The more important chords that ''American Pie'' struck were ones of tone and mood. Lines like ''And in the streets the children screamed/ The lovers cried and the poets dreamed'' reek of a college course on the poetry of rock. Reading the lyrics now, it's easy to wince at the heavy-handed, often overwrought imagery that invited such critical scorn at the time. on a candlestick''? (Simple - Mick Jagger.) And we argued over a line in the second verse: was McLean singing ''I saw you dancing in the gym'' or the more risque ''I saw you dancing chin to chin''? ''American Pie'' was as much a mystery as its singer, a folkie from New Rochelle, N.Y. The ''day the music died'' was easy: a reference to the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly.īut who was ''the jester on the sidelines in a cast''? (Bob Dylan.) Or the ''king'' from whom the jester stole his ''thorny crown''? (Elvis?) ''Jack Flash. Listening intently, transistor radios pressed to our preteen ears, my friends and I struggled to decipher the clues. For those born too late or too early to remember, ''American Pie'' was an allegory about the end of rock's innocence, tracing the music from 50's sock hops through the Rolling Stones' death-stained Altamont concert. Here was a pop phenomenon that grabbed the public's attention not so much with chords as with words. But its allure wasn't merely attributable to a musical hook. Like much 70's singer-songwriter rock, this behemoth was an earnest slice of unplugged folk-pop with a sing-along chorus.
Whenever it was played, everyone seemed to listen. ''American Pie'' took over the airwaves and the consciousness in a way that few records had done before or since. Those are the facts, but the legacy of ''American Pie'' is much greater and more lasting. It was McLean's first and biggest hit, it galloped on for eight and a half minutes, and it sold more than a million copies. TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO this week, Don McLean's ''American Pie'' ended a four-week run as the No.
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