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It was not going to be like any other song ever, and it took me three months to figure out where I was going with it.

I knew I wanted to write a big song about America. “I went home and I wrote the first part of American Pie. And when he did that, he immediately changed everything in my head.

Ten years later…Phil Everly told me that Buddy Holly took a plane because he needed to do his laundry. It started when I learned about Buddy Holly’s death when I was 15 as a paper boy. “Really, the song American Pie and the album, but especially that song, took ten years to write. It’s the brainchild of a man named Spencer Proffer,” McLean told FOX 17. Mark Moormann is the man who’s making the movie. “The documentary is called The Day the Music Died: The Making of Don McLean’s American Pie. McLean brought his 50 th anniversary tour behind “American Pie” to DeVos Performance Hall.įriday afternoon, Black Pigeon Studios invited McLean to reflect on his legacy and the influence “American Pie” had on the Grand Rapids community. The grand production reportedly cost tens of thousands of dollars, included a major shutdown of downtown Grand Rapids and filled the streets with marching bands, motorcades and even some explosives.įast forward to Friday, June 17, 2022. Thousands of Grand Rapids community members joined in on the more than eight-minute-long video, which not only went viral, but also set a new world record for largest lip dub video. It may be hard to believe now, but more than a decade ago, in 2011, Newsweek named Grand Rapids “Most Boring City in America.”Ĭommunity members responded with a citywide “Lip Dub” to a live version of McLean’s “American Pie.” You know, it’s a tremendous video, just on its own, for the song.

“So I checked it out and I said, ‘I couldn’t believe it.’ It was like a Spielberg video for somebody. “Well, somebody said, you know, ‘there’s 5,000 people in Grand Rapids who’ve sung your song and it’s being seen by millions and millions of viewers,’” McLean recalled. Little did McLean know, his 1971 hit record influenced Grand Rapids in a major way, several decades later. This’ll be the day that I die.’”įor five decades, people from different generations, countries and walks of life have been singing those world-famous lyrics, written and sung by Don McLean. Them good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye and singing ‘this’ll be the day that I die. Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry.