Scientists say that smell often triggers memory in people; Proust and his madeleines are an excellent example. Songs trigger memories, too, some tunes more than others. One song that always does that for me is Don McLean’s American Pie, released in 1971.
I heard the song on the car radio Tuesday afternoon as I made the long trek up I-45 from my home in Houston to my mother’s home just north of Dallas. The song’s opening lines, “A long, long time ago/I can still remember how that music used to make me smile” (McLean, 1971, track 1) took me right back to a sunny afternoon back in 1972.
It was a different time
I was eight years old at the time. My parents and I lived on the Marine Corps base at Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii. My unbelievably beautiful, hip mom was 28, and we had just finished a shopping trip at her favorite department store, Liberty House in Kailua, Hawaii.
American Pie was playing on the radio that day when my mother started the car to drive us back to our house on the base. The song was often on the radio as it was a big hit (it went to #1 on the charts in 1972), and I loved to sing along when I heard it, even though I didn’t understand fully what all of the lyrics meant. And, apparently, I wasn’t the only child of my generation who did that.
As Morgan (2015, para. 2-3) explains, American Pie “became an anthem for an entire generation – who memorised every line. Their children in turn grew up singing it – fascinated by the mysterious lyrics with their cryptic references to 50s innocence, the turbulent 60s, and 70s disillusion.”
But on that day in 1972, I was particularly curious about a specific line in the chorus that didn’t make sense to me, the line that refers to rye whiskey: “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 ryeSingin’ this will be the day that I die” ((McLean, 1971, track 1).
Now, I knew what a levee was – my mother’s family is all from Louisiana. I knew what whiskey was – I was, after all, the daughter of a hard charging Marine Corps fighter pilot – but I couldn’t understand why or how anyone could drink rye. I only knew the word in association with rye bread, which I thought and still think is delicious!
My mother patiently explained to me that the words of the song referred to rye whiskey, which, like bourbon and scotch, is created, or distilled, by aging a combination of corn, malt, and rye grains in oak barrels for a certain number of years.
“So, is it like the stuff that Hawkeye and Trapper make in their tent for martinis?” I asked – my parents were fans of M*A*S*H, which we watched together once a week on our 13” Sony Trinitron color television set, so I was familiar with the strange ongoing lab experiment (which I later learned is called a still) in their tent.
“It’s a similar process, yes,” my mother replied.
“Oh, okay,” I said, content with my mother’s answer.
The actual process didn’t interest me. I really only wanted to know how rye figured into it. And that was that. To be honest, I didn’t pay closer attention to the meaning of the lyrics until I was much older and learned how to explicate poetry in college.
Still a favorite
American Pie is still one of my favorite songs. It’s in my iTunes library, and I always turn up the radio when it’s played.
Like many people, I have pored over the lyrics to the song over the years. And, as a teacher, I turn to it again and again.
In 1988, at the suggestion of a fellow graduate teaching assistant at Texas A&M University, I started to use American Pie as a teaching aid for introducing students to poetry because, as previously noted, the song is chock full of allusions. Plus, the allusions are old enough that my students have to take the time to do some research in order to support their ideas/arguments for what they believe the song’s lyrics mean. Granted, they have the benefit of the Internet, but it is still a valuable exercise.
Not a parlor game
When I sat down to write this piece, I Googled the words “McLean” and “American Pie” to find out the exact year the song was released. To my great surprise, I discovered that in 2015 McLean finally broke his silence about the meaning of the words to his song. (I also discovered that he had sold the rights to the lyrics for $1.2 million dollars).
McLean’s explanation for deciding to finally do so was included in the Christie’s auction catalog in which the lyrics were listed for sale: He said, “I thought it would be interesting as I reach age 70 to release [my original notes] on the song American Pie so that anyone who might be interested will learn that this song was not a parlor game [emphasis mine],” (qtd. in Meyer, 2015, para. 4).
But, to be honest, I have never thought of McLean’s song as “a parlor game.” Even as a child, I realized that, despite the catchy tune, it’s a melancholy song – in 1970’s parlance, “a bit of a downer.” As Moyer (2015, para. 10) explains, American Pie captures the way in which the “ideals of the 1960s turned into the cynicism of the 1970s.”
Out of the mouths of babes
Twenty five years ago, when I was was working on my dissertation on the literature of the Vietnam War., my mother told me that, in spite of my parents’ and maternal grandparents’ best efforts to censor the news of the war and prevent me from watching the war’s terrible images on the 6:00 evening news, I understood, on some subconscious level, as McLean sings, that “in the streets, the children screamed/The lovers cried and the poets dreamed/But not a word was spoken.”
She said, “When you were five and your stepfather was on his second tour, I took you and your best friend Piper to see a movie one afternoon. On the way home, we drove by the local cemetery. Piper was visibly upset and explained that one of her parents’ friends had just died and been buried there..”
Her reaction was, of course, completely normal. Mine, however, was a little different.
My mother continued. “When Piper shared that,” she said, “you just reached over, patted her hand, and said to her, ‘That’s okay, Piper. My parents’ friends die all the time, and . they just make new ones.’”
If only life had truly been that simple then
Kaneohe Bay was our next to last military posting. We moved from there to Cherry Point, North Carolina, and then my stepfather retired from the service. It was a time of personal upheaval in the context of a sea change in American culture.
My father, an Marine Corps F-8 Crusader pilot who was killed in 1963; my stepfather, a Marine Corps F-4 Phantom pilot; and all of my parents’ friends had joined the military because they believed they were fighting for the ideals of America; they were the front line against Communism.
Yet it was an entirely different world off the base. Pilots and soldiers returned from Vietnam to an America that no longer honored their service or believed in the war that the military had sent them to fight in its name.
Quite simply, the return to civilian life was a shock
But I grew up. I assimilated. I forgot that the childhood I experienced was unlike that of my peers.
It wasn’t until I went to see Platoon in 1986 with two friends whose parents had not served in the military or ever gone to war that I realized the vast divide that separated us. In fact, I think that, in spite of its flaws, that film helped many of the people in my generation to understand that everyone, both combatants and non-combatants, lost their innocence in that war. And I truly believe that Americans have never been able to regain it or the trust they had in their country’s leadership.
As McLean sings in Verse 2 of American Pie, “Now for 10 years we’ve been on our own . . . But that’s not how it used to be” (McLean, 1971, track 1).
Still relevant today
On Tuesday, I heard American Pie on the 70s channel on Sirius XM radio, but as I sit and write this, I cannot help but think that it is a song whose time has come once again. I imagine that the lyrics would resonate for today’s generation in much the same way that they did back in 1971 when the song was released.
References:
McLean, D. (1971). American Pie. On American Pie [Vinyl]. New York City: United Artists Records (1971, October 21)
Morgan, J. (2015, April 7). What do American Pie’s lyrics mean? BBC Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32196117
Moyer, J. W. (2015, April 6). Gloomy Don McLean reveals meaning of ‘American Pie’ — and sells lyrics for $1.2 million. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/08/gloomy-don-mclean-reveals-meaning-of-american-pie-and-sells-lyrics-for-1-2-million/?utm_term=.d14678ec9f36