Talk Back: The day 'American Pie' died

Can you imagine anything more useful than a rotary phone? Didn’t think so. It just sits on a table, plugged into a weird little hole in the wall, leaving you free to go shopping, traveling or whatever, free from those annoying interruptions. And if you’re like us and don’t have an answering machine, you never have to go through that time-wasting exercise of count-the-hang-ups when you get back. Nor do you have to worry about returning calls that you missed. Imagine! No way to know who’s been ringing that thing off the hook while you’ve been out having fun.

What’s not to like about that?

But the coolest thing about a phone with no accoutrements — there’s a word you don’t run across very often — is that you have no clue who’s calling. So when it rings, do you ignore it, only to have your mom come storming over to give you what for because you didn’t pick up, pick up, pick up like you were supposed to? Or do you holler “Shut up” when you answer — hoping her hand doesn’t suddenly pop out of the receiver like it always does in the horror movies, grab you by the earlobe, and march you to the blackboard where you have to stand on your tippy-toes with your nose inside a chalk-drawn circle for the next two weeks? Take it from us.

Some questions are best left unanswered.

Alas, we are among the few who still cherish things like mystery, intrigue and open-ended interpretation while others crave instant explanation. If Penn and Teller pull off an eye-popping illusion, everyone else demands a masked magician nearby show how it’s done. Way to go, Magic Man. Nothing like ruining all the fun. And John Lennon’s certainly got some ’splainin’ to do because Eggmen and Walruses — or is it Walri— are clearly deep state code for unleashing the coming Blue Meanie apocalypse. Goo goo g’joob. But the greatest sacrilege of all?

Don McLean’s new “American Pie” documentary.

Talk about bad news on the doorstep. If you go down to the sacred store, ain’t no mystery there anymore. For faster than you can say “Da do Don Don,” he who wrote the greatest 8-minute, 37-second epic of the last half-century has up and spilled the beans on virtually every nuance of his oft-analyzed Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and Big Bopper tribute. Oh sure, some of it’s always been pretty easy to figure out, but like the impressionistic painting MacLean often compared it to, other elements were much more obtuse.

Until now.

Apparently one of his confidantes decided a half-century of keeping folks in the dark — which raises the question, if no one can hear the dirges played there, do they make a sound — was long enough, so start paying attention to the man behind the curtain. The Great and Powerful Oz has spoken. Hence the release of a 90-minute tell-all that aims to demystify every element. Line by line and word by word.

No wonder our hands are clenched in fists of rage.

Old Donny boy may have robbed us of endless lyrical debate around the water cooler, but we get the last laugh, because we cracked the code long ago. Think the jester and king are references to Dylan and Elvis? Fuhgeddaboudit. It’s Danny Kaye’s 1955 classic, “The Court Jester.” And only one king was taught how to go barefootin’ around the dance floor, and it’s not Robert Parker.

But Yul Brynner.

Don’t believe us? How about a winner-take-all half-polka, half-waltz dance-off for all the marbles? Ready? One-two-three-AND. One-two-three-AND.

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Talk Back with Doug Spade and Mike Clement is heard every Saturday morning from 9 a.m. to noon Eastern Time on Buzz 102.5 FM and online at www.dougspade.com and www.lenconnect.com.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Talk Back: 'American Pie' documentary ends lyrical debate