“I ruined my career”: The mistake that Don McLean still laments
The music industry can be a cruel place. Artists put everything they have into their work, writing a plethora of songs and constantly trying to give the public something that resonates but also that is true to them. The care and attention artists give their songs never change, yet how the public perceives those songs changes drastically. Don McLean is all too aware of how tricky the music industry can be.
When McLean was working on his debut album, he was touring up and down the country and signed to a record label that looked as though it was going under. He didn’t pay too much attention to the label’s business affairs and instead simply focused on becoming the best artist he could possibly become.
“The record company going out of business was very daunting, but I still had to finish the new album,” he said, “I wanted something long about America and different and really rock and roll, old fashioned rock and roll. That was my goal. I said, ‘To hell with it. I’m going to keep working on these songs’.”
For the next few months, one of his big pieces of work became the song which would be his biggest hit, ‘American Pie’. The track, which is eight minutes long, laced with narrative and incredibly catchy, came to McLean in fits and starts. He knew it was a track that deserved his attention, but he wasn’t sure which direction it would go down.
“I wanted to speed up the verses and tell the story, but what was the story going to be?” He said, “Well, I couldn’t figure that out, and then it just came to me. Because I figured out that politics and music influence each other, I decided I was going to make a song that went forward and toward it. I wasn’t sure what type of an ending it would be, whether it’d be a happy ending, or an apocalyptic thing.”
As we all know, McLean ended up finishing the song, and it was a hit. Given how long and poetic the track was in its construction, people called it the second coming of ‘Like A Rolling Stone’. However, even though McLean was proud of the track, he also has regrets surrounding it. His first regret is that the song frequently labels him a one-hit wonder despite his releasing over 40 albums. His other regret is letting the record label manipulate the track.
McLean’s record label had been bought out by Mediarts, who were keen on releasing a lot of music as soon as possible. One of these songs was ‘American Pie’, which the label saw promise with but had also cut up to make it more radio-friendly. McLean hated the way the revised version made him look.
“Somebody there heard the song and immediately cut all the slow parts out,” recalled McLean, “And made it chorus and two verses and chorus over and over at the end and put it on the radio, and I went to #1, just like a rocket.”
He continued, “I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t listen to the radio, and I didn’t care. But suddenly, William Morris was telling me, ‘You’re getting bookings in major theatres now and college concerts in big halls’. It ruined my career because I was immediately branded as a sellout.”
