radionotes podcast episodes

Don McLean after 50 years of American Pie

by | Jan 24, 2021 | episodes | 1 comment

Don McLean after 50 years of American Pie

Don McLean during 2021 will mark 50 years of his Single and Album ‘American Pie‘ and also during the year a star will be unveiled on the Hollywood Walk of Fame with his name. Recently of note is that Time Life have re-released his back catalogue of music including the album Still Playin’ Favourites. In this chat, can hear some background about his 2018 album of originals called Botanical Gardens.

From his home – down the line from America to Australia – Don McLean talks about his life with radionotes…

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IMAGE CREDIT: Don McLean – Supplied

As live music returns in person, keep an eye out for tours and gigs from Don McLean – TOUR DATES

SHOW NOTES: Don McLean

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Emily Hatton – details of new EP:

Feature Guest: Don McLean

Next Feature Guest: Alex Lleo

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CREDITS

Theme/Music: Martin Kennedy and All India Radio   

Web-design/tech: Steve Davis

Voice: Tammy Weller  

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TRANSCRIPT

First version provided by REV team member Sarah K – check to audio before quoting wider

John Murch:
Don McLean, welcome to radionotes.

Don Mclean:
Well, nice to be here, thank you for having me. I’ve always enjoyed my many, many tours of Australia, I love the country, and I hope I’ll be able to come back.

John Murch:
Speaking about your affections of Australia, one of the things I was hoping to do a number of years ago, and I guess now is my chance to have a chat with you about briefly, is the fantastic record from 2018 called Botanical Gardens that I believe started from some walks around the Sydney Opera House, or at least the Royal Botanic Gardens nearby.

Don Mclean:
Yes. I forget the hotel I was at, but it was a very nice hotel and it was up on the hill, and I would walk down the hill towards the Sydney Opera House, and of course the gardens are off to the right. Also on the way down there I think there was an auto club, a private club for auto enthusiasts, so I liked to visit some of these clubs in different countries because I have a membership in one of them in the United States, and so I checked that out, and then I would walk down and take a long walk through the gardens. And it really is like heaven there.

Don Mclean:
Australia has a vibration about it that’s of course unlike any place else on earth. I mean every place has a vibration, but I think if you were to go to Russia, or some of these countries, it’s dark and forbidding and everything, and foreboding, Australia is light and sunny, and the animals are there, and there’s so many extinct animals in Australia and New Zealand that are still alive, and the people are very happy to be alive. They party a lot, they’re smiling usually. They don’t really have time for downers. You don’t really find too many Australian downers, they’re upbeat people.

John Murch:
The record itself, I was so inspired by how uplifting it was, and in one of the recent interviews I checked out you said one of the underrated numbers of yours is called Ain’t She a Honey. So I’d like to ask you, what’s so special about that very song of botanical gardens?

Don Mclean:
It’s the theme song of the whole album because it’s heaven. It’s like I’ve died and gone to heaven, because I’ve left behind the canyons of steel and the darkness of the city. And I mean, cities are great for shopping and eating, but I wouldn’t want to live in one. Although I wouldn’t mind living in Sydney because it’s so bright, and as I say, all those other reasons I just gave you, it’s one of the few cities I would enjoy living in.

John Murch:
You’re more than welcome to come to Adelaide with this World Tour that you’re doing in 2021, which is a little bit further down south.

Don Mclean:
I like Adelaide too, I like all the cities along the coast, and I like Perth very much. But I’m saying to myself, this song, it sets the tone for the whole album, and it’s thinking back on your youth and on love and passion and desire, and the future is ahead of you, and all those things that ebb away as you get older and you try to cling on to. So then you have to decide, do I want to go back to the world? In other words, it’s almost like you’ve died, and do I want to be saved and brought back? They have these people that talk about these out of body experiences, and some of them say, “I wish I hadn’t been brought back,” and some tell about this. But anyway, that’s the tone for all the songs that follow.

John Murch:
And the first two tracks for that album, You’ve Got Such Beautiful Eyes and Lucky Guy were the first two cuts. What was it about those two tracks that you thought there was going to be a full album, which was released in 2018?

Don Mclean:
Well, I just felt that, I don’t know how I write these things, honestly I just don’t. I have these moments of clear sailing in my head where I know where I’m headed, and I just do it. And then there are other times that I can’t put two words together. So I’m really not a professional songwriter, although I’ve been known to write songs that people know, and I’ve written many songs that people know, but it almost comes in on my radio somehow. And I wanted to write a swingy kind of a forties or fifties or thirties song, back where you could hear a swing orchestra just do that performance, that song, and that’s how it turned out and I’m very happy with it, to tell you the truth, because the power of women, like in the middle it says, “She can make you leave your friends, leave your family, leave everything, because of those eyes.”

John Murch:
And then with Ain’t She Honey, “She spends all the money I got,” and I just get the feeling of, you don’t really care, it’s just money. You’re with this beautiful person and it’s all about them, it’s not about the money.

Don Mclean:
You know, it’s just… that song is the most remarkable song on the record to me, and that recording is the most remarkable, one of the most remarkable ones that I ever made, because it was done live, and Vip Vipperman is my guitarist, and he’s playing slide guitar, but the verses, “Ain’t she a ripper with a buckle and a zipper, she’s hot,” it’s just exactly what I’m trying to talk about losing in Botanical Gardens, that sense of wonder at women and love and romance and fun, and that’s a lot of what Australia has.

Don Mclean:
The harmony, there’s a harmonious sense that I get when I go there that people, you were always at least 10 years behind the times in the old days. You’re in your own world, and people would come who had been famous 10 years before and be treated like they were the Beatles. And I remember being told this back in the 1970s, and I said, “Well, I want to start going there now, I want to see this place.” And it was a lot smaller and it was a lot less big city. It grew very fast over the 50 years that I would tour there, I would see these cities, like Perth is humongous now, and really when I went over there first, it was a beautiful country town. And places in New Zealand that used to be quaint, and now have these glass and steel buildings that have been thrown up, changing the character and moving everybody into the mainstream more, everybody’s right on top of everything now, there’s no gap.

Don Mclean:
And I think it’s a good thing when people are not in the mainstream and they can have their own little private happiness, which you don’t get when you’re immediately hooked up now to the internet, where every damn little thing you know is taking away your time. You don’t have the concentration to be gentle and to be thoughtful and to be civilized and to have a good time with your mates, and to go have a barbecue down by the beach, and all the things that you people do. I’ve tried to recapture that where I live in California, I live in the desert, it reminds me of Australia, I like the sun.

John Murch:
Obviously with the sun comes the danger of bush fires as well, which you’ve had there recently in 2020. As someone who’s had, I believe, asthma since a young child, the recent bush fires that have been occurring, which we also get here in Australia, would have seen a lot of smoke, and there’s also been other pandemics that have been occurring across the world as well.

Don Mclean:
Yes.

John Murch:
I’m just wondering how you’re dealing with that, how you’re coping with that?

Don Mclean:
Well, I’m coping with it incredibly well. I am very happy. I feel like I’m enjoying retirement for a while, and yet I’m fully ready to go traveling again and start singing whatever schedule I can sing at whatever time it happens in the next few years. I like being flexible in my thinking, I’m doing a whole lot of other things now that I would not have been doing if I was always busy going every two or three days on the road away for a few days, which has been my schedule for 50 years.

Don Mclean:
As far as fires that have been here, they have affected my breathing somewhat. I am allergic to smoke, and so there’s smoke and particulate matter in the air here sometimes. But I don’t take drugs or anything for any little asthma attack that I might have, I just take a little Bronkaid, a tablet once in a while, and I try to keep, the drugs, away from that stuff, because I think that what you need to do if you can is get away from the thing that’s irritating you, and when I grew up I was made sick by the fact that I lived in a tiny house with my grandmother’s sister, mother, and father, four grownups who all smoked all day, and never opened the windows. That was really the problem.

John Murch:
What is it about horses that Don McLean must have them in his life?

Don Mclean:
Oh, you’re talking about horses, equines?

John Murch:
Yeah, as in the ones that you ride in a Western style, the three that you’ve trained.

Don Mclean:
I’ve had horses who’ve been the best friends I’ve ever had. I’ve had the best experiences I’ve ever had with a few horses that I owned, and I look back and I remember them like they were people, and we did so many things together than only the two of us know about, going into the woods and following deer trails, and having all kinds of adventures. I love that, and I think that’s been one of the best things in my entire life, more so than hanging around people. People always seem to take back some of what they give, and so I’ve always enjoyed the honesty of a good relationship or even a bad relationship with a horse it’s honest and you learn something.

Don Mclean:
One of the things that you do learn is patience, and you realize that you have to have patience. Once you get your mind in sync with the animal that you’re always involved with, it’s a remarkable thing because you’re riding him, you’re not walking him like you do a dog, and you’re not petting him like you do a cat, you’re sitting on him, and if he decides to take off, you’re moving at the speed of the wind, it’s a primal experience like you’re on the back of some beast that loves you and is taking care of you too. So it’s really quite an experience.

John Murch:
It’s that mutual respect, is that what you’re talking about?

Don Mclean:
Well, yeah, but you have to realize that the horse would much rather be out grazing and running free, he doesn’t really want you on his back. He doesn’t really want to be pulling a wagon, he doesn’t really want to be in a rodeo, he wants to be out running. They can run 100 miles a day and they can eat on the run, if you see some of the great wild horses out west. And today it’s so nasty because they herd them with helicopters, boy I hate that. If you’re going to herd some horses, go out on horseback and do it like a man. It’s so unfair to do that, scare the hell out of them with a helicopter and they run. You know, it’s interesting, a group of animals, whether it’s cows or horses, have to learn to be a herd. They don’t always want to be in the herd, and there’s some that run off and they just would prefer to be on their own. I suppose I’m one of those, I guess.

John Murch:
In this year of 2021, you will be hitting the road for what is the 50th anniversary of what’s been classed one of your greatest albums, and of course one of the most popular songs. And there’s plenty of interviews that you’ve done over the years about, and I’m not going to ask you what the song is about, but I want to ask you about Paul Griffin’s work on the piano. My understanding is he started with a polka, you taught him a guitar part, and then he got it right. Can you talk to us about the piano part that Paul Griffin brought to this song?

Don Mclean:
Well I’d be happy to do that because for about three months, or at least a month, I had been rehearsing with this group that ended up making the record, and Ed Freeman made the record, he did it, and managed to make eight minutes and 27 seconds interesting. But they kept playing it and it was awful, it wasn’t what I wanted, and I had a lot of trouble communicating with these musicians who were all very talented and very seasoned, but I knew there was something missing. And Ed brought this piano player in, I think it was on the day of the session, I don’t believe I’d ever rehearsed with this guy before. I think we may have had other piano players, I said, “These guys just don’t cut it, I’m not hearing what I want.”

Don Mclean:
So he gets this guy in who, he could play anything, genius player. And they put my guitar, and I’m singing live in the sound booth, bashing away on the guitar, because I play the guitar hard, and he put that in his earphones, and he started just jumping all over the song because the guitar is kicking him in the ass, basically. And he starts playing this gospel piano I said, “Man, that’s it, that’s what I’m after.” And of course all the other guys just followed into the groove. And afterwards he said, “Well man, I heard that guitar in my ears and I was inspired.” And so it was the two of us together, he felt the sincerity of my playing. One thing about me is what you see is what you get. And I don’t like a lot of stuff, and when I like something, I really love it. So I was all over this song, he got right behind it and just made that record. I mean, he really did.

John Murch:
I want to talk about something that you do love that you’re passionate about, that of architecture. Where was the first spark for architecture?

Don Mclean:
That’s a nice question, thank you for asking that. Well, I lived in a little house in New Rochelle, New York on Mulberry Road, 15 Mulberry Road, Larchmont Woods, New York, and my mother and father were very, and there’s a term called “house proud.” They loved their home. And my father could do anything. He could fix the roof, he could paint the house, he did the electrical, he did the plumbing. You never know on a weekend, my father would say, “Okay, come on, we’re going to break this wall down and rebuild it.” So that’s what we do all weekend. “We’re going to build some cabinets.” He always had plans. He’d go up and prune the tree, one time he fell out of the tree and hurt himself, but there was nothing he wouldn’t tackle because he just loved the house.

Don Mclean:
And my mother loved the house also, and wanted this and she’d say, “Well Don, can you do this for me, or make some radiator covers, or do this or that, make a nice mantle piece with a mirror,” and my father would do it. So I grew up that way, and I also had some friends who were very well off, and they lived in huge houses. Because I was always sick I was home a lot, I knew every square inch of my little house, basement, you name it. I knew what was behind the furnace, for God’s sakes.

John Murch:
Yeah.

Don Mclean:
I can still remember, I was always exploring everywhere in there. So these guys had big houses, 10,000 square feet, whatever they were, and gorgeous, and their parents were very well-educated and they had lovely furniture and everything. So I loved that, and never realizing if I could ever have anything like that. And little by little it grew, and then I took a art history course at Iona College, and the teacher was magnificent because he pointed out all of the various architectural features of the buildings on the campus, which I had never noticed, that this is Gothic revival, and this column is a stop-fluted column, or an ionic column, or whatever, and Palladian windows and pilasters and different things. From then on everywhere I went I was seeing these things. So there was that.

Don Mclean:
And then I bought my first house, which was just a little farmhouse, and I was in there for 20 years, and I loved that so much. I was near the woods, that’s where I’d ride my horses up into the woods on the trails there, and I was in heaven. I mean, I really was. And then I moved into this, that was the farm house phase, and then I moved into what I might call the gilded age phase of Don McLean’s architecture.

John Murch:
Right.

Don Mclean:
And I had two houses in Maine, one in Castine, Maine, one in Camden, Maine, which is 175 acres, it’s the size of a small village. And I have fixed up every single one of those buildings, I still own the place in Castine, they’re both Greek revival homes built around, one in 1860, and then one in Camden in 1900, 1905, about there. And I’ve made those into a show places for antique furniture and rugs, and all this, and I learned all about this through the years, trying to develop my eye to have done that. And then now I’m out in California and I’m in love with mid-century modern architecture, and you can only find that really in Palm Springs and in this region.

Don Mclean:
So this is where it all happened, a lot of the architects came out here in the 1930s and built one story, very simple homes. Everyone follows suit out here, nobody builds any big houses, so it’s very homogenized, homogeneous you might say. So I’m in love with that. And that’s you’re 57 Chevy and your Stratocaster, and all that, those are all from, it’s a kind of a double whammy. It’s a look to the future, which is live outdoors and lots of glass and minimum amount of height on the house, and also, in a sense, almost like it’s futuristic, which is what the Stratocaster design is supposed to be, the future, always thinking about space travel in a way. And it’s look to the past, which is you live like a desert rat, basically. Outside all the time, and under the stars, and all the stuff I liked about Australia.

John Murch:
That was 2018, that album, Botanical Gardens, it was inspired by the Sydney Royal Gardens. Are you someone who when you do get back out in the road, start to write new material for a new record? I know you do take your time when it comes to writing material and recording, and that’s a good thing.

Don Mclean:
This next album, I’m making a new album, I have most of the new album written already, new songs, and there’s some things on here that are just straight up rock and roll like John Fogarty would do, really kickass, and there’s some other really nice things, and I have some more work to do, I’ll be working on it throughout the next six months or so, if not longer, until I get something really, really nice. But I’ve got a lot of good stuff on here that’s inspiring me now to finish the job, and that’s what happens.

John Murch:
Because my understanding, it’s the fun and excitement that gets the music out of you. It sounds like you’re in a good place at the moment.

Don Mclean:
I’ve already got some great stuff, which I didn’t have when I was making the American Pie album, I had some nice ballads, Vincent, Empty Chairs, Sister Fatima, Crossroads, but I didn’t have what I was looking for, and finally I got that with the American Pie song. And the funny thing was that it was hard going because I had put everything into the first album, Tapestry, and all of a sudden I had another album that was required, and I had these ballads, and it just wasn’t what I wanted. But when I came up with this long song, it now made the album the right length, and it meant I could pull everything else that I had on it in a way toward this theme, which was American Pie. So everything, Babylon makes sense, The Grave makes sense, Sister Fatima makes sense, Everybody Loves Me makes sense, they all make sense because of the bigger song, and they didn’t make sense before.

Don Mclean:
This is the kind of stuff that goes on in my head, really, I can’t really tell you how, but I know right now that I’ve got a lot more than I’ve ever had for a new album, and my mind is wide open thinking now about ideas for songs that are going to be a little bit more political, perhaps, in an obtuse way. I don’t like writing a song about politics, or anything like that, because it’s very dated then.

John Murch:
Well, absolutely. Even us talking today, by the end of today you may or may not have a new president of the United States, but one thing that is decided is that American Pie, the song and the record, are an absolute classic. It’s been a pleasure to speak to you, Don McLean, thanks for your time.

Don Mclean:
Well, I enjoyed talking to you very much, and I enjoyed your questions and your sensitivity, and thank you for having me.

 

 

1 Comment

  1. Doug stuart
    Doug stuart on December 31, 2021 at 9:12 am

    Have always been a Don Mclean fan.

    Reply

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