His dream, to play in a band at high school dances, was the dream of many young boys who wanted to make people dance to Rock and Roll.īuddy Holly died on February 3, 1959, in a plane crash in Iowa during a snowstorm. McLean also had an intense desire to entertain as a musician. McLean was a teenager in 1959 and he begins by simply commenting that the music had an appealing quality to him as well as the millions of other teens. Their shear number were the force behind most of our country’s recent major transitions. Sociologists credit teenagers with the popularity of Rock and Roll, as a part of the Baby boomer generation, they found themselves in a very influential position. And I knew if I had my chance, That I could make those people dance, And maybe they’d be happy for a while. I can still remember how That music used to make me smile. “American Pie” reached #1 in 1972, shortly after it was released. Buddy Holly, unfortunately, died in 1959 while other aspects of the song hint even further back. Little did I know then that the impression it left would be indelible, drawing me decades later to Austin, TX, the live music capital of the world, where the story of Buddy Holly’s impact on Texas music can be found in the Texas History Museum. No longer online, that domain was later replaced with a site I called RareException, an effort also relegated to history when I found myself first employed at Yahoo! As it happens, my passion for this song was imprinted on my life thanks to my young love affair with high school theater as a Junior at Portage Northern High School, the performing artists of the graduating Senior class sang this, a cappella, during their graduating performance. The republishing, here, is to retain, as an archive, the history of that publishing it was the first of a few music related articles I used in the creation of my first website The Octopus’s Garden.

First published in 1996- ish, what follows is an article I wrote out of a passion I had for the tune and lyrics, for a music history class.

Don mclean american pie songs