy; you need to watch this utter massacre of an American classic to better appreciate the fact that Don McLean is the only man who has ever, and will ever, pull off this song with as much aplomb, gratitude for the music from artists lost over the years, and general acceptance of the continual changing of times. 

       The song begins with the line "a long, long time ago", meaning that the song, released in 1971, is heading back to 1959. Though people only seem to discuss this song in terms of Buddy Holly, the only part of the song dedicated to his legacy (aside from a chorus throughout which states "this will be the day that I die", taken from his popular "That'll Be The Day") are the opening stanzas which state "but February made me shiver" (as McLean was a paper boy and first heard of the news while reading the headline on his morning route), "I can't remember if I cried, when I read about his widowed bride" (mentioning Holly's wife), and "something touched me deep inside, the day the music died" (which, as a fan of Holly's music, references McLean's intense grief over the death of Buddy Holly).

       The song quickly moves on to the beginning of the 1960's with the line "now do you believe in rock 'n roll? Can music save your mortal soul? And, can you teach me how to dance real slow?", taken from The Lovin's Spoonful's "Do You Believe In Magic?" (from the opening verse: "do you believe in magic...how the music can free her...and it'll free your soul, but it's like trying to tell a stranger 'bout rock and roll") and referencing the move from music which placed an importance on slow dancing with a single partner to the guitar solos, psychedelic influences, and the non-importance of specific partners which came about with the introduction of the sixties music scene. The line "man, I dig those rhythm 'n' blues" simply refers to McLean's appreciation for the sounds of early rock and roll that were brought about by artists like Buddy Holly.

       The song moves on to the mid-sixties through references to Bob Dylan. "Moss grows fat on a rolling stone, but that's not how it used to be" alludes to Bob Dylan's earlier, angrier sound and the change to his more recent and subdued sound which received poor reviews from critics and which only came about later, after Bob Dylan had returned from the break he took after his motorcycle accident (referenced with "the jester in the sidelines in a cast"). "While the king was looking down, the jester stole his thorny crown" refers to the young Dylan having taken Elvis Presley's spot as beloved artist of the masses. It's symbolic because it shows the masses shifting away from the simplicity of the 1950's music/lifestyle and moving towards the radical and politically charged song lyrics of the sixties. He throws in other references to Dylan like "in a coat he borrowed from James Dean" (cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan) and "a voice that came from you and me" (Dylan's roots were folk and his voice was the voice of a generation [or at least the voice of his fans]) that move the song forward until he begins to make references to The Beatles.

"American Pie" The Jonas Brothers

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Three Stars

       The anniversary of 'the day the music died' is this Monday and, rather than put up one incredibly long post that points out the ridiculous number of references made throughout Don McLean's "American Pie", I'm going to segment the song into it's pieces (late '50's-early '60's, mid '60's to late '60's, late '60's to early '70's) and give you some cover versions to listen to along the way (spoiler alert: none of them are any good [which is what makes them so much fun]).

       "Three Stars" by Eddie Cochran was the first song to commemorate the musician's deaths, so it only makes sense to start there and to include some background to the events that led up to the plane crash on February 3, 1959.

       Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper, and Buddy Holly were part of the three week Winter Dance Party tour across the Midwest (along with Dion and the Belmonts, Frankie Sardo, and The Crickets [Waylon Jennings, Carl Brunch, Tommy Allsup]). The groups had been travelling by bus, but the bus had already broken down during that first week of the three week tour, and Holly, Allsup, and Richardson (The Big Bopper), were to fly ahead to do the group's laundry and get some rest before the next show. The pilot agreed to take the three to their next destination, not mentioning the blizzard warnings which had come in to aircraft personnel and, shortly after take-off and only five miles from the airport, the plane crashed and the remains were not discovered until the next morning. The three musicians killed in the crash were the three most widely loved rock 'n roll musicians of the time and their deaths, timed with the end of the '50's (February 1959), seemed to be the end of that era of rock music; which is why McLean chose to refer to the anniversary of the crash as "the day the music died".

       At only seventeen years of age, Ritchie Valens made music history when his single, "La Bamba", became the first pop charting hit, in the US, which was sung entirely in Spanish, allowing him to successfully cross into the mainstream rock scene. Personally, I find Valens death to be particularly sad because he had a fear of flying while growing up (due to the memory of a plane crash that had injured several of his childhood friends) and had only overcome this fear in order to travel from place to place and to achieve his dream of becoming a musician and performer. He was not supposed to be on the plane that night (as he was the youngest and was expected to brave the bus ride), and he only got a seat on the three passenger plane by winning a last minute coin flip against Allsup in between sets during that night's performance. 

      The Big Bopper had been an army corporal and radio personality for multiple years before he added singer/songwriter to his resume and is most known for his interminably catchy single, "Chantilly Lace" (it will be in my head for a week now).

         Buddy Holly is one of my all time favorite artists and, if you're interested in his music, you should research him (though it takes more than a simple Wikipedia search to garner all the interesting stuff, so only bother if you're truly interested). In a time when it was impossible to get fame without a label to back you, Holly (actually Holley, but popularized as 'Holly') worked around label contracts to continue making the music he wanted to create. Two 'E! at the Golden Globes' style fun facts about Holly's death: 1) His wife, mentioned in the song as "the widowed bride", had a miscarriage shortly after Holly's death which was caused by the psychological trauma of finding out her husband had died from her morning newspaper; this led to the move towards not allowing media to release victim's names until after family member's had been notified. 2) Phil Everly, of The Everly Brothers, was one of the pallbearers at Holly's funeral, as The Crickets' Waylon Jennings (who had jokingly said "I hope your plane crashes" in response to Holly's "I hope your bus freezes up" the night of the crash) could not attend, due to the ongoing Winter Dance Party tour.

"Three Stars" Eddie Cochran

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Let Go

       SafetySuit's acoustic tracks are fantastic and this one is almost better than the original track. Listen to the acoustic version below or follow the link to listen to the album version of "Let Go". 

"Let Go" (Acoustic) SafetySuit

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