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" 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. "
Don McLean
Going
Drift
Off
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" 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. "
Don McLean
Life
Glad
People
" 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. "
Don McLean
You
Painting
Night
" 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. "
Don McLean
Think
Life
People
" 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.' "
Don McLean
Last
Pie
Now
" If something comes up I might write about it, but without an outlet the whole thing winds down. "
Don McLean
Write
Outlet
Up
" I mean, I've been given a terrific life by the audiences who stuck with me all over the world. "
Don McLean
Me
Mean
World
" The kids today all seem to think they should be stars, but I wasn't brought up that way. "
Don McLean
Think
Stars
Kids
" 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. "
Don McLean
Yellow
Song
Good
" American Pie speaks to the loss that we feel. That's why that song has found the niche that it has. "
Don McLean
Song
American
Pie
" 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. "
Don McLean
Baseball
Game
Women
" In the autumn of 1970 I had a job singing in the school system, playing my guitar in classrooms. "
Don McLean
Guitar
School
Job
" 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. "
Don McLean
Happy
You
Music
" That song didn't just happen. It grew out of my experiences. 'American Pie' was part of my process of self-awakening: a mystical trip into my past. "
Don McLean
Song
Trip
Pie
" There's always a fundamental misery that's with me that I always relate to some bit of loss or something. I don't know what it is about me, but even though I'm happy on the surface, there's something there, I guess. So, it all comes from wherever it comes from. I really don't know where that is. "
Don McLean
Me
Loss
Know
" When people ask what 'American Pie' is about, they're missing the point. The song isn't about the lines themselves - it's about what is between the lines. The song is about what isn't there. "
Don McLean
Missing
American
Pie
" When I go on the road now, which is less than before, but still more than I'd like to, I think of myself primarily as a singer. Not a songwriter, not a celebrity, just a man who likes to sing. "
Don McLean
Think
Celebrity
Now
" 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. "
Don McLean
World
Travel
Thought
" 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. "
Don McLean
Direction
You
American
" I think longevity is more important than trying to make people realize you're around every second. "
Don McLean
People
Think
Trying
" 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. "
Don McLean
School
Singing
High School
" 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. "
Don McLean
Guitar
Family
Thought
" 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. "
Don McLean
Roads
Apple
Home
" 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. "
Don McLean
Sing
Will
Why
" 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. "
Don McLean
Sometimes
Going
Kind
" 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. "
Don McLean
Work
New York
Goodbye
" 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. "
Don McLean
Point
Business
Way
" 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. "
Don McLean
Myself
Thinking
Way
" 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. "
Don McLean
Sail
Fun
Direction
" In a sense, 'American Pie' was a very despairing song but it can also be seen as very hopeful. "
Don McLean
Very
American
Pie
" Over the years I've had more and more of an association with Nashville. "
Don McLean
Over
Had
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