There are interpretations a-plenty online. One or two suggest that the wording is actually “whisk(e)y in Rye”.
“Don McLean grew up in New York, and he would listen to music and party at “The Levee” in New Rochelle, NY. Sometimes, when The Levee would close (i.e. when the levee was dry), McLean and his friends would drive across the river and scout for places to drink and have fun in Rye, NY.”
But what always made me wonder is the line “Can music save your mortal soul”. Aren’t souls by definition immortal?
But besides taking mortal to mean transitory, the soul that is mortal, you could also take it to mean human, the soul belonging to a mortal. In which case your mortal soul might potentially be an immortal soul, thanks to the magic of language.
I wish I could react to this explanation with a , because it does nobody any favors, but Discourse only allows a or nothing at all. If this is someone besides McLean’s explanation, it sorely lacks imagination. If it is his explanation, it’s anticlimactic to say the least.
The lyric isn’t about Buddy Holly and John Wayne getting shit-faced in heaven and reminiscing about the Good Old Days™? Okay, I can accept that. But to think that it’s actually about teenagers “scout[ing] for places to drink* and have fun in Rye, NY**”? sadtrombone.wav
*Maybe things have changed since McLean’s day, but I can’t imagine kids “partying” with whiskey. Beer, most definitely. Vodka, sure why not. But whiskey is an old man’s drink.
**I have an answer for that one: way the hell away from Rye. What the hell, just get out of Westchester County completely. There. Is. Nothing. For. You. There.
I like that interpretation in that it at least explains it, but it still leaves me unsatisfied that McLean would use such an ambiguous and personal anecdote in a song that is otherwise the embodyment of the universal Young American experience '59-'69. His artistry was too advanced to be blind to the fact that “whiskey 'n Rye” would be parsed by literally everyone else as “whiskey & rye.” But he’s the writer, he’s allowed to take personal license. At least this way, it makes sense if you’re him instead of not at all.
Having only seen rough descriptions of the new Star Wars movies, and only having the description above to go on for Lucas’s version… Disney, you did a better job with the sequel trilogy than Lucas would have.
Thank you, George, for giving me perspective on how bad it actually could have been.
Eh. Singer-songwriters throw personal anecdotes into their songs all the time, even if the songs are politically and socially conscious. They write songs, not history textbooks.
But what gets me about this explanation, if true, is that it’s so mind-numbingly provincial. It comes across as: “The Levee is a bar in my suburban shitbox hometown, and Rye is the next shitbox town over, durrrrrr, and that’s the only explanation, and I expect you to know that because you’re also somehow from Westchester County!” I think the reason behind the success of “American Pie” is that so quintessentially reflects the American Experience during that time. There’s no provincialism or even regionalism to speak of. A lyric that’s about some bar in the writer’s hometown, and that has no deeper meaning other than that, would stand out like a thousand sore thumbs.
Then again, who really knows? It seems like a good 95% of the new books for sale in local bookstores are written either by or for people from Westchester County
Holy cow—I just finished reading that entire link and speaking of interesting, it hit me with two related facts heretofore unknown by me: TDTMD McLean is the inspiration to another American songwriting classic, “Killing Me Softly With His Song.” And also, that writer Lori Lieberman sang and released it herself; I always assumed that Roberta Flack’s was the original.
Re-reading the lyrics, it becomes perfectly clear that McLean and his song were the subject, and it had me tearing up.
(lyrics link)
I don’t think I’d ever heard Lieberman’s original before https://hooktube.com/watch?v=WxY47jh9owA
(hooktube allegedly removes location restrictions and loads faster but no embed)
EDIT annnd the article got it’s facts wrong. It was about McLean’s performance of a song on the American Pie album, though.
According to Lori Lieberman, who performed the original recording in 1971, the song was born of a poem she wrote after experiencing a strong reaction to the Don McLean song “Empty Chairs”,[1][2][3]
All I can think is that in another universe, bigots are complaining about putting minority characters and making fascists bad guys in Triumph of the Whills.
Well, that partial depends on how many people actually read her book, though. I like her previous work (Behind the Mask of Chivalry, which is about the KKK out in Athens, GA), but I’d guess most Americans don’t read the work of academic historians, for the most part.
This sounds like a critical book that needs to be read, but whether or not it GETS read is another question.
When I was in college in New Orleans, everyone said I would not need a car. And I didn’t. I could walk, bike, or take the streetcar (they have trolleys in San Franscico, got to get that right!), and buses. There was a lot I liked about living in the city. The ease and affordability of getting around, not to mention that it was New Orleans so to get out and go to the bars which were usually a very low cover or even no cover and see all that music was amazing.
But the crime element was very hard to cope with. I lived with a lot of fear. I had many friends who had been in dangerous situations, including the girl who lived next door to me my Sophomore year, who was murdered one morning on her way to work, just a block or two off campus. (I looked up the crime recently and learned that the guy was just released. He was described as a “walking crime spree” back in the day.)
I also really struggled with the noise of the city. I’m very sensitive to sound. Of course, out in the burbs I get the leaf blowers and lawn mowers all the time. But at night it gets quiet.
Interesting but I was annoyed with the reporting of this part
a stockbroker called Arsène Goedertier had a heart attack and made a
deathbed confession to his lawyer. Goedertier was said to have
whispered: “I alone know where the Mystic Lamb is. The information is in
the drawer on the right of my writing table, in an envelope marked
‘mutualité’.”
It was carbon copies of the ransom letters. So basically Goedertier did it, or was the last living accomplice, or something. But all they tell us is that he was a stockbroker. Presumably he has been the subject of some investigations since then. He loved art? He just wanted the money? Being a stockbroker was just a cover for being an underworld kingpin? He was always mild-mannered but saw an opportunity to get away with it and took his shot? Why is Goedertier so obfuscated in the article? Perhaps he covered his motivations, his methods so well that there’s nothing to report, but at least say that, don’t leave us guessing.
, because it does nobody any favors, but Discourse only allows a 
or nothing at all. If this is someone besides McLean’s explanation, it sorely lacks imagination. If it is his explanation, it’s anticlimactic to say the least.
