I said, Don, it’s time for you to reveal’: 50 years later, the truth behind American Pie

The Guardian ^ | Jim Farber

[OneVike]

A long, long time ago – five decades to be exact – America was roiled by wrenching generational showdowns, massive street protests, and a blazing array of social justice movements. Now, half a century later, similar events and dynamics dominate the public conversation. So, perhaps, it’s poetic that precisely five decades have elapsed since a song that captured all that cultural turmoil, American Pie, became a smash hit. “It’s a song that spoke to its time,” said Spencer Proffer, who has produced a comprehensive new documentary about the song, titled The Day the Music Died. “But it’s just as applicable now.”

The event, which McLean dubbed “the day the music died”, shattered the pop world of its day and had a formative effect on the songwriter. On a frigid night in 1959, a small plane carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and JP Richardson (The Big Bopper) crashed in a corn field in Clear Lake, Iowa, minutes after take-off, killing everyone on board. The documentary begins with that event, traveling back to the Surf Ballroom, where the stars played their final show. The film-makers scored a coup by bringing on camera a man who saw that fateful concert, as well as the man who owns the aviation company that rented the doomed plane. More, it features a moving interview with Valens’ sister Connie, who we see thanking McLean for immortalizing her brother in song.

…………………..

Buddy Holly was his musical idol. If his death instigated the song’s words, a more personal loss altered the course of McLean’s life. When he was 15, his father died suddenly of a heart attack. “That had a profound effect on him,” Proffer said. “He has carried the death of his father in his soul.”

[OneVike]

Probably because of where he was raised. Depending upon the part of the country you grew up in some drop the “r” from the word. It was laziness in speaking things the way one could pronounce things, and eventually became normal.

I remember watching my wife’s grand mother, and my wife’s brother get into a huge fight on how to properly pronounce Almonds. Her grandmother grew up in the Midwest and they drop the “l”, Scott (my wife’s brother) being much younger and had grown up in California where they grew almonds, grew up pronouncing it using the “l”.

Shirley (the grandmother) went to her grave not liking her grandson, because he had to do his best to humiliate her that day for the way she pronounced almond.

To this day I cannot understand how some people can get so irate over the way people from other parts of the country talk, due to their upbringing.

I lived all over the country in my 66 years, but grew up in the Midwest, and while I used to talk like they do in the movie, “Fargo”, I lost my accent. Today, one would be hard pressed to figure out where I was raised.

[Tymesup]

Thanks, I did make a decision on one issue this morning, it’s a start.

[zeebee]

I’m right with you on the pronunciation of “almonds”- I leave off the L also but my wife doesn’t.
My other peeve is when people like GW Bush pronounce nuclear as “nuc-u-lar”

[aspasia]

The problem is, it's not true.

It is no irony that in this wondrous muddle Macbeth's hatred of life is a lament against time.

Macbeth:

She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Never forget, these are the word of a murderer. And now a bonus quote that shows how challenging it is to persuade one that their taste is bad.

Expressive individualism requires no moral argument or empirical justification for its claims, no matter how absurd or controverted they may be.