Don McLean

“But I knew - in the old days, if a song was a good song, I don't care if it was 'Yellow Submarine' or, you know, or 'The Times They Are a-Changin' or 'Don't Be Cruel', you knew it, you know? You heard that song, and you were talking about it, and you knew it.”

“No matter how happy or hopeful I am, I always tend to drift back to that. It's underneath all the music I've ever written... An artist is trying to tell you how he's feeling. And if that accidentally becomes entertaining, it becomes a career.”

“I was around in 1970, and now I am around in 2015 ... there is no poetry and very little romance in anything anymore, so it is really like the last phase of 'American Pie.'”

“People ask me if I left the lyrics open to ambiguity. Of course I did. I wanted to make a whole series of complex statements. The lyrics had to do with the state of society at the time.”

“That song didn't just happen. It grew out of my experiences. 'American Pie' was part of my process of self-awakening: a mystical trip into my past.”

“Before the Beatles, America was musically a very conservative country. You can see film footage of people at a baseball game, they all had hats and ties on, and the women were dressed up like they were going to church. That was the America that I started getting interested in musically.”

“Over the years I've had more and more of an association with Nashville.”

“In the autumn of 1970 I had a job singing in the school system, playing my guitar in classrooms.”

“I'd listen to all the stuff that was going on around me and drift off into my fantasies about it. My fantasies have fuelled all the songs I've ever written.”

“I'm glad that my music has helped other people as it's helped me. It makes me glad that I did what I did with my life.”

“My expectations for myself were never high. I had a very unusual way of writing songs and of thinking about music. I wasn't at all like Bob Dylan or Simon and Garfunkel. I was completely different - I didn't have a David Geffen at my side.”

“In a sense, 'American Pie' was a very despairing song but it can also be seen as very hopeful.”

“I was always just into my music and maybe into trying to save the world a little bit. I never really thought I'd have a hit record or anything like that. I was prepared to travel around all over the country, kind of like a Johnny Appleseed, and sing.”

“Herman Melville was supposed to be an accountant. Van Gogh was meant to be an art dealer. I was meant to take the train into New York and work for a bank. To be an artist, you have to say goodbye to your family.”

“I actually feel I'm in a much better place than I've ever been because I'm thankful people still love the songs that I've written, and they seem to like me. And they come to the shows in droves, and they get all excited, and I can still hit all the notes, and I don't look terrible.”

“Basically, in 'American Pie,' things are heading in the wrong direction. It is becoming less ideal, less idyllic. I don't know whether you consider that wrong or right, but it is a morality song in a sense.”

“All roads lead to 'American Pie.' 'As American as apple pie' was the saying. It was some kind of a big American song that I wanted to write, which would be a conclusion for my show and bring all the songs home, which it still does. I can go anywhere I want with American music and come home to that. And it all makes sense.”

“When I go on the road now, which is less than before, but still more than I'd like to, I think of myself primarily as a singer. Not a songwriter, not a celebrity, just a man who likes to sing.”

“I got my first guitar when I was 16. I'd play for my family and friends, but taking that guitar out there into the wide, wide world wasn't something I ever thought about.”

“I just started playing guitar and started singing and started working on this act that I would call 'Don McLean' when I was probably in high school.”