Don McLean
American Pie

THE REVIEW

I can't remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride,
But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died.
So bye-bye, miss american pie.
Drove my chevy to the levee,
But the levee was dry.
And them good old boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye
Singin', "this'll be the day that I die".
"this'll be the day that I die".

"American Pie", Don McLean

Not all things around us have the same temporality. It must be the same inside my brain, where elephant-memories coexist with butterfly-memories, but their duration is inexorably different. Or as Joe Lansdale would say, some are hamburgers without sauce, others are triple cheeseburgers with chili, a side of onions and fries.

Don McLean has always lived in the sauce-less part of my memory. And his memory, despite this, still causes me drowsiness and spiritual flatulence.
But if, and I emphasize if, accidentally one evening, while I'm driving home, he comes to mind, it can only be for 3 (mind you, for someone who’s sane and has varied interests these are still too many) valid reasons. And when I write only and exclusively, I am not referring to the fact that he was born in New Rochelle, had a good dentist, and never argued with his accountant:

- because one evening the young folksinger Lori Lieberman goes to hear one of his concerts at the Troubadour in Los Angeles and, struck by the performance, writes a song about it. "And there was a young boy / A stranger to my eye... Strumming my pain with his fingers / Singing my life with his words / Killing me softly with his song / Killing me softly with his song / Telling my life whole life with his words / Killing me softly... with his song". Then Lori meets two old American Brill Building foxes, Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox, who take hold of the song and launch it. So high that a soul singer, Roberta Flack, takes an American Airlines flight, listens to it on board, and the rest, Aretha Franklin, Fugees, is known;

- because he wrote a song dedicated to Van Gogh. Vincent, indeed. Which no one remembers unless you whisper the beginning... "Starry Starry Night";

- because he wrote another song on which I believe he still makes a living, which is "American Pie". Ciccone docet.

And then there's a verse in "American Pie" that goes like this "I can't remember if I cried / When I read about his widowed bride. But something touched me deep inside / The day the music died".
That day when the music died.
And in "American Pie" that day was Buddy Holly crashing in a plane between Iowa and North Dakota.
And here the mental passage becomes emphatic.
And I start to imagine the list of my daysthemusicdied...

- Elvis Presley leaves for military service
- Mark Chapman shoots John Lennon
- Kurt Cobain shoots Kurt Cobain
- MTV airs the first video
- The CD supplants vinyl
- Bob Dylan crashes his motorcycle
- Woodstock
- Johnny Rotten leaves the Sex Pistols
- Pink Floyd start recording "Dark Side Of The Moon"
- Hüsker Dü disband
- 1991: Johnny Thunders, Stiv Bators, and Gene Clark die
- Lou Reed plays with the tai-chi master in Turin 2006.