Don McLean Quotes

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.

I'm gonna say this and I really mean it - I'm very thankful that I'm not a huge star. I've all the stardom and celebrity that I can handle. But I also have peace and quiet. I am left alone. And I am not recognized everywhere I go and it's perfect. I can come and fill the theatres and I get on stage ... people say: "Well, oh yeah, that must be him," you know?

Faces come and faces go in circular rotation.But something yearns within to grow beyond infatuation.

The Byrds flew off the fallout shelter, eight miles high and falling fast.

And when no hope was left inside on that starry, starry night, you took your life as lovers often do. But I could have told you, Vincent, this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.

American Pie speaks to the loss that we feel. That's why that song has found the niche that it has.

You're going to be buying your ticket with your heartache, you're gonna be payin' the man with your dues. You're gonna be living alone when you hear that whistle moan, you're gonna be learnin' to live with the blues.

Do you recall what was revealed the day the music died?

As you sell your soul and sow your seeds, and you wound yourself and your loved ones bleed. And your habits grow and your conscience feeds, on all that you thought you should be.

I mean, I've been given a terrific life by the audiences who stuck with me all over the world.

We live in a world of empty spectacle, the world of spectacle rock, songs you can't remember, it's all about the expression of money, power and kind of empty and fascistic. Where technology has changed society, where people are not using their brains as much, not seeing the bigger picture but constantly looking down at the cellphone and not seeing the bigger picture. Today's songwriter need to be on outside, find their own trip if you will and find a way to connect from a place that no one has heard before. It might be taken as weird but that is what makes it unique.

We all got up to dance. Oh, but we never got the chance!

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack sat on a candle stick, cause fire is the devil's only friend.

The society that produced The Who, The Stones, Dylan, Paul McCartney and later on people, like myself, is over. The materialistic society that produces these kinds of bombastic performances that don't have any value or musical meaning, is very conspicuous, look at me, I'm rich, dig my brand. That's what missing, Bob Dylan made us feel worthy, I try to do the same thing. Respect for the audience with music that is meaningful and soulful. Go for what moves you and not necessarily what you think will be commercial.

I think longevity is more important than trying to make people realize you're around every second.

Bye, Bye Miss American Pie, drove my chevy to the levy but the levy was dry. Good old boys drinking whiskey and rye, singing, this'll be the day that I die.

Bad news on the doorstep;I couldn’t take one more step

There we were all in one place, a generation lost in space.

Every thread of creation is held in position by still other strands of things living. In an earthly tapestry hung from the skyline of smoldering cities so gray and so vulgar, as not to be satisfied with their own negativity, but needing to touch all the living as well.

I'm living in a world that was created a hundred years ago with vaudeville and people traveling around and medicine shows and things and making live music on stage and I'm still doing that. I like it that way. I like to present something to people that's had 40 years of being honed and perfected. It's something that you're not going to find with an artist who's been around for two or three years, or even ten years.

Over the years I've had more and more of an association with Nashville.

I feel like a spinning top or a DreidelThe spinning don't stop when you leave the cradleYou just slow downRound and around this world you goSpinning through the lives of the people you knowWe all slow down.

Not a word was spoken. The church bells all were broken.

My face on every coin engraved, the anarchists are all enslaved. My flag is forever waved, by the grateful people I have saved.

Helter skelter in a summer swelter.

A long long time ago, I can still remember how that music use to make me smile.

The kids today all seem to think they should be stars, but I wasn't brought up that way.

Each thread of life that you leave, will spin around your deeds and dictate your needs.

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.

Because of an off-hand funny comment I made backstage at a concert years ago, a story circulated that the song has been a burden and even that I didn’t sing it for a while. That’s completely false. I am very proud of ‘American Pie’ and the many satellites that grow from it and revolve around it. For many years I carried my songs around and now they carry me around. I have always sung ‘American Pie’ for my audience and would never think of disappointing them since it is they who have given me a wonderful life and untold affection for almost 30 years.

It's a video world now, you know? It's not a musical world. It's a video world. I can watch videos. I see videos, you know, Britney Spears, she's sexy. I like to watch her videos. It's not like the music is what I'm hearing. It's different now. But it's not my world. It's the world of young people and they have what they want and they have what the technology and the society produces as a result of all these advancements that have occurred. And the in the future we'll have something else. Maybe we'll have holograms and, you know, all kinds of stuff.

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.

Drove my chevy to the levee but the levee was dry.

Do you believe in rock 'n roll? Can music save your mortal soul?

How did the land of Jefferson, how did the land of King, become the land of hamburgers and raisins that can sing? Roosevelt was cripple, Lincoln was a geek, they'd never get elected, their clothes were never chic.

Something touched me deep inside The day the music died.

That's the hard thing - getting started. You get started for a long time until you finally get to this point where people call you an icon or whatever they call you. It's nice. Suddenly the audience is with you more and they help you along and it's not so much that you have to do everything.

Devoid of all romance, the music plays and everyone must dance. I'm bowing out.

As you can imagine, over the years I have been asked many times to discuss and explain my song "American Pie." I have never discussed the lyrics, but have admitted to the Holly reference in the opening stanzas. You will find many interpretations of my lyrics but none of them by me. You will find many “interpretations” of my lyrics but none of them by me. Isn’t this fun? Sorry to leave you all on your own like this but long ago I realized that songwriters should make their statements and move on, maintaining a dignified silence.

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.

As I watched him on the stage, my hands were clinched in fists of rage. No angel born in hell, could break that Satan's spell.

When writing I just go with the song. I go with the song and try to tell the story. So the story may be "Wonderful Baby", which is a little song. Or it might be a gentle song, "Empty Chairs". Or it might be a rock and roll song like "Prime Time" or "Run, Diana, Run", or "American Pie". I don't know where it's gonna go. I don't have any idea what I'm doing. I just do it. I just keep doing it. I keep taking adva

All you gotta do is think of the song in your head. And it doesn't matter whether you can play it or not, you can get somebody to play it. With songs I've written, there's a song called "The Statue", which I can't play. There are songs that I've written that I've actually just hummed on - there's a song on one of the albums they have there on the Internet called "My Love Was True" and it's almost operatic. I can't play it. But I can sing it.

When people ask me what 'American Pie' means, I tell them it means I don't ever have to work again if I don't want to.

The horrible thing about Death of princess Diana - the sacrificial lamb, which she was. And I believe, in a sense, John Kennedy, Jr. was the same thing. These are people that we loved so much that we drove them berserk with all the attention and they basically didn't have any particular stellar talents. They were just in some kind of a position somewhere where we fixed on them and they became, literally, sacrificial lambs

In a sense, 'American Pie' was a very despairing song but it can also be seen as very hopeful.

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.

Everything has become very corporate and very careful. Before we had a real democracy going and there were a lot of freedoms and now there's this terrorism thing that everybody's focused on, which is really a boondoggle in my opinion. It's just an excuse to clamp down on people's free speech. And corporations intimidate people and everybody's gotten intimidated and that's really what it is, and they just keep going along. It's almost like - a little bit like that Charlie Chaplin movie, Modern Times, or 1984, Orwell