Don McLean

01. American Pie
02. Vincent
03. And I Love You So
04. Castles  In The Air
05. Love Hurts
06. Crossroads
07. The Birthday Song
08. It Doesn't Matter Anymore
09. Crying
10. Prime Time
11. Winterwood
12. Crying In The Chapel
13. Wonderful Baby
14. Everyday
15. Fool's Paradise
16. Tapestry
17. Sittin' On Top Of The World

http://www.dfw.com/2012/09/08/677521/5-questions-with-don-mclean.html

Don McLean says he already knows how his obituary will begin. It'll emphasize the singer/songwriter's best-remembered hit, American Pie. This song, about "the day the music died," was a No. 1 chart topper in 1972. More recently, when a 2001 Recording Industry Association of America/National Endowment for the Arts poll celebrated the greatest songs of the 20th century, American Pie ranked fifth on the list. But McLean is no one-hit wonder. Other successful singles include Vincent, Crying and Wonderful Baby. And 40 years after American Pie, McLean is still writing music and still performing. Here he answers 5 questions:

1 When you look back over four decades in the music business, what do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment?

The main thing I would like to say is that I have become the person I wanted to be. As opposed to reaching goals but being an alcoholic, or reaching goals but having four failed marriages, or reaching goals but having kids in rehab. A lot of people reach their goals, but at a terrific price.

2 Is it safe to say, then, that you never cared about fame?

I had a recording contract with Clive Davis for about a year. He kept sending me wimpy little songs to sing and I didn't want to do them. So we ended our association. I guarantee you if I had decided to sing those songs, with the production values they would have used, I would have had hit records. But I didn't want those kinds of hit records. I don't want songs that don't mean anything. You wind up regretting it in the end anyway. Because if you get a hit that you don't like, you've still got to sing it.

3 Songs come and songs go. So what do you think about the staying power of American Pie?

It's a real honor and a gift. The thing that I value about the songs that Buddy Holly wrote and that Elvis sang, the songs by Pete Seeger and the Weavers, those songs are my friends. Better than my friends, in fact, because they're always there. And my hope is that people will consider my songs to be their friends as the years go by.

4 Is it true that the famous song Killing Me Softly is about you?

The way it happened was that Lori Lieberman [who was first to record the song, a year before Roberta Flack sang it] was asked by a friend to go see me in concert. I sang a song called Empty Chairs. That was a song that apparently resonated with her. She had all these feelings and told the songwriters about that. So they didn't have Don McLean in their minds when they wrote Killing Me Softly. But they used her memories of what she saw when she saw me. So she feels, and has always said, that the song is about me.

5 You're doing a concert tour in England next month. At age 66, have you ever considered retiring?

It's not really a career. It's a way of life. It's like breathing. I can't do anything else.



Wiki:
Famed for -- and ultimately defined by -- his perennial "American Pie," singer/songwriter Don McLean was born October 2, 1945, in New Rochelle, New York. After getting his start in the folk clubs of New York City during the mid-'60s, McLean struggled for a number of years, building a small following through his work with Pete Seeger on the Clearwater, a sloop that sailed up and down the eastern seaboard to promote environmental causes.

Still, McLean was primarily singing in elementary schools and the like when, in 1970, he wrote a musical tribute to painter Vincent Van Gogh; the project was roundly rejected by a number of labels, although MediaArts did offer him a contract to record a number of his other songs under the title Tapestry. The album fared poorly, but Perry Como earned a hit with a cover of the track "And I Love Her So," prompting United Artists to pick up McLean's contract. He returned in 1971 with American Pie; the title track, an elegiac eight-and-a-half-minute folk-pop epic inspired by the tragic death of Buddy Holly, became a number one hit, and the LP soon reached the top of the charts as well.

The follow-up, "Vincent," was also a smash, and McLean even became the subject of the Roberta Flack hit "Killing Me Softly with His Song"; however, to his credit -- and to his label's horror -- the singer refused to let the success of "American Pie" straitjacket his career. Subsequent records like 1972's self-titled effort and 1974's Playin' Favorites deliberately avoided any attempts to re-create the "American Pie" flavor; not surprisingly, his sales plummeted, and the latter release even failed to chart. After 1974's Homeless Brother and 1976's Solo, United Artists dropped McLean from his contract; he resurfaced on Arista the next year with Prime Time, but when it, too, fared poorly, he spent the next several years without a label.

McLean enjoyed a renaissance of sorts with 1980's Chain Lightning; his first Top 30 LP in close to a decade, it spawned a Top Ten smash with its cover of Roy Orbison's classic "Crying," and his originals "Castles in the Air" and "Since I Don't Have You" both also reached the Top 40. However, 1981's Believers failed to sustain the comeback, and after 1983's Dominion, he was again left without benefit of label support. McLean spent the remainder of his career primarily on the road, grudgingly restoring "American Pie" to his set list and drawing inspiration from the country market; in addition to a number of live sets and re-recordings of old favorites, he also returned to the studio for projects like 1990's For the Memories (a collection of classic pop, country, and jazz covers) and 1995's River of Love (an LP of original material).