Singer-songwriter Don McLean to perform 'American Pie,' 'Vincent' in Bellefontaine concert

“A long, long time ago / I can still remember how that music used to make me smile ...”

It’s been a long, long time since singer-songwriter Don McLean wrote those words, the opening lyrics to his classic song “American Pie.”

The signature song of McLean’s 1971 sophomore album, also titled “American Pie,” takes nearly nine minutes to wind its way through pivotal moments in popular culture and American history more broadly. The song is studded with allusions to things such as the death of Buddy Holly (“The day the music died”) and the counterculture (“Helter skelter in a summer swelter”).

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As part of a tour to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the song — which attained the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in January 1972 and stayed there for four weeks — McLean will perform on Thursdayat the Holland Theatre in Bellefontaine.

Ahead of his appearance in Ohio, the 76-year-old vocalist — whose other notable songs include “Vincent,” “Dreidel” and “Winterwood” — spoke by phone with The Dispatch. The interview has been edited for space and clarity.

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Question: What was the impulse that made you write “American Pie”?

McLean: I wanted to write a big song about America, but bigger and more American than anybody ever did before. It was almost like a sculpture, wanting to do a massive piece of some sort that expressed some inexpressible idea about something. I’m an artist, so I’m not afraid of my own concepts. The thing is, I live by my own concepts. I don’t live by other people’s idea of what I should be, so I develop in my mind these ideas that I want to write songs about and how I want to do it, and then I go ahead with it. . . .

Even though I was an unknown, I would not sign (a) record deal unless I had complete control over what I did. They were going to get a record from me, and it was up to me to give them what I wanted to give them. Nobody can hand me a song and say, “Sing this”; nobody can stick their nose into my business and say, “Change this” or, “We don’t like this.”

I made an eight-minute song, and they made it a No. 1 record. (It) was a pretty interesting trip they had to go through to do that.

How the song came together

Q: It sounds like you had a notion from the beginning that “American Pie” would refer to music but you would thread in the story of a chapter in American history.

McLean: It was that music and politics influence each other going forward. That was the notion I had in my head. When I came up with that, I came up with the whole idea. But in the beginning, the “long, long time ago” part, right up to “the day the music died” part — the slow part in the beginning — that came to me in one section, the whole thing. I sang it right into the tape recorder, exactly like it is. (Holly died in a plane crash in 1959 at age 22.)

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Q: Is that like divine inspiration?

McLean: I would say I could never let go of a certain kind of grief that I had about Buddy Holly. From the time I was a teenager, I kept it with me. And, all of a sudden, I shocked myself by finding a use for it. And this put me on the trail to this song. It was Buddy Holly and my love for him, and my sadness about his death, that I carried with me all the time. In some ways, I’m a permanent mourner. I mourn loss a lot, and it’s a big part of life. But I didn’t know that people would relate to anything that I did.

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Q: There’s an elegiac tone to the whole song. People love a lament.

McLean: The whole album is that way: (The songs) “The Grace,” “By the Waters of Babylon,” “Sister Fatima,” “Empty Chairs,” “Winterwood.” They’re all laments of some kind.

Q: Do you remember the reaction when you first performed “American Pie” live?

McLean: The reaction was nothing special. It was a long song. ...

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Q: Somehow, the song has acquired this following.

McLean: We made a very good record, and the record jumped out of the record — it just jumped off the track. That’s what did the trick. When something has been accomplished, everybody looks back and thinks, “Well, of course. Of course, he had talent.” Nobody thought I had talent — nobody. Nobody was in my corner. I was never anointed. Rolling Stone never ran over to Don McLean and said, “Oh, put him on the cover. This guy is an American treasure.”

Q: When we see you in Bellefontaine, how will the concert go? Do you plan what you’re going to sing?

McLean: I’m like the wind. I blow in on stage, I sing whatever I want, I make sure that I talk about stuff that interests me, quickly. I don’t spend a lot of time jawing and wasting the audience’s time with my important thoughts, ha ha. I know they’ve come to hear the music, so I sing quite a bit of music, a lot of songs. And, boom, before you know it, we do “Vincent,” we do “American Pie,” we do “Crying,” we do “Castles (in the Air),” we do “And I Love You So,” we do “Dreidel” sometimes. . . .

It’s not on a set list, because I don’t do the same show ever twice. I don’t write the same song ever twice, and I don’t do the same show ever twice.

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At a glance

Singer-songwriter Don McLean will perform at 7:30 p.m. Thursdayin the Holland Theatre, 127 E. Columbus Ave., Bellefontaine. Tickets cost $60 to $90. For more information, visit www.thehollandtheatre.org.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: 'American Pie' singer-songwriter Don McLean to play in Bellefontaine