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All Quotes by author - Don McLean
" All roads lead to 'American Pie.' 'As American as apple pie' was the saying. It was some kind of a big American song that I wanted to write, which would be a conclusion for my show and bring all the songs home, which it still does. I can go anywhere I want with American music and come home to that. And it all makes sense. "
Roads
Apple
Home
" American Pie speaks to the loss that we feel. That's why that song has found the niche that it has. "
Song
American
Pie
" Basically, in 'American Pie,' things are heading in the wrong direction. It is becoming less ideal, less idyllic. I don't know whether you consider that wrong or right, but it is a morality song in a sense. "
Direction
You
American
" Before the Beatles, America was musically a very conservative country. You can see film footage of people at a baseball game, they all had hats and ties on, and the women were dressed up like they were going to church. That was the America that I started getting interested in musically. "
Baseball
Game
Women
" Being on United Artists was almost as bad as not being on any label at all. They were the crappiest in the business. All they did was movie soundtracks. Now, they were making an effort to become much hipper - signing people like Bobby Womack and what have you. "
People
Business
Bad
" But I knew - in the old days, if a song was a good song, I don't care if it was 'Yellow Submarine' or, you know, or 'The Times They Are a-Changin' or 'Don't Be Cruel', you knew it, you know? You heard that song, and you were talking about it, and you knew it. "
Yellow
Song
Good
" Every thread of creation is held in position by still other strands of things living. "
Creation
Thread
Position
" Herman Melville was supposed to be an accountant. Van Gogh was meant to be an art dealer. I was meant to take the train into New York and work for a bank. To be an artist, you have to say goodbye to your family. "
Work
New York
Goodbye
" I actually feel I'm in a much better place than I've ever been because I'm thankful people still love the songs that I've written, and they seem to like me. And they come to the shows in droves, and they get all excited, and I can still hit all the notes, and I don't look terrible. "
Thankful
People
Place
" I am what I do, and that's partly why I don't want to give up singing. But when I can't sing well, I will. "
Sing
Will
Why
" I developed this fantasy world. I found that that was much more fun and more interesting and exciting than real life was to me. Then, once I got the guitar going when I was a teenager, I set sail for the direction I've been in my whole life. "
Sail
Fun
Direction
" I'd listen to all the stuff that was going on around me and drift off into my fantasies about it. My fantasies have fuelled all the songs I've ever written. "
Going
Drift
Off
" I don't relate to what's left of the music business. There doesn't seem to be any point to it anymore. The business that I grew up in and loved, we made records a different way - there were record companies, there were stores where you could buy albums. "
Point
Business
Way
" If something comes up I might write about it, but without an outlet the whole thing winds down. "
Write
Outlet
Up
" If you listen to one of my albums, you can tell I do a lot of different things. In the case of 'Vincent', I thought of his picture 'Starry Night.' It was a beautiful road-map for a song. I used a lot of imagery from that painting. "
You
Painting
Night
" I got my first guitar when I was 16. I'd play for my family and friends, but taking that guitar out there into the wide, wide world wasn't something I ever thought about. "
Guitar
Family
Thought
" I had asthma when I was a kid, asthma so bad that it would turn into pneumonia and I almost died several times. Nobody knew why back then, but now it's obvious. "
Nobody
Back
Kid
" I have a weird sense sometimes of what's going to happen before it happens, and I kind of live by that, which is how my instincts operate, I suppose. "
Sometimes
Going
Kind
" I just started playing guitar and started singing and started working on this act that I would call 'Don McLean' when I was probably in high school. "
School
Singing
High School
" I mean, I've been given a terrific life by the audiences who stuck with me all over the world. "
Me
Mean
World
" I'm glad that my music has helped other people as it's helped me. It makes me glad that I did what I did with my life. "
Life
Glad
People
" In a sense, 'American Pie' was a very despairing song but it can also be seen as very hopeful. "
Very
American
Pie
" In the autumn of 1970 I had a job singing in the school system, playing my guitar in classrooms. "
Guitar
School
Job
" I think longevity is more important than trying to make people realize you're around every second. "
People
Think
Trying
" I've never done anything but what I wanted to do with my life. I don't think too many people can say that. I wrote the songs I wanted to write, for me. I had no idea that 'American Pie' would relate to anybody. "
Think
Life
People
" I was always just into my music and maybe into trying to save the world a little bit. I never really thought I'd have a hit record or anything like that. I was prepared to travel around all over the country, kind of like a Johnny Appleseed, and sing. "
World
Travel
Thought
" I was around in 1970, and now I am around in 2015 ... there is no poetry and very little romance in anything anymore, so it is really like the last phase of 'American Pie.' "
Last
Pie
Now
" My expectations for myself were never high. I had a very unusual way of writing songs and of thinking about music. I wasn't at all like Bob Dylan or Simon and Garfunkel. I was completely different - I didn't have a David Geffen at my side. "
Myself
Thinking
Way
" My parents were not musical, and they were not effervescent people; everything was very quiet. The music that I played was loud; it used to drive them up the wall. My father died, and that was a tragedy for everybody, but suddenly I didn't have anybody to stop me from doing what I wanted to do. "
Drive
Music
Parents
" No matter how happy or hopeful I am, I always tend to drift back to that. It's underneath all the music I've ever written... An artist is trying to tell you how he's feeling. And if that accidentally becomes entertaining, it becomes a career. "
Happy
You
Music
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