Don McLean still carries a torch for the Americana of yesteryear.
His own sizable contribution to the American soundtrack, 1971's "American Pie," became a designated National Recording Registry entry by the Library of Congress in 2016 for being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant." In it, he famously wove an allegorical tale of the country's loss of innocence, centered around "the day the music died," i.e., the real-life plane crash that killed pioneering American rock stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson in 1959.
And now, more than five decades later, he's eulogizing the "American Boys" who "invented rock and roll" on his new album of the same name.
"'American Boys' is just a fun song, a malt shop song," McLean tells Music Times of the new tune, which honors Fats Domino, Bill Haley, Hank Williams, and Johnny Cash, among many others. "What I liked was [the line] 'invented rock and roll,' because that gives me a chance to point out briefly to people that America is the source of so much creativity."
"It's kind of like the song the Beach Boys wrote about the guys that gave us rock and roll, 'Do You Remember?'" he says, referring to the 1964 song that Brian Wilson and Mike Love wrote as a tribute to many of the same greats that McLean admires and namechecks, such as Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Elvis Presley. "We invented the blues and invented rock and roll. We invented pop. We didn't invent popular music, but we dominated it."
McLean gives credit to the British for folk music and for their outsized contribution to rock and roll ("It's an inspiration to see Mick Jagger running around at 80 years old," McLean says. "He refuses to pay any heed to anything. He's just going to do what he wants to do. I love that about him."), but his deep love for the roots of American music is evident.
"The church, the Black and white mix of the south and the farmland and everything, that's what's created the blues and jazz and rock and roll," he says. "America needs to brag more about the great things that we do and have done."
Of course, McLean has also been around long enough to see not just the huge shift in American music, but in its many forms of protest and political anthems. He names singer-songwriter Josh White, a prominent blues artist who became an outspoken civil rights activist, as one of his heroes.
"In 1941, he sang a song called 'Uncle Sam Says,' which was about discrimination in the military," McLean says before reciting some of White's scathingly direct lyrics: "Airplanes flying across the land and sea / everybody flying them but a Negro like me / because Uncle Sam says your place is on the ground. / When I fly my airplane, I don't want no Negro around."
"He sang it directly to President Roosevelt," McLean says. As a result of that song and White and Roosevelt's intimate conversations regarding race, FDR began the process of desegregating the United States defense industry (though it was his successor, Harry Truman, who ultimately desegregated the armed forces by executive order). "He was very, very courageous."
In this vein of speaking out for his fellow man, McLean wrote "The Ballad of George Floyd," the second single off of American Boys, which he released last week to coincide with the fourth anniversary of Floyd's 2020 death at the hands of Minneapolis police. The event sparked nationwide protests, and hearing Floyd cry out for his mother was a moment McLean couldn't get out of his mind.
"I'm not a happy songwriter," McLean says. "I write things that come out, like George Floyd. It's a sad story, and I said, 'I have to write this about this. It must do this.'"
He says he wants people to see the humanity in Floyd, and for Americans as a whole to be less polarized.
"My message is that we're all Americans, and what happens to a guy you don't like -- just assume it's going to happen to a guy you do like and might happen to you," he says. "So at least be empathetic about it. Hopefully this song will sow some empathy. That's all I'm looking for."
McLean knows his "good old days" of driving Chevys to levees and slow-dancing in the gym are a long distance point of nostalgia now, and at 78, he's starting to see his generation of artists slip away.
"What are we going to do without these people?" he asks forlornly. "It's like when fall comes and all the leaves turn brown, and then the winds of winter come and blow 'em away."
In this analogy, everyone mentioned in "American Boys" is a leaf that has blown off of this tree of life -- Holly, Haley, Berry, etc. The ones who are left are the only ones who might still remember where they were on that all-important day when the music died.
"There are a few little leaves that still hang onto the tree," McLean says. "That's Mick. And [Bob] Dylan. All the other leaves are gone. When the last leaves are gone, what are we going to do? I don't know."
© 2024 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
