This is to let UK readers know that a programme in the Classic Albums series about Don McLean's American Pie will be available to watch on BBC iplayer until the 2nd of March.
Not being a rabid fan of McLean's work in general - as it might be, a McLeanatic - when the show was repeated a few weeks ago on BBC 4 I recorded it for later, expecting to dip in, grab what I could about the title song, an undoubted masterpiece, then dip out and delete.
Instead, however, I found myself watching to the end, going back to catch the bits I'd skimmed but then staying with it until the end again ... and even going to BBC iplayer after that to catch the last two minutes which my not-so-smart TV had failed to preserve. Not to mention watching the whole thing again uninterrupted a couple of days later with equal enjoyment.
For others bent on Pie the evolution of the song occupies the last twenty minutes or so of the programme, but don't be too ready to fast forward: there's a good chance you too may find the whole thing enthralling.
Not being predisposed to the artist and all his works may, I suspect, be an advantage for this kind of show. I don't know whether all the stories and resentments which emerged over the hour have been endlessly retold over the decades in interviews and concert patter, but coming to the information fresh this struck me as an exemplary programme of its type, with just the right amount of talking heads and portioning out of time to individuals.
As the artist, McLean got the biggest slice of the pie, of course, but producer Ed Freeman also featured prominently and there were other views about aspects of the process from musicians, the album's engineer, McLean's biographer and a rock critic - plus the singer-songwriter whose experience watching McLean perform gave rise to Killing Me Softly. (She had to watch her version slide down the charts after Roberta Flack covered it but admits that Flack made something new and different out of her folk song.)
Some lingering grievances were aired in the show by both McLean and Freeman, which made me wonder whether it might be a convention of the series that artist and producer are interviewed in separate locations; it would seem to be a wise precaution. But what really makes this particular show so beguiling, whatever unworthy glee may be derived from the spectacle of wounds festering more than four decades after the event, is the drip feed of concessions on both sides, testament to the quality of the work: neither man seems in any doubt that the recording is something of enduring importance, whatever the tensions. McLeans sums it up by saying:
A lot of artistry went into this album, and a bunch of arguing. But it turned out alright.
For example, Freeman whose approach to producing was shaped by hearing the new possibilities in the arrangements for Beatles' Rubber Soul, experimented with an elaborate arrangement for Vincent which McLean was adamant should only be allowed to creep in at the very end, like a breeze blowing through a window; now the producer can admit that the artist was right.
And when McLean listens to a discarded arrangement for another song on the original tapes he wonders why a "pretty" harpsichord wasn't used in the final mix - although you are never quite sure whether he would say the same if some radical reworking of the album ever became a serious proposition. McLean, used to making his own decisions from an early age, seems to be a man who knows that when he is right he is right.
We got some hints about how conflict emerged during the sessions. McLean took it as an affront, early on, that Freeman didn't see it as part of his job to offer the singer-songwriter unqualified praise all the time, citing the moment the producer suggested they get a professional guitarist in for a track: "You're lookin' at him," was Don's blunt rejoinder. Freeman now admits he could have been more sensitive - not through clenched teeth, exactly, but when he refers to "a delicate artist's ego"while doing so you suspect his contrition is a little more twinkle-eyed and less wholehearted than McLean would ideally wish.
Yet even if Don McLean comes over a man who isn't exactly lacking in the self-worth department, I should stress that it doesn't seem self-serving: you get that he is speaking on behalf of the work, and you feel his understandable pleasure and pride in revisiting it and in having this platform to state his case to an audience unaware of the circumstances of the LP's birth.
Among other things, we were able to see that American Pie (the album) was a product of its age: not only through the Beatles' influence in terms of Freeman's production but also because it was the beginning of the age of the singer/songwriter, with James Taylor (a former Beatles protege) popular. And Buddy Holly, to whom American Pie is dedicated, is another link between the Beatles and Don McLean.
When attention finally turned to American Pie (the song), there was plenty to learn - for one who has not exhaustively researched Don McLean's career, anyway. I won't go into all the details, although it's worth saying that its writer does not offer a comprehensive glossary, declaring reasonably enough that a song ought to explain itself.
But you still learn a lot about the circumstances around its creation. McLean had been wanting to write a song about where America was at that time, and had the opening. Two months later the delicious section beginning: "Did you write The Book of Love ..." "came tumblin' out", presumably having been fermenting in the McLean-brain all that time. I can recall hearing it on the radio, the instant sense of connection and delight, helped by the fact I had lately discovered Little Richard's Ready Teddy:
Now the flat top cats and the dungaree dolls
Are headin' for the gym to the sock hop ball
He doesn't say so, but all writers must wish it was always so easy. I seem to recall a passage in Arthur Miller's autobiography Timebends in which he says that Death of a Salesman - another investigation into the state of America, appropriately enough - came pouring out in a similar fashion.
If you do require more of a line-by-line explanation of the song, there are quite a few options out there. I haven't investigated many myself although I once bought a copy of Spencer Leigh's Brother Can You Spare a Rhyme, a study of many songwriters, which promised a full explanation of American Pie along the way. I eagerly opened it at the relevant page to find ... nothing. A perfect and absolute blank, like the Bellman's map.
No, it wasn't an intentional omission, like those books with titles like The Wit and Wisdom of Ronald Regan or My Memories of Scotland by Elvis Presley; I contacted Spencer, who kindly made good the gap. But if you want to find out more, I suggest you buy a copy of the book from his website here.
The major concession McLean made in the programme about Ed Freeman's contribution was to be found in the section about the title song. Listening, on the multitrack, to the pianist whom Freeman had brought in for the recording, McLean says something like: "The piano is all over it" - not as a complaint but a simple statement of fact. And when you do hear the piano isolated, providing its supportive commentary on the lyrics, there is no doubt that it is what really makes the pie sizzle, ensuring a great song was left to posterity as an equally great recording. And it was Freeman who found the player. For that, at least, he must surely have the artist's enternal gratitude.
And it's moving to hear the producer's greatest tribute to McLean, even though you could say it's an oblique one, as he is quoting from a letter: the widow of an American soldier killed in Vietnam wrote to say that when, already bereaved, she first heard the album she realised that she wasn't the only one who had lost something so she wanted to say thanks; Freeman is close to tears recalling this.
It's not only American Pie (the song) which directly concerns America's loss of innocence on the album, but I have to make an embarrassing admission here. I heard the LP in full around the time of its release, borrowed from a schoolfriend, but didn't make the connection between The Grave and Vietnam, unlikely as that may seem. Possibly I'm doing my teenage self a disservice, but to the best of my recollection the song came across as a kind of overheated Jacques Brel-inspired ditty about war in general, not rooted to any specific conflict. In my defence, the lyric does seems to take care not to be too specific, as though to give it the potency of a traditional ballad - and McLean does make reference to his Scottish ancestry in the documentary.
I recall enjoying the album when I first heard it but not being bowled over by anything once that last train had been taken for the coast. And I certainly remember finding Sister Fatima (a number not discussed on the programme) facile when I heard it for the first time, with that "powers/ ... flowers" rhyme, and the rest of the numbers, other than the title song and Vincent, were ... well, pleasant enough but nondescript in comparison to those two. It was admitted on the programme that it's an album with two very well known songs but most people would be hard pushed to name other tracks.
Listening to the album again, possibly for the first time since around 1972, I'd revise my general opinion considerably upwards, although I fear the overfamiliarity of Vincent may have permanently dulled that number for me. But one point McLean kept pushing during the programme was the importance of spaces in the music, silences between the notes, and that's more apparent to me now. Thank goodness he did fight to ensure it sounded the way he wanted.
I suppose one difficulty for my younger self was that so much of the album is about forms of loss I couldn't yet comprehend - and despite the verve of the title song it, too, is a farewell.
Classic Albums: American Pie is available here on BBC iplayer until Saturday the 2nd of March. According to McLean's twitter feed US readers can view it on Am*zon Pr*me.
At the time of posting, an eight minute excerpt from the start of the programme can be found on youtube here.
Spencer Leigh's website is here. He has written many books, which can be bought directly from him. His weekly show on BBC Radio Merseyside, On the Beat, can be found here.
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