Don McLean

“When people ask what 'American Pie' is about, they're missing the point. The song isn't about the lines themselves - it's about what is between the lines. The song is about what isn't there.”

“I am what I do, and that's partly why I don't want to give up singing. But when I can't sing well, I will.”

“American Pie speaks to the loss that we feel. That's why that song has found the niche that it has.”

“The kids today all seem to think they should be stars, but I wasn't brought up that way.”

“If something comes up I might write about it, but without an outlet the whole thing winds down.”

“Every thread of creation is held in position by still other strands of things living.”

“I mean, I've been given a terrific life by the audiences who stuck with me all over the world.”

“Being on United Artists was almost as bad as not being on any label at all. They were the crappiest in the business. All they did was movie soundtracks. Now, they were making an effort to become much hipper - signing people like Bobby Womack and what have you.”

“My parents were not musical, and they were not effervescent people; everything was very quiet. The music that I played was loud; it used to drive them up the wall. My father died, and that was a tragedy for everybody, but suddenly I didn't have anybody to stop me from doing what I wanted to do.”

“I had asthma when I was a kid, asthma so bad that it would turn into pneumonia and I almost died several times. Nobody knew why back then, but now it's obvious.”

“I think longevity is more important than trying to make people realize you're around every second.”

“There's always a fundamental misery that's with me that I always relate to some bit of loss or something. I don't know what it is about me, but even though I'm happy on the surface, there's something there, I guess. So, it all comes from wherever it comes from. I really don't know where that is.”

“I developed this fantasy world. I found that that was much more fun and more interesting and exciting than real life was to me. Then, once I got the guitar going when I was a teenager, I set sail for the direction I've been in my whole life.”

“I have a weird sense sometimes of what's going to happen before it happens, and I kind of live by that, which is how my instincts operate, I suppose.”

“I don't relate to what's left of the music business. There doesn't seem to be any point to it anymore. The business that I grew up in and loved, we made records a different way - there were record companies, there were stores where you could buy albums.”

“I've never done anything but what I wanted to do with my life. I don't think too many people can say that. I wrote the songs I wanted to write, for me. I had no idea that 'American Pie' would relate to anybody.”

“If you listen to one of my albums, you can tell I do a lot of different things. In the case of 'Vincent', I thought of his picture 'Starry Night.' It was a beautiful road-map for a song. I used a lot of imagery from that painting.”