'American Pie' writer Don McLean brings songbook to Bonita Springs

Don McLean, whose first hit propelled him out of the 1970s box of pop tunes into posterity, is philosophical about his most famous work.

McLean, who will sing "American Pie" at the Southwest Florida Event Center on Friday, Feb. 23, shakes his head mentally at fans still seeking a Rosetta stone to the rock 'n' roll landmarks and picaresque characters in its 8½-minute story.  

"People get so serious about this stuff. It's just rock 'n' roll," he said of his massive 1972 hit. "It’s fun. It’s good. It’s a good time." 

A multi-decade echo

But beyond that it's still a pleasant surprise to McLean that the song has become a brick in the bedrock of pop culture

"American Pie" was named one of the five greatest songs of the 20th century in a poll by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Recording Industry Association of America. (It was in extremely good company: The others were "This Land is Your Land," "Somewhere Over the Rainbow,"  "Respect" and "White Christmas.")

More:Hear Don McLean performing "American Pie."

It hung at the No. 1 spot on U.S. charts like a gull over the Gulf, staying there four weeks in 1972 despite being three times as long as the tunes being played around it. It reached the top spot on every English-language rock chart around the world and ignited the love affair the British and Australians have with McLean's music; after he circles U.S. concert halls, he is headed to the British Isles for a three-month tour.

It also put behind his days playing the folk clubs along the Eastern seaboard. "American Pie" gave McLean a platform for successive hits such as "Vincent (Starry, Starry Night"); "And I Love You So," which had actually been recorded for his 1969 album, "Tapestry"; and "Castles in the Air."

Further the name recognition it endowed on McLean has helped him return again and again. In 1981 he made a soulful cover of  the Roy Orbison hit "Crying," taking it to No. 5 on the Billboard charts in the U.S.

More:Hear Don McLean's rendition of the classic "Crying."

McLean had put plenty of miles on his Martin guitar and his five-string banjo before "American Pie" came out, however. At 72, he has been on the road nearly 54 years by his own estimate. He began playing at folk music clubs at age 16, after the death of his father a year earlier left his family financially strapped. 

"I wasn’t poor, but we were broke a lot," said McClean from his Palm Desert, California, home (there's also a home in Maine). "It was a great thing these folk clubs came along all over the country in the early '60s. At one time there was a folk club on just about every campus In America.

"And you could work. We would be working all the time here there and everywhere," he recalled. "I was able to help support my mother and other members of my family. I had my guitar and what I wore, and played a five-string banjo sometimes. I didn’t have to take a band."

He'll bring one to Bonita Springs, however, a band of longtime musicians friends who "can play anything, but will also let me take time and just play the guitar and perform by myself."

McLean says he never felt totally accepted by the folk music scene, however, "because I was always singing rock 'n' roll." He was an inveterate experimenter with styles and messages as well.

"I was always trying to write and capture unusual things, so ... there's never a song anybody can recognize as being a Don McLean song. ‘Wonderful Baby’ didn’t sound like ‘Dreidle,’ which didn’t sound like ‘Vincent,’ ” he said.

So many bands, he said, invest in style.

"Take, for example, Creedence Clearwater Revival," he said. "Anything it does has that kind of ‘Rollin' on the River’ sound to it. It's arrangements, yes, but there’s an energy, the chord changes — it's what they do. Same with the Stones..

"My thing is that I don't have a thing ... I come up with a theme and I don’t do it any more," he said, chuckling. 

The era of instant fame

He may have had the freedom to do that from the era in which he worked.

"God, you know, I’m so lucky to have had some No. 1 records in the ’70s and the early ’80s when there still the old music biz, the vinyl —  ... it was just such a wonderful business.

 "There were really only three stations in New York that played rock ’n’ roll, so if you had a No. 1 song everybody knew about it.  It was such a powerful thing," he recalled. "There are groups out there now who are selling out stadiums that I can’t tell you what they’re singing. It’s almost like a social event, something that occurs through social networking on the internet or something — a phenomenon.

"In my day, and before my day, it was truly song-driven. That’s when Bob Dylan was a legend. And I became very famous very fast."

That analysis comes from the business administration graduate he is (Iona College, 1968).

Despite graduating, as he had promised his late father he would,  McLean said he "got involved in the music business, because  "it’s what I wanted to do. But I had low expectations of myself," he mused. "I certainly never expected to have a famous song or  No. 1 albums.

"I’ve had quite a bit of success for someone who didn’t really think about it in commercial terms."

Gray days, new growth

Success has been tempered. McLean fought domestic violence charges brought by his second wife, Patrisha, in 2016 that were eventually settled with a fine.

"We’re talking about the end of a 30-year relationship. There were some pretty rough things that were said about me that were simply not true. And that hurt," he said.

Just a year earlier, he sold the lyrics to "American Pie" for $1.2 million, which he told Rolling Stone magazine was done to get the best price at the right time for his family.

But McLean is still singing. He comes to Bonita Springs a month to the day before the release of a new disc, "Botanical Gardens," by BMG Records.

"The theme, to put it rather prosaically and bluntly, is the old man dreaming of his youth and romance. lt’s rather romantic and personal," he said.

And, true to McLean's far-reaching roots, it won't just be ballads: "It will have a wide variety of songs and orchestrations," he promised.

Don McLean 

When: 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 23; admission for rows is timed; information on the website at swfleventcenter.com, with the venue open for drinks at 5 p.m.

Where: Southwest Florida Event Center, 11515 Bonita Beach Road S.E., Bonita Springs (southeast corner of its intersection of Imperial Parkway)

Tickets: swfleventcenter.com 

Information: 239-245-9910