This article is from the The Annotated American Pie FAQ, by Rich Kulawiec rsk@gsp.org with numerous contributions by others.
I met a girl who sang the blues
Janis Joplin.
And I asked her for some happy news
But she just smiled and turned away
Janis died of an accidental heroin overdose on October 4, 1970.
I went down to the sacred store
Where I'd heard the music years before
There are two interpretations of this: The "sacred store" was
Bill Graham's Fillmore West, one of the great rock and roll venues
of all time. Alternatively, this refers to record stores, and their
longtime (then discontinued) practice of allowing customers to
preview records in the store. (What year did the Fillmore West
close?)
It could also refer to record stores as "sacred" because this is where
one goes to get "saved".
(See above lyric "Can music save your mortal soul?")
But the man there said the music wouldn't play
Perhaps he means that nobody is interested in hearing Buddy Holly
et.al.'s music? Or, as above, the discontinuation of the in-store
listening booths.
It's also possible that this line and the two before it refer
to the closing of the Fillmore West in 19?? -- but I've been
unable to verify that it was actually closed when this song
was written.
And in the streets the children screamed
"Flower children" being beaten by police and National Guard troops;
in particular, perhaps, the People's Park riots in Berkeley in
1969 and 1970.
The lovers cried and the poets dreamed
The trend towards psychedelic music in the 60's?
But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken
It could be that the broken bells are the dead musicians: neither can
produce any more music.
And the three men I admire most
The Father Son and Holy Ghost
Holly, The Big Bopper, and Valens
-- or --
Hank Williams, Presley and Holly
-- or --
JFK, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy
-- or --
or the Catholic aspects of the deity.
McLean had attended several Catholic schools.
They caught the last train for the coast
Could be a reference to wacky California religions, or could just be
a way of saying that they've left (or died -- western culture often
uses "went west" as a synonym for dying). Or, perhaps this is a
reference to the famous "God is Dead" headline in the New York Times.
David Cromwell has suggested that this is an oblique reference to
a line in Procol Harum's "Whiter Shade of Pale", but I'm not sure
I buy that; for one thing, all of McLean's musical references are
to much older "roots" rock and roll songs; and secondly, I think it's
more likely that this line shows up in both songs simply because it's
a common cultural metaphor.
The day the music died
This tends to support the conjecture that the "three
men" were Holly/Bopper/Valens, since this says that
they left on the day the music died.
And they were singing...
Refrain (2x)
 
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