Don McLean to bring 'American Pie 50th Anniversary Tour' to Grand Forks' Fritz Auditorium
Pamela Knudson, Grand Forks Herald
6 min read
Jan. 28—GRAND FORKS — When Don McLean brings his "American Pie 50th Anniversary Tour" to the Chester Fritz Auditorium on Feb. 5, the audience will hear songs the iconic singer-songwriter is known for, as well as music that will be new to his fans.
This event is McLean's first concert appearance in Grand Forks.
The tour celebrates the anniversary of the release of "American Pie," a classic work that is probably the most "evergreen" song in popular music, promoters say.
"That song is entertaining on a bunch of different levels for people," McLean said in an interview with the Herald. "I think they love to fool around with the lyrics. I think they like to sing it when they get loaded ... in a bar somewhere."
"It leads to discussions about music and America and politics and all that," McLean said. "So, it's more than a song."
With the backstory that references the tragic, untimely death of the rock 'n' roll legend Buddy Holly, the song also emerged from the anti-war turmoil that gripped the country five decades ago.
But the longevity of this 76-year-old musician's success is not driven by a single hit.
In the performance at the Fritz, McLean and his four-member band will showcase the slower numbers he's known for — and audiences expect to hear — such as "Vincent (Starry Starry Night)" and "Crossroads," he said, "or I can rock-n-roll — and everything in between."
"There's no audience of any size — as long as the sound system is big — that we can't rock," he said.
Concert-goers will hear "And I Love You So," "Cryin'," "Since I Don't Have You" and "Castles in the Air," he said, as well as songs from his most recent album, "Botanical Gardens," and a yet-to-be-released album.
McLean, who started the anniversary tour recently in Hawaii, has scheduled about 80 performances in 2022. He's been touring since 1968, he said, until the pandemic, which derailed his and numerous other touring shows.
"I've kind of missed it. I'm really glad to be getting out and doing whatever shows I'm able to do on this tour," said McLean, who makes his home in Palm Desert, California. "In spite of everything, I've had wonderful health and have toughed it out, kept on going, year after year after year."
The song he is most known for, "American Pie," arose out of his "desire to write a contemporary song about America rather than just a love letter to the country or something like that," he said.
In the late '60s and the early '70s, "I was around a lot of left-wing people," he said. "There was a lot of anger toward America, and I heard those kind of songs and I didn't want to do that — I was not quite the same as a lot of those people were, although I was very very unhappy about the Vietnam War and I am still very unhappy about wars in general that we get ourselves into ... so that's always present."
In the song, "there's the sense of civil unrest, which was how the song was born," he said.
"American Pie" was recorded for McLean's first album, "Tapestry," in May 1971 in Berkeley, Calif.
"There were riots every few days and there'd be tear gas, and some of the (musicians) would come to the sessions and they'd get caught in the middle of the whole thing and they'd get tear-gassed. And they'd have to wash their eyes out."
In an environment of pervasive "anger in the streets" in those turbulent years, "I was capturing that — or attempting to — but at the same time trying to keep ("American Pie") a little light, which is a tricky thing to do. But I managed to do it with the chorus and the melody and the way it moves."
The "Tapestry" album launched McLean's transition to international stardom. Thirty years later, "American Pie" was voted No. 5 in a poll of the 365 "Songs of the Century," compiled by the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Through his years in elementary school in New Rochelle, N.Y., McLean suffered serious bouts with asthma, which kept him out of school for long periods of time, he said. "And, believe you me, I was sick — I couldn't walk up the stairs in our little house to get to the bedroom. I was completely drained of any energy whatsoever."
But the recurring illness allowed him to spend hours at home listening to music, he remembered. "I loved music. And I didn't realize this (at the time) but I loved people who played guitar." He was especially drawn to the music of Elvis Presley and Roy Orbeson, and to folk and country music.
As he matured, the asthma attacks subsided, he said. "Singing really helped me," because the ability to sing at the level he desired requires breath control.
In later years, as a young songwriter, he was influenced by Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie.
"I was impressed by their use of language," said McLean, who earned a college degree in finance and economics, with a minor in philosophy.
But McLean's musical style is uniquely his own.
"There's a confessional quality to my music — which I think I pioneered, I don't think people did that before me — and a personal quality to the music," he said.
His music "is also distinctly American in a kind of 1950s way — I don't curse in my songs and I don't speak badly about people or make violent remarks. There's a lot of that now."
In contrast to the "ugliness" in music today, he said, "I try to go for beauty, beautiful things, beautiful melody; I like the sound to be beautiful. I like the ideas to be lyrical and beautiful, as demonstrated by a song like 'Vincent'. That's what that sound has."
About his approach to creating music, he said, "I'm a song-writer, but also an inventor — I kind of invent ideas for songs that are radically different.
"All my songs are very different — and it's still me, you can tell it's me. If you listen to five of my songs you're going to hear five different lyric styles, five different rhythm styles, and five different melodies that are nothing like the other melodies, pretty much.
"What I'm trying to do is, I'm feeling something — the feeling is going through me while I'm writing the song and I'm trying to get it so that when I sing it and you hear it, the feeling comes back. You feel it," he said.
"So whenever you hear 'Vincent,' you're always going to get that strange 'Vincent' feeling that you can't get anywhere else. It's in a bottle, almost."
