The Soundtrack of Seasons: Don McLean's Journey from 'American Pie' to 'Christmas Memories'

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George Panayi: Okay, are you ready?

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13524544571: Yes.

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George Panayi: Hello, listeners. Today's episode is a double delight. We're joined by the legendary Don Mc Lane, known for his timeless hits like American pie. And Vincent. But that's not all. Get ready for a festive twists as we dive into Don's latest creation. Christmas album called Christmas memories that promises to add to your musical spark

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George Panayi: for these holidays. Coming up here without further ado, Tom Mc Lane, welcome to the show!

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13524544571: Well, thank you for having me.

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George Panayi: hey? You know what christmas is a fabulous time of year. I'm happy to put this record

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George Panayi: alongside some of my favorite

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George Panayi: Records, Frank Sinatra is one of my favorite song artists.

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George Panayi: Can you describe one of your Christmas traditions that you have?

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13524544571: Well, I had a lot of Christmas traditions until my divorce. and then my Christmas traditions changed. And now I have a great girlfriend, and she has a great little family, and we have a different

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13524544571: set of traditions which have been going on for the last 8 years, I would say.

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13524544571: and what I have been doing. And and really I like to collect Christmas albums.

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13524544571: So I really like that music, and I must have 30 or 40

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different artists.

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13524544571: With their Christmas records.

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And so that was one thing I would do.

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13524544571: You know, just I'm out in California right now, because II don't really want to be in the winter

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13524544571: anymore. And there's some terrific

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13524544571: shopping out here. So I get my car and go from one cool place to the next and buy buy things for people, and then II wrap them myself.

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George Panayi: That's that's fantastic. I mean, Christmas is that time of year where you, I guess you constantly make new memories

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George Panayi: every year. Right? I mean, sometimes not so much, but hopefully, this one is an extra special one for you, Don. Well, my! My girlfriend, Paris, she's been with me every Christmas for the last 8 years.

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13524544571: and we spend every Christmas together, and we also had a fun 2 days in in Hawaii, and we spent a week there when I was singing with my boys. It's a blue note

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13524544571: cafe, and I stayed at this really very old hotel in Waikiki Beach, and it was a really good experience, and I enjoyed it. So we're back now, and we're doing the thing here. But I'm really excited about promoting

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13524544571: these tracks because I think the album feels like the way I remember Christmas, and I hope that

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13524544571: people will hear this record and play it, you know, each year going forward because there's a lot of I think there are a lot of very nice things on it.

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George Panayi: What do you remember Christmas being like?

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13524544571: Well, you know, in my, when I was young, and I'm a pretty old guy. Things were very quiet, you know you didn't. The phone didn't ring, and and if it did, it usually was serious.

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13524544571: So you know, you didn't have a lot of distraction. You had the newspapers, and you had a half hour of news in the evening, and later on at 110'clock, and that was pretty much the same thing.

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13524544571: and it was baseball, and it was all this during the year. And then, as you'd move toward Christmas, there was a I think, a more solemn

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13524544571: attitude, because we were a white Christian country in those days, and this is about the birth of Christ. And this is about

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13524544571: you know, a solemn event, and secondarily to that, of course, it was Santa Claus and Christmas.

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you know.

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13524544571: food and all this good stuff, and I and I think it was really wonderful how the year was planned out. because, you know, you'd have your

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cold winter, and then you move into beautiful spring, and

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13524544571: then you'd have your great summers, you know, one which would never be long enough, and then fall was very poignant, and then thanksgiving, and it was worked out.

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13524544571: you know, to think about. What do you have to be thankful for? And I every year, when I had a family and my children were home.

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13524544571: I would ask them, what are you thankful for this year? I know what I'm thankful for, and we would talk about that because there's so much to be thankful for. And then you move into this sparkling

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13524544571: colorful. You know, Christmas time with music and the TV shows where were interesting. You know, they had specials and

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variety programs. But again, television was not

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13524544571: like, it is now omnipresence, you know, everywhere.

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George Panayi: Yeah, absolutely. It's become more materialistic.

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George Panayi: It's a great time of year to celebrate with your family, but it's also very dangerous time of year for many people, as you know, we end up spending well. Some of us end up spending more than what we've got in our pockets. And

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George Panayi: this is what some people suggest is the beginning for some people shopping

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George Panayi: the the debt carries on from Christmas, and it goes on to almost half the year, if not the whole next year. Let's talk about gifts. What is one of the most memorable gifts you've ever received on Christmas.

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13524544571:  probably, some kind of a 6 shooter

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13524544571: or gene autry watch, or something, you know, when I was a little guy. you know some cowboy star.

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13524544571:  we would get things from them because we love cowboys, and I still do. And we love the the TV shows and the movies. And that is that was one thing that that stayed with all of us growing up. We had these

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13524544571: individuals who were moral guides in a way, Roy Rogers and Gene, Archery, and couple on Cassidy and the Lone Ranger. These were.

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13524544571: These were not just for entertainment purposes for children. They were also to teach them

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13524544571: right from wrong. And you know, Corny, as that may seem sometimes, Corny is very, very good and very important.

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13524544571: And we we we keep. We're having to relearn everything. Which is so. How stupid we are! You know that we had a lot of good things already, and we throw them away for something else, and then we come back to that.

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13524544571: So there was that, you know, and then there was a feeling of goodness, you know.

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13524544571: and also when I was little, it was only a few years after World War 2 had ended. So believe me, Thanksgiving was full of poignant memories for families, you know.

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13524544571: young men, and who had died in the war and There were a lot of old uniforms up in the attic, you know, and and we were in a a time. Now, you know, when we're a teenager

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13524544571: actually was created. because when the boys came home they started knocking out the kids. and soon we were a buying group that they had to name, you know. And and then we created our own music and our own

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13524544571: pastimes, records and things that we did

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13524544571: dance steps, whatever and everything was because of this massive

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13524544571: young people called teenagers and of course that made Christmas even more fun, you know, because it was not a an old man or an old woman's thing. Now it was a you know, a teenage thing.

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George Panayi: These are. These are great memories, and they're one of a kind, unique memories. Hearing it from you! Are there any artists or genres outside of your own

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George Panayi: that have significantly influenced your music? You know, perhaps, in ways that your fans might be surprised by?

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13524544571: Are are there any young performers around that I would like, or my fans would like?

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George Panayi: No. Is there? Are there any other genres or artists that your fans would be surprised that you're influenced by.

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13524544571: Oh, well, I'm I'm very guitar or or I'm guitar centric. So I'm interested in classical guitar, Flamenco guitar jazz guitar rock and roll guitar.

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13524544571: Every kind of guitar, you know. It's it's

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13524544571: yeah. And so I

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13524544571: I'm amazed at how the guitar is an instrument that

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13524544571: you can play a little, or you can play a lot.

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13524544571: You know. Woody Guthrie was not a very good guitar player, but he had the songs in his head. So

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you know, he played this land as your land with 2 chords

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13524544571: or some of his other beautiful songs. But yet. you can be much more sophisticated than that. There's you know, they're all kinds of George Benson and Bucky Pizzarelli. And these guys.

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13524544571: you know, sing and play. And they very sophisticated musically. So it's it's not like the piano, because the piano, if you're a bad piano player, you know that 1 min, you know, anybody can put a guitar on and play 3 chords, and you can get by, you know, singing, you know, a simple song, but you can't get by on the piano. If you don't know what you're doing.

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George Panayi: absolutely.

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George Panayi: let's talk about a Christmas album, the one you have going now. Christmas memories. Why is now the time

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George Panayi: for a Christmas album from Don Mclean.

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13524544571: Well, I again, I don't ever plan anything. I kind of backed into this because I have a deal with this company, and they're kind of put out

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13524544571: 16 of my albums, all in Vinyl and on CD. Over the next couple of years. I would imagine. Maybe the next even year I don't know. They'll they'll all be on Amazon

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albums that people bought a lot of in the last 40 years.

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13524544571: and so I got a chance. While talking to my producer, Mike Fevers, out in Nashville, I said, you know

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13524544571: it's getting to be Christmas time, and there's a couple of these tracks that there's some things on there that really really bother me. And II just for fun.

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13524544571: I don't care about the expense. I just would like to change them if we have a great upright bass player named Jim Ferguson, who swings just like the old guys, you know. And

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13524544571: So he came in, and we over dubbed a bunch of beautiful swing and bass parts on some of these tracks that I formerly did not like the base on, and

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13524544571: we got them going, and then remix them. And he put the Eq. On my voice, which is much bigger. The whole thing is much bigger, more dynamic. And I got 3 or 4 of these, and I said, You know, this is like a new record. I said we should put

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13524544571: should do a dozen of these and put this out. So that's how that started.

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George Panayi: That's incredible. I'm it's always good to hear some something new around this time of year. And

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I just wanna say,

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George Panayi: there were a lot of questions I wanted to ask you. But there's one in particular your song, American pie is often analyzed and interpreted in various ways. Can you share any insight into its creation and the meaning behind it

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George Panayi: from your perspective.

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13524544571: Well, there's a whole movie now called The Day the music died. Story of Don Mclean's American pie, and you can stream that on paramount plus.

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13524544571: And you can buy that on Amazon. You can also buy on Amazon the new Christmas Album, Christmas

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13524544571: memories remixed and remastered.

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13524544571: So everything is on Amazon, and and but I will tell you something that 2 years ago we began working on this documentary.

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13524544571: and I wasn't all that thrilled about another movie.

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13524544571: But I a a. A bunch of other people were involved in making this. Not just me.

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13524544571: you know, and so I so I'll do a couple of interviews, whatever, you know. But then I started getting involved, and I began to see some of the footage that they came up with.

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13524544571: And I it it really hit me that this song, American Pie, which is my most famous song. and probably one of the most famous songs it ever was, was took me 10 years to write this thing

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13524544571: that I was thinking about Buddy Holly the whole time. In those 10 years I was always thinking about him. He was always haunting me, and I adore. I love his music, the tripping crickets to me that's one of the greatest albums ever made, and this is no dis. This is no disrespect to, you know the Beatles, or the Stones, or any of the English groups, but they cannot hold a candle to Buddy Holly.

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13524544571: and that's this new Route month coming out with American boys, invented rock and roll. And that's we invented this stuff. So Buddy is a total original. He wrote all his own songs. Every song was a hit, and he died at 22 years of age.

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13524544571: and they're still digging up stuff like these apartment tapes that they found which we thought were done on the studio because they were they had additional music put onto them, and they had the Buddy Holly story volume, too, but you know he was. He moved to New York City and

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13524544571: wanted to get with what was going on in Washington Square. and he'd he was moving on. He was very, very creative, young guy, and

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13524544571: so that haunted me. And I remember finally I was getting with Pete Seeger. And I was thinking about America a lot, because, you know, there are all these

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13524544571: really

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13524544571: bad things going on. People are setting the city's on fire, and so on, and so forth.

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13524544571: And

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13524544571: I was thinking about America. I wanted to write a big song about America, and then all of a sudden the first part of American pie came out of me.

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13524544571: and that was the story of the plane crash, and I said, Well, I'm I'm on my way, and that's how it started.

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George Panayi: This is incredible. Thank you so much, Don, for joining us on meet me for coffee. Looking forward to spitting this new record. Christmas memories from Don Mclean. At my Christmas dinner this year. Thank you so much. Happy holidays, and hopefully

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13524544571: great to talk to you, man, I enjoyed it.

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George Panayi: Take care.

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13524544571: bye, bye.