What was revealed the day the music died

I bought into the idea that America was the greatest. He asked her about faith and whether she believes, no matter what, if the Bible tells her so. That is the representation of the faith in the Fifties. He then talks about, do you have faith in rock and roll, that music will save your mortal soul. So the girl moves on to somebody else, leaving him with his truck and the carnation. You would do things because the Bible told you so.

Remember in the Fifties you had faith, you had the Bible, you had family, you had all of these things that were there. This is referring to Bob Dylan who the court jester and his song like a Rolling Stone. Lenin read a book of Marx. We know that John Lennon was influenced at the time by Karl Marx.

Lennon read a book of Marx. The quartet practiced in the park. Could be a reference to the Beatles preparing for their role in the cultural revolution. And as the ultimate icons of the new era. But McLean is saying, but we sang dirges in the dark because we knew what was coming.

Do you recall what was revealed, The day the music died? We started singing. The Byrds he spells with a Y, flew off to the fallout shelter. Nature, represented by the Byrds, sense the danger, headed for safety in a shelter. But eight miles high is another song reference by the band the Byrds. So they are falling fast, because everything is falling fast. Everybody, the smart people, nature knows, get into a fallout shelter.

Then he goes into the youth culture clashing with the government violently, using a football metaphor. He said the players youth going for a forward pass. The players going for a forward pass.

Its creator talks about its meaning — and reveals the family deaths underlying it. W hen Don McLean was 15 years old, he had a premonition that his father was going to die. Distraught, he ran to tell his grandmother. A few days later, his father dropped dead right in front of him. He was the king, the boss. He knew everything. Wildfires are still burning across the state.

So what did he do when his father died? McLean wrote it half a century ago, at the age of 24 — and to mark the anniversary, a new documentary, inevitably titled The Day the Music Died, will be released.

Plenty do. Every line of American Pie has been stripped bare. There are fan websites dedicated entirely to decoding it. Who was the jester who sang for the king and queen in a coat he borrowed from James Dean? What exactly was revealed the day the music died? The direction that he was going in that he then didn't want to follow. As the singer himself said recently: "The writing and the lyrics will divulge everything there is to divulge. For McLean scholars with pet theories, there could be bad news on the doorstep.

This could be the day that they die. But before we sing bye bye, and in honour of the American Pie fans everywhere, the BBC News Magazine takes a nostalgic trip back through the song's six enigmatic verses, and the popular theories that have grown up around them. Contrary to popular rumour, "American Pie" was not the name of the plane that rock and roll legend Buddy Holly died in, says Jim Fann, author of Understanding American Pie.

Miss American Pie is "as American as apple pie, so the saying goes," he argues. Either way, her name evokes a simpler, optimistic age and McLean bids her farewell. But if you think this is "what American Pie is about", you would greatly disappoint McLean, who is on record that his song has so much more to say in the verses that follow next. Into verse two and the swinging 60s have arrived. The religious imagery that emerges in the second verse becomes a powerful and recurring symbol of loss throughout the song.

From "the sacred store" to the broken church bells, from this point forward, "whatever is couched in religious terms can be seen as referring back The fickle girl who McLean saw "dancing in the gym" no longer cares for his "pink carnation and pickup truck", leaving him "out of luck".

Enter Bob Dylan, the court jester who becomes the revolutionary leader of the 60s generation, knocking Elvis, the king of the 50s, off his pedestal: "While the King was looking down, the jester stole his thorny crown.

But by the end of the decade, we see that Dylan's "rolling stone" is gathering moss, in fat quantities. But if you think the case is closed on the true meanings in this third verse, think again - "no verdict" has been returned. Whichever way you peer at it, "the world [McLean] once knew is changing," concludes Fann. As the 60s reach their turbulent climax in verse four, and nuclear tensions rising, the Beatles have become the "sergeants" leading the march of counter-culture, leaving Dylan behind as "the jester on the sidelines in a cast" after his near-fatal motorbike crash.

But just at the peak of the sweetly marijuana-perfumed Summer of Love in , the tension boils over into civil unrest. He looks on as the "players try to take the field; But the marching band refused to yield".

There are almost as many theories for this line as the single has sold copies more than three million in its first year. One has the marching band as the police blocking civil rights protesters, another as the Beatles preaching non-violence with their hit "All You Need Is Love".

This could be the song's most ambiguous line of all. Some suggest it refers to a John Lennon and Yoko Ono album cover. Another popular theory is the Miss America contest of where feminist protesters had supposedly "burned their bras".

But the most likely reference, Fann believes, is the riot at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where police brutally cracked down on demonstrators. What was revealed? But perhaps "what was revealed" has nothing really to do with any of these events, and is really a harbinger for the tragedy that follows in the fifth verse A giant gathering of people, all high on drugs.