Don McLean
17 articles
Audio interviews
Interview by John Tobler, Rock's Backpages audio, 1989
The singer/songwriter talks of his environmental concerns; being too commercial for the folk world; working in Nashville; choosing the musician's life; his association with the Weavers' Lee Hayes; his early albums including American Pie; playing with the Persuasions and Jordanaires; keeping his copyrights, and the importance of ideas.
File format: mp3; total file size: 38.4mb, total interview length: 40' 01" sound quality: *****
List of articles in the library
Interview by David G. Walley, Phonograph Record, 1 December 1971
DON WALKS INTO MY cluttered house, up four flights and to the left, arriving in a confusion of papers, cats, ashtrays. ...
Review by Michael Gray, Let It Rock, March 1973
THERE ARE TIMES when rock music seems about as relevant as O-level Geography, and listening to Don McLean's new album is one of them. ...
Eye On The Future, Ear In The Past: Don McLean
Interview by Jerry Gilbert, Sounds, 22 September 1973
DON McLEAN took a deep breath and launched into a long qualification of his next album — how one cycle was complete and how his ...
Don McLean: Royal Albert Hall, London
Live Review by Bob Woffinden, New Musical Express, 20 October 1973
AFTER RECEIVING one of the warmest receptions that it's possible for a sepulchral Albert Hall audience to give there can be no doubt about either ...
Don McLean: Playin' Favourites
Review by Bob Woffinden, New Musical Express, 27 October 1973
AN ALBUM of other people's songs from someone who's written a few celebrated ones of his own? Yes, this is Don McLean laying bare his ...
Don McLean: One Of Mammy's Boys
Interview by Bob Woffinden, New Musical Express, 3 November 1973
DON McLEAN on the traumas of 'instant' success and the virtues of Al Jolson's act...not to mention, of course the incredible Perry Como and Bing ...
Review by Paul Gambaccini, Rolling Stone, 20 December 1973
DON McLEAN could well be the pop Orson Welles of the Seventies, a talented man who happened to make his initial impact with one of ...
What Does It Feel Like to Create Today's Music?
Interview by Loraine Alterman, Family Weekly, 21 July 1974
"I guess there are some people who sit down and say, 'All right, I want to write a hit single. Let's see, what's a big item ...
Review by Bob Woffinden, New Musical Express, 14 December 1974
UNEASY PREAMBLE: I don't really know what to make of this album. Bits of it seem to me very good, other bits leave me unconvinced, ...
Don McLean: How A Hobo Could Save McLean From Endless Pie
Interview by Chris Charlesworth, Melody Maker, 22 March 1975
THE BIZARRE tale of a black hobo with one leg who fell from a Dallas bound train in the early part of this century and ...
Live Review by Bob Woffinden, New Musical Express, 24 May 1975
WHY SHOULD DON McLean have chosen to open his Albert Hall-concert – and with it his first British tour for eighteen months – with his ...
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Sounds, 7 January 1978
COULD IT be that protest singers are about to make a comeback? It makes sense – after the glitter and the head-banging punk came out ...
Don McLean: City Hall, Newcastle
Live Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Sounds, 27 May 1978
ALTHOUGH HE has become generally underrated because 'American Pie' and 'Vincent' in their different ways were songs impossible to top, to me Don McLean has ...
Don McLean: Waterfront Hall, Belfast
Live Review by Colin Harper, The Irish Times, 30 October 1998
"PEOPLE ASK ME what 'American Pie' means" says Don, midway through his enviably well-attended show. "It means I don't have to work any more if ...
School of Rock Study Guide: Singer-Songwriters
Guide by Barney Hoskyns, iTunes, October 2008
"WHERE DO YOU have left to go but in?" It was a question posed by Joni Mitchell, the brilliant Canadian blonde who specialized in intensely ...
Retrospective and Interview by David Burke, R2/Rock'n'Reel, March 2015
THE OBJECTS OF pop culture iconography never grow old. Elvis Presley is forever framed as the hip-thrusting, kiss-curled, impossibly beautiful boy king, just as Bob ...
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