The American Pie Blog

August 26, 2007

I’ve spent the last couple of days engrossed in two films about Bob Dylan’s career. The first was Bob Dylan: Dont Look Back (Dont {sic} as spelled on the DVD) and the second was No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (part 1). I’ve come away with a better appreciation for the folk music movement and a better understanding for Dylan’s impact on music. By the way, both DVD’s are available from Netflix.

No Direction Home is a very good, two-part documentary directed by Martin Scorcese with an incredible number of sound and video rarities (including some awesome performance footage from legendary artists). The commentaries will simply melt anyone with more than a passing interest in the history of rock and roll. Dont Look Back is a sometimes silly and often irreverent look at Dylan’s 1965 concert tour in Great Britain.

So what new contributions to understanding Don McLean’s American Pie comes from these films? Are we any closer to a definitive reference for “When the Jester sang for the King and Queen …”? One interesting possibility is that the Great Britain concert tour could be viewed as “singing for the King and Queen” (king and queen as a symbol for England). Another possibility is that there were multiple performances at Royal Albert Hall, a venue opened in 1871 and named for Prince Albert, the husband and consort of Queen Victoria.

More possibilities come from No Direction Home. The 1962 album Bob Dylan includes Song to Woody and, in the liner notes to 1963’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Dylan says, “The most important thing I know I learned from Woody Guthrie. I’m my own person. I’ve got basic common rights – whether I’m here in this country or any other place.” Woody Guthrie could certainly be considered a king, having endowed Dylan with his sense of human rights.

My favorite discovery along the way was a folk singing legend, Odetta Holmes. My previous disinterest in anything to do with folk music beyond the Mamas and the Papas left me with many blind spots in my rock and roll knowledge. However, Bob Dylan said about Odetta:

“The first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta. I heard a record of hers (Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues) in a record store, back when you could listen to records right there in the store. Right then and there, I went out and traded my electric guitar and amplifier for an acoustical guitar, a flat-top Gibson. … (That album was) just something vital and personal. I learned all the songs on that record. It was her first and the songs were – ‘Mule Skinner’, ‘Waterboy’, ‘Jack of Diamonds’, ‘‘Buked and Scorned’.”
(From Playboy, March 1978)

Even more interesting is the 1965 album, Odetta Sings Dylan, in which she performs twelve of Dylan’s classics. Could Odetta have been the queen?

The only way that any of these inferences are relevant is if Don McLean could have known of them. McLean probably would have seen Don’t Look Back because its public premiere was in September 1967 at the 34th Street East Theater in New York City. Odetta was a folk singing legend and a young McLean undoubtedly would have encountered her works. It would also be pretty certain that McLean had every Dylan album and had read the liner notes several times. Therefore, we have a whole new set of possible, plausible interpretations.

The Dylan quote about Odetta also reminded me again of the line from American Pie’s final verse: “I went down to the sacred store, where I’d heard the music years before, but the man there said the music wouldn’t play.” I had forgotten that long, lost practice of record stores with listening rooms where you could listen to records before buying them. That practice was long-abandoned by the early 1970’s (at least in New York).

As usual, it isn’t what I think the lyrics mean … all that matters is what the poetry inspires you to see and feel.

August 8, 2007

I must confess that I have been really hung up on one line: “When the Jester sang for the King and Queen.” I cursed my lack of knowledge about Dylan and decided to do more painstaking research.

I stand by much of my original commentary, but have found two more plausible options. One is that Dylan played at The King and Queen Pub in London late in 1962. The reference seems rather obscure (something that may have not been common knowledge UNLESS you really dug into his background). Would McLean have known this? A second problem with a reference to the pub has to do with the song’s chronology in the preceding lines (Now for ten years we’ve been on our own and moss grows fat on a rolling stone). We seem to be talking about “Like a Rolling Stone” from 1965, but then we would go back to 1962? It seems a little disjointed.

I also uncovered something I overlooked. I have a record set with everything Buddy Holly recorded, and he had a song called “Early in the Morning” with the lyrics, “Well, you know a rolling stone – don’t gather no moss.” That offers a great explanation to the line “And moss grows fat on a rolling stone but that’s not how it used to be.” Don’t you love this?

Now, with thanks to my good friend Bon Baggies, I think have another plausible explanation for the King and Queen. It comes from Dylan’s song “Down in the Flood” and the lyrics tie everything up.

Crash on the levee, mama,
Water’s gonna overflow,
Swamp’s gonna rise,
No boat’s gonna row.
Now, you can train on down
To Williams Point,
You can bust your feet,
You can rock this joint.
But oh mama, ain’t you gonna miss your best friend now?
You’re gonna have to find yourself
Another best friend, somehow.

Now, don’t you try an’ move me,
You’re just gonna lose.
There’s a crash on the levee
And, mama, you’ve been refused.
Well, it’s sugar for sugar
And salt for salt,
If you go down in the flood,
It’s gonna be your own fault.
Oh mama, ain’t you gonna miss your best friend now?
You’re gonna have to find yourself
Another best friend, somehow.

Well, that high tide’s risin’,
Mama, don’t you let me down.
Pack up your suitcase,
Mama, don’t you make a sound.
Now, it’s king for king,
Queen for queen,
It’s gonna be the meanest flood
That anybody’s seen.
Oh mama, ain’t you gonna miss your best friend now?
Yes, you’re gonna have to find yourself
Another best friend, somehow.

Wow. There is so much imagery in this song that ties into McLean’s “American Pie.” The one problem is that the earliest recording of this song is on The Basement Tapes which was recorded in the fall of 1967 but released as an album in 1975. The first published release of the song was on Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 in November 1971, just after “American Pie” had started climbing the charts to Number One.

The first interesting connection is that the full title of Dylan’s song (according to his Basement Tapes page) is “Crash on the Levee (Down in the Flood)” with obvious similarities to several American Pie lyrics:

Dylan’s “Crash on the Levee” to McLean’s “Drove my Chevy to the levee”

Dylan’s “Crash on the levee” to McLean’s reference to the Clear Lake crash.

Dylan’s “Water’s gonna overflow, Swamp’s gonna rise” to McLean’s “But the levee was dry.”

Dylan’s “Now, you can train on down to William’s Point” dovetails nicely with McLean’s “… The Father, Son and Holy Ghost, They caught the last train for the coast …” because William’s Point is in Florida on the west coast of the Indian River opposite Kennedy Space Center (formerly Cape Canaveral). That would also tie in nicely with my interpretation of “the generation lost in space” focused on the lunar landing in the summer of 1969.

Dylan’s “Now it’s king for king, Queen for queen” has its own imagery that may well refer to the love affair between Dylan and Baez. However, that strongly supports McLean’s lyric “When the Jester sang for the King and Queen” if we see Dylan singing to himself and Baez.

The only question that might remain is how McLean himself may have connected to Dylan’s song, but the answers are simple enough. First, the Basement Tapes were recorded in West Saugerties, NY, about 90 minutes north of New Rochelle near the Hudson River. His association with Pete Seeger and the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater could have put him in touch with these sessions. McLean was also a regular performer at the Newport Folk Festival and it’s quite likely that McLean rubbed shoulders with Dylan anytime staring in 1964.

Again, the beauty of poetry is that interpretations can be as personal as you would like them to be. While most people like to know “the definitive intention or inspiration” of the author/composer, these comparisons are merely one set of options. It is, however, uncanny that there are so many connections between “Crash on the Levee (Down in the Flood) and “American Pie.” At least I can rest a little easier.