The 20th of February 1972
Official U.K. Singles Chart results from Sunday the 20th to Saturday the 26th of February 1972
Cut-off for sales figures was up to the end of Saturday the 19th of February
Results counted from Sunday the 20th,
announced on Tuesday the 22nd,
and broadcast on B.B.C. Radio 1 on Sunday the 27th of February 1972.
Don McLean
American Pie
At No.3, on the the U.K. Top 50 Singles Chart the day I am born, is Don McLean with “American Pie”.
Don McLean’s epic tribute to Buddy Holly,..
…and the cultural whirlwind which followed, was split over the A and B sides of this single, and had entered the U.K. Singles Chart back in mid-January, almost 13 years since the plane crash that took the lives of three of the most influential music stars of their generation, back on that bitterly cold February night in 1959.
That tragedy…
…was a watershed moment in the world of Rock ‘n’ Roll entertainment. One which would be forever afterwards be reflected upon as “The Day the Music Died”.
For any kids out there not young enough to either remember, or who hadn’t been born at that time (obviously, that includes me), these are the voices that went quiet from that day forth…
One such soul to be affected…
…was a young boy from the city of New Rochelle, in the county of Westchester, New York state, who was doing his usual paper round the following cold morning when he read the headline of the paper he was delivering.
“But February made me shiver
With every paper I’d deliver
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn’t take one more step
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”
Fast forward 12 years later, when it came to composing his song, and Don would use that earlier defining moment as a touch paper for all events that he had witnessed in his proud country, and which had affected him emotionally, politically, subjectively, even skeptically. Questioning the idea of America itself and what it did, and would come, to stand for. Back then, and especially now he was an adult in his 20’s.
Along with Buddy,..
…while he was growing up, Don had been influenced by artists as diverse as Frank Sinatra, to the Everly Brothers, to Muddy Waters, to The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and of course, Elvis Presley, and a little later during his teenage years, the folk music quartet, The Weavers, which, had featured Pete Seeger in their line-up until 1958.
Don especially loved their ‘Live at Carnegie Hall’ album, which had been recorded on Christmas Eve 1955, and released in 1957.
By the time Don was 16,..
…he tracked down another two of the members of the group, Erik Darling and Fred Hellerman, managed to contact them, and, upon invitation, went to visit them, and they soon became good friends with this new up-and-coming young troubadour.
Along with Erik and Fred, he would also be lucky enough to also meet and befriend Pete, who, after seeing the musical and lyrical promise in the teenage Don, would eventually become his mentor.
In due course, it came time for Don to write his first album,..
…which coincided with living in the eye of the student riots hurricane that was blowing through the landscape at that juncture.
And although his debut album would eventually come to the public’s attention, it didn’t do so initially. Although the track “Castles in the Air” did get some airplay at the time.
But it would be his next release,..
…this current single, which would seal his success.
It was an epic long exposed snapshot, where the shutter opened the moment he read the newspaper headline at the age of 13, and shut at moment he’d completed his first album.
With a soup of simmering memories spinning around in his head, he wrote them all lyrically down in a way which made perfect sense in his memorable perceptions, but to others they would unintentionally seem like riddles.
Due to the expanse and kaleidoscope…
…of historical information he was writing out of his memories onto paper, the duration of the song, when complete, came in at a whopping 8 minutes and 42 seconds. Way too long for a standard 45 rpm single. So, with no intention of his relenting to the track being edited down in any way, the song was dissected into two, and each half placed on sides A and B respectively instead.
In fact, at this time of my birth, it officially becomes the longest song to ever chart.
However, that is only a mere microcosm of time compared to the amount some people spent (or still spend) discussing its meaning and purpose.
After the first verse, which concentrates on the moment he discovered the news of Buddy Holly’s death back when he was a paperboy, part of the magic and mystery of the rest of the song is that it leads people to guess what the lyrics from that point onward actually mean, and many have attempted to dissect it, and pull comparisons with events that were relevant at the time to which he wrote it.
To some who felt like they had to know what every line meant, it could (or would) drive them to distraction. To them, it must be like attempting to decipher Dicken’s ‘David Copperfield’ through a musical Enigma machine.
Even now, over 50 years later, with the advent of the internet long having been established, people are still discussing it today, with many of them sure they know the answer.
Certain points have become fact,..
…due to Don himself confirming them. Such as the line “Bye, Bye Miss American Pie” which pays homage to his mentor Pete Seeger’s song entitled “Bye, Bye My Roseanna”. At first the intention for Don, when he initially wrote this song, was for the line to be “Bye, Bye Miss American Apple Pie”, due to an Apple Pie being a symbolic homely comforting familiarity of the United States (as in ‘as American as Apple Pie’) but he couldn’t work the music to fit the words.
Also, according to Don himself, the reference to “sweet perfume” alluded to tear gas from the student riots. The “coast”, where the last train is heading to, refers to Los Angeles. The line “This’ll be the day that I die” came from the John Wayne cowboy film ‘The Searchers’, which in turn, Buddy Holly had also gained inspiration from when he wrote the song “That’ll Be The Day”. So that line was definitely a nod to his deceased idol.
Years later, after so many theories had been circulating, regarding hidden meanings and connections to events, Don would say this about his lyrics to the song…
“You will find many interpretations of my lyrics but none of them by me… 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.”
For me personally,..
…I completely understand how the thinking mind can be drawn into the meanings.
For instance, my brain wants to work out that “Bye, Bye Miss American Pie” alludes to the fact that, at the time, with all the social upheavals that were evident when he wrote the song at the dawn of a new decade, especially in the United States, Don was suggesting for the people to not get too comfortable in their lives. That social changes were happening that would push the old ways out (when Buddy, Ritchie, and Jiles (The Big Bopper) were still alive), and move them into a future which could be unnervingly unfamiliar. In other words, don’t let yourself feel too safe. This whole safe, secure, comfortable feeling (the apple pie); the comfort blanket that you’ve been led to believe in your whole life, could well be just an illusion (this train of thought could well have come from when Don’s father died, when Don was only 15 years old, possibly leaving him a little vulnerable, growing up in his later teenage years).
Is it like the wizard in ‘The Wizard of Oz’?. After all the changes since the end of the 1950’s, to how their world had been left by the end of the 1960’s, who knows what the 1970’s, and beyond, could bring?
What is really behind the curtain?
See how easy it is to fall into?
Ultimately, I like to think that it’s good to know the inquisitive mind is still healthily pushing boundaries and questioning things which don’t necessarily like being questioned; and long may it continue.
As Don sings himself…
“Do you recall what was revealed
The day the music died?”
Over here, in the U.K. Singles Chart,..
…the British public’s interest took a while to pique, when it had initially edged in at No.49 on the 16th of January. However, as the first month of the year progressed, it first bounded up to No.27, and then climbed another 10 places to No.17.
Now in this month of February, the single will unnervingly almost slow to a crawl, when it only creeps up 2 places to No.15, but then suddenly bounds into the Top 10, to sit at No.6, before another climb of 3 places, to find it here at No.3.
After this week, it will gain another place and sit at No.2, but then goes no further for 3 weeks, from the 27th of February to the 18th of March, before it slips slowly back throughout March to No.3, then No.4, and then No.7, before the drops become more rapid.
In total, “American Pie” will rack up a very respectable total of 16 weeks in the chart, with 8 of those impressively in the Top 10, before singing bye bye after Saturday the 6th of May.
I remember exactly where I was when I first heard this song…
It was a friend’s birthday, out in Central London during the late afternoon / evening, I believe for his 18th, which was in August. I can’t quite remember if he was half a year older, or younger than I was, whichever way it lands, that would place it in the summer of either 1989 or 1990.
Now I may have heard it in the background, on the radio, countless times before. However, it was when walking into the Hard Rock Café that I really took notice of it.
Maybe it was because of the amazing sound system they had in the place, but I remember walking in with the song enveloping me, and while standing with the others at the bar, waiting to get our drinks (which took longer, due to the bar steward breaking a glass over the ice bucket, having to throw the whole lot of it away, and get some more ice in a fresh bucket), the song began to wind down to the end.
I don’t think I’d ever heard the full version before. I know I’d never heard the end of it; and as the other voices came in at the final chorus, I turned around, sure that the rest of the establishment were singing it, and a bit perplexed when I could see that clearly everyone else wasn’t. I just remember it sounding as if he.and they, were there singing for real.
Anyway, the next video came on, which in complete contrast to Don, was Duran Duran’s uncut version of “Girls On Film”. The uncensored version.
Something else I’d never seen before, especially not on a late afternoon out.
Still, that gave me something else to ‘study’ while I waited for the drinks to finally arrive.
Anyway, I digress.
Just as a quick final afterthought back to “American Pie”.
As I mentioned earlier, the song is about the demise of Buddy Holly who with Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper perished in a plane crash back in early 1959.
Now, for me, originally writing this in the year 2023, that moment is ancient Rock history. However, back when this single was riding high in the charts on the day I was born, that tragic moment had happened only 13 years before. That would be like 2010 at the time of writing, and that sort of blows my mind.
The “A” Side
The “B” Side
Don McLean – American Pie (TV Performance)
Don McLean – American Pie (Live Performance)
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