Don McLean Quotes
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I have no idea how I do anything. I never have. You know 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. And I have been doing this for 40 years, adding songs and writing things, cobbling together albums, doing live things, you know, albums and tours. And then I have records on the charts. I have no idea how this happened.
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This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.
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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.
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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.
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Over the years I've had more and more of an association with Nashville.
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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.
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Jerusalem is old, Jerusalem is new, Jerusalem can hold Moslem, Christian, Jew.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I've always been on the outside of all that political stuff so I just sort of watch it and I'm appalled and I think people should be screaming about a lot of things right now and they're not. They're just letting everything happen. I don't know. At some point the wheels are going to come off and we're going to have a real problem. The people are going to get angry and it's going to be too late.
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There's enough ugliness - you know, we got wars going on and people dying and sickness and everything. We don't need to have our art be ugly. But it is, in a lot of it. And these people justify this crap by saying, "Oh we're just representing what's out there, man". Basically, you're making it worse and number one, the artist's job is to elevate people and to lift people up and to give them a place to go, something to hold on to.
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Helter skelter in a summer swelter.
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Devoid of all romance, the music plays and everyone must dance. I'm bowing out.
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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.
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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.
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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 didnt sing it for a while. Thats 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.
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There we were all in one place, a generation lost in space.
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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.
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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.