Quotes About Don Mclean

#1. I just started playing guitar and started singing and started working on this act that I would call 'Don McLean' when I was probably in high school.

Don McLean

#2. I'm not good at secrets, so don't tell me any.

A. J. McLean

#3. But I knew - in the old days, if a song was a good song, I don't care if it was 'Yellow Submarine' or, you know, or 'The Times They Are a-Changin' or 'Don't Be Cruel', you knew it, you know? You heard that song, and you were talking about it, and you knew it.

Don McLean

#4. Before the Beatles, America was musically a very conservative country. You can see film footage of people at a baseball game, they all had hats and ties on, and the women were dressed up like they were going to church. That was the America that I started getting interested in musically.

Don McLean

#5. No matter how happy or hopeful I am, I always tend to drift back to that. It's underneath all the music I've ever written ... An artist is trying to tell you how he's feeling. And if that accidentally becomes entertaining, it becomes a career.

Don McLean

#6. Jerusalem is old, Jerusalem is new, Jerusalem can hold Moslem, Christian, Jew.

Don McLean

#7. A long long time ago, I can still remember how that music use to make me smile.

Don McLean

#8. Usually I give demigods something simple like a shopping trip, singing a funny song, that sort of thing. After all those labors I had to complete for my evil cousin Eurystheus, well...I don't want to be that guy, you know?

Rick Riordan

#9. I don't think anything, or anyone, is ever going to keep me away from you. I love you way too much. You're my heart, my world, my light.

Jay McLean

#10. You don't need a happy ending to move onto a happy beginning.

Krystal McLean

#11. People ask me if I left the lyrics open to ambiguity. Of course I did. I wanted to make a whole series of complex statements. The lyrics had to do with the state of society at the time.

Don McLean

#12. I had asthma when I was a kid, asthma so bad that it would turn into pneumonia and I almost died several times. Nobody knew why back then, but now it's obvious.

Don McLean

#13. The kids today all seem to think they should be stars, but I wasn't brought up that way.

Don McLean

#14. I mean, I've been given a terrific life by the audiences who stuck with me all over the world.

Don McLean

#15. I have a weird sense sometimes of what's going to happen before it happens, and I kind of live by that, which is how my instincts operate, I suppose.

Don McLean

#16. Our raw imperfections make us real and make us human but they don't make us.

Jay McLean

#17. If something comes up I might write about it, but without an outlet the whole thing winds down.

Don McLean

#18. I don't like it when people don't look me dead in the eye. I move my head around trying to catch their eye.

A. J. McLean

#19. I think longevity is more important than trying to make people realize you're around every second.

Don McLean

#20. Every thread of creation is held in position by still other strands of things living.

Don McLean

#21. Each thread of life that you leave, will spin around your deeds and dictate your needs.

Don McLean

#22. As I watched him on the stage, my hands were clinched in fists of rage. No angel born in hell, could break that Satan's spell.

Don McLean

#23. We didn't realize there were that many boy bands until we started touring in Europe. I don't think we were ever affected by it since a lot of the groups in Europe didn't really sing live, but we did and would perform a cappella as well.

A. J. McLean

#24. This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.

Don McLean

#25. Every pulse of your heartbeat is one liquid moment that flows through the veins of your being. Like a river of life flowing on since creation, approaching the sea with each new generation.

Don McLean

#26. In a sense, 'American Pie' was a very despairing song but it can also be seen as very hopeful.

Don McLean

#27. I actually feel I'm in a much better place than I've ever been because I'm thankful people still love the songs that I've written, and they seem to like me. And they come to the shows in droves, and they get all excited, and I can still hit all the notes, and I don't look terrible.

Don McLean

#28. I feel like a spinning top or a DreidelThe spinning don't stop when you leave the cradleYou just slow downRound and around this world you goSpinning through the lives of the people you knowWe all slow down.

Don McLean

#29. And as the players tried to take the field, the Marching Band refused to yield ...

Don McLean

#30. Bad news on the doorstep;I couldn't take one more step

Don McLean

#31. There we were all in one place, a generation lost in space.

Don McLean

#32. Work my hands in the soil, what's the pay for all the toil? Dust for blood, dust for blood, dust for blood.

Don McLean

#33. I met a girl who sang the blues
and I asked her for some happy news,
but she just smiled and turned away.
And the three men I admire most,
The Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost,
They caught the last train to the coast
The day the music died.

Don McLean

#34. Maybe you don't need to be a complete person, or maybe you do. But maybe, he's it. Maybe he's the other half of you.

Jay McLean

#35. I'll wait for you, Luce, until you're ready. Just tell me now, so I don't sit around getting my hopes up ... do you think that maybe someday you'll want me, too?

Jay McLean

#36. Don't you want to be the first to touch something? To reach out and grasp onto the world around you? You can't touch it if you can't see it.

Jay McLean

#37. Being on United Artists was almost as bad as not being on any label at all. They were the crappiest in the business. All they did was movie soundtracks. Now, they were making an effort to become much hipper - signing people like Bobby Womack and what have you.

Don McLean

#38. Devoid of all romance, the music plays and everyone must dance. I'm bowing out.

Don McLean

#39. Some believe in Jesus, they don't act like they do. Some believe in Mohammed, I don't believe that's true. Cause they do believe in money, and gold is what it's for, all the gold can't buy no peace of mind in a world that don't believe in nothing anymore.

Don McLean

#40. Do you believe in rock 'n roll? Can music save your mortal soul?

Don McLean

#41. For all the clever jokes that could be made here involving "mind" and "matter" there is one sure and certain variation you can take with you to the grave: "In the grand scheme of things you don't matter very much, and the laws of physics don't mind at all.

Patrick E. McLean

#42. As you sell your soul and sow your seeds, and you wound yourself and your loved ones bleed. And your habits grow and your conscience feeds, on all that you thought you should be.

Don McLean

#43. I'd listen to all the stuff that was going on around me and drift off into my fantasies about it. My fantasies have fuelled all the songs I've ever written.

Don McLean

#44. I developed this fantasy world. I found that that was much more fun and more interesting and exciting than real life was to me. Then, once I got the guitar going when I was a teenager, I set sail for the direction I've been in my whole life.

Don McLean

#45. If you listen to one of my albums, you can tell I do a lot of different things. In the case of 'Vincent', I thought of his picture 'Starry Night.' It was a beautiful road-map for a song. I used a lot of imagery from that painting.

Don McLean

#46. Eating at home is fine, as I can easily work around the foods that don't agree with me and still eat heartily with the rest of my family. I don't force them to follow my diet.

Andrea McLean

#47. In the autumn of 1970 I had a job singing in the school system, playing my guitar in classrooms.

Don McLean

#48. Everyone always says, 'When you look at a boy band, one of them has to be gay.' No, they don't.

A. J. McLean

#49. Not a word was spoken. The church bells all were broken.

Don McLean

#50. When people ask me what 'American Pie' means, I tell them it means I don't ever have to work again if I don't want to.

Don McLean

#51. Something touched me deep inside The day the music died.

Don McLean

#52. There's always a fundamental misery that's with me that I always relate to some bit of loss or something. I don't know what it is about me, but even though I'm happy on the surface, there's something there, I guess. So, it all comes from wherever it comes from. I really don't know where that is.

Don McLean

#53. The Byrds flew off the fallout shelter, eight miles high and falling fast.

Don McLean

#54. I got my first guitar when I was 16. I'd play for my family and friends, but taking that guitar out there into the wide, wide world wasn't something I ever thought about.

Don McLean

#55. Babe," I cut her off. "I don't care about my friends, or what they think. I just care about you.

Jay McLean

#56. No matter who you are or what you do, there will always be some people who don't like you

A. J. McLean

#57. Herman Melville was supposed to be an accountant. Van Gogh was meant to be an art dealer. I was meant to take the train into New York and work for a bank. To be an artist, you have to say goodbye to your family.

Don McLean

#58. My expectations for myself were never high. I had a very unusual way of writing songs and of thinking about music. I wasn't at all like Bob Dylan or Simon and Garfunkel. I was completely different - I didn't have a David Geffen at my side.

Don McLean

#59. Do you recall what was revealed the day the music died?

Don McLean

#60. Because the thing is, you don't fall in love with your best friends girl

Jay McLean

#61. I don't want my past to determine my future - and my future is you, Josh.

Jay McLean

#62. The greatest thing about dreams is they don't expire. They can lay dormant for years and when you pull them out and dust them off, they shine like new.

Casi McLean

#63. I was around in 1970, and now I am around in 2015 ... there is no poetry and very little romance in anything anymore, so it is really like the last phase of 'American Pie.'

Don McLean

#64. Starry, starry night, flaming flowers that brightly blaze, swirling clouds in violet haze reflect Vincent's eyes of china blue.

Don McLean

#65. I've never done anything but what I wanted to do with my life. I don't think too many people can say that. I wrote the songs I wanted to write, for me. I had no idea that 'American Pie' would relate to anybody.

Don McLean

#66. I am what I do, and that's partly why I don't want to give up singing. But when I can't sing well, I will.

Don McLean

#67. Basically, in 'American Pie,' things are heading in the wrong direction. It is becoming less ideal, less idyllic. I don't know whether you consider that wrong or right, but it is a morality song in a sense.

Don McLean

#68. I don't think it's our pasts that define us, and it's not even our life's final destination. It's everything we do in between, the actual living, that creates who we are.

Jay McLean

#69. Faces come and faces go in circular rotation.But something yearns within to grow beyond infatuation.

Don McLean

#70. Starry Starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul
Shadows on the hills
Sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills
In colors on the snowy linen land.

Don McLean

#71. My face on every coin engraved, the anarchists are all enslaved. My flag is forever waved, by the grateful people I have saved.

Don McLean

#72. They don't keep their promises in the promised land, its getting mighty hard to find an honest man.

Don McLean

#73. My parents were not musical, and they were not effervescent people; everything was very quiet. The music that I played was loud; it used to drive them up the wall. My father died, and that was a tragedy for everybody, but suddenly I didn't have anybody to stop me from doing what I wanted to do.

Don McLean

#74. American Pie speaks to the loss that we feel. That's why that song has found the niche that it has.

Don McLean

#75. I don't relate to what's left of the music business. There doesn't seem to be any point to it anymore. The business that I grew up in and loved, we made records a different way - there were record companies, there were stores where you could buy albums.

Don McLean

#76. Over the years I've had more and more of an association with Nashville.

Don McLean

#77. I don't know. It's like my lips - on your pulse. I can feel your heart beating and know that you're here. I guess sometimes I find it hard to believe that you're real - and that you're mine.

Jay McLean

#78. We all got up to dance. Oh, but we never got the chance!

Don McLean

#79. I don't just love you. It's like the word I want to use hasn't been invented yet. Maybe it's because no one's ever felt this type of love before. Maybe I'm the first to feel it. I don't know. I can't explain it. But those words
I love you
they just don't seem like enough. Not anymore.

Jay McLean

#80. I'm glad that my music has helped other people as it's helped me. It makes me glad that I did what I did with my life.

Don McLean

#81. Please, please be patient with me. Because I really don't want to let go of this. And you - I don't want to let go of you." My voice drops to a whisper. "Of us.

Jay McLean

#82. That song didn't just happen. It grew out of my experiences. 'American Pie' was part of my process of self-awakening: a mystical trip into my past.

Don McLean

#83. Hugs are part of everybody life for me. Hug all sorts of people - I don't worry about it looking unmanly or whatever. I think physical human contact is one of the things that makes living worthwhile.

A. J. McLean

#84. Drove my chevy to the levee but the levee was dry.

Don McLean

#85. How did the land of Jefferson, how did the land of King, become the land of hamburgers and raisins that can sing? Roosevelt was cripple, Lincoln was a geek, they'd never get elected, their clothes were never chic.

Don McLean

#86. You're going to be buying your ticket with your heartache, you're gonna be payin' the man with your dues. You're gonna be living alone when you hear that whistle moan, you're gonna be learnin' to live with the blues.

Don McLean

#87. Hey, Jake?"
"Yeah, Kayla?" He's almost asleep.
"I more than a lot like you."
It's quiet for so long I don't know if he heard me.
Then, "I more than a lot like you too, so much more than a lot.

Jay McLean

#88. Hills of forest green where the mountains touch the sky, a dream come true, I'll live there til I die.

Don McLean

#89. I saw satan laughing with delight
The day the music died.

Don McLean

#90. She's on the last few chapters of some book she's been reading. She can't stay away from it. We're used to it by now. We always find her reading at the oddest times. Don't we, babe? He says the last sentence a little louder to get her attention.

Jay McLean

#91. Clients don't want us to do what they ask, they want us to go further

Kevin McLean

#92. In the streets the children screamed. The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed

Don McLean

#93. You're not an object. I don't want you to think that I own you."
"Why not? I'm yours.

Jay McLean

#94. Bye, Bye Miss American Pie, drove my chevy to the levy but the levy was dry. Good old boys drinking whiskey and rye, singing, this'll be the day that I die.

Don McLean

#95. I don't care that you can't quote my favorite movie, and you don't care that I don't know what book Will and Layken are from.

Jay McLean

#96. Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack sat on a candle stick, cause fire is the devil's only friend.

Don McLean

#97. Being with Cameron - in his bed - it's not physical, or sexual. "I understand ," I tell her. "But you don't have to worry, it's not like that. Cameron - he's my strength. And right now, I don't know that I have any left.

Jay McLean

#98. When people ask what 'American Pie' is about, they're missing the point. The song isn't about the lines themselves - it's about what is between the lines. The song is about what isn't there.

Don McLean

#99. When I go on the road now, which is less than before, but still more than I'd like to, I think of myself primarily as a singer. Not a songwriter, not a celebrity, just a man who likes to sing.

Don McLean

#100. You are exactly who you need to be in this moment. Don't begrudge that or justify it.

Jennifer Mclean