EVERY Billboard #1 hit discussion thread 1958-Present

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by alphanguy, Jan 29, 2016.

  1. Victor/Victrola

    Victor/Victrola Makng shure its write

    This is one of the major points I made when I decided that American Pie suffered from a superiority complex.
     
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  2. tmoore

    tmoore Forum Resident

    Location:
    Olney, MD
    I don't have my Goldmine catalogs with me so I can't check right now wrt your "Sweet Pea" 45 (and I don't know that single offhand), but are you sure you have an original pressing of "Sweet Pea"?

    I am sure that you know that later pressings can have later label designs (think of the various Capitol labels the Beatles singles appeared on).

    I'm not saying you're wrong (which is why I hesitate to post this before checking). But I wanted to throw that out there.
     
  3. tmoore

    tmoore Forum Resident

    Location:
    Olney, MD
    Maybe it's better to look at the Altamont lines from a broader context (not so literally) -- I take it to mean -- not so much he's waving his fists at the Stones themselves but the end of the "hippie dream" or whatever you want to call it -- a thought comes to mind, maybe that's what the fire is consuming? (I'll grant that he is talking about the Stones at Altamont, at least on one level).

    I have to take that tack with the whole song; otherwise the song loses its magic (at least it does for me).

    For example, from a different part of the song, I have a hard time believing that Buddy Holly's plane crash was front page news (I was a newspaper deliverer way back when and the only thing I ever looked at when delivering the paper was the front page). So I presume he's not trying to be literal.
     
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  4. Mylene

    Mylene Senior Member

    [​IMG]

    Even in the UK it was front page news.
     
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  5. KayNicole

    KayNicole Well-Known Member

    Location:
    USA
    Honestly such a great song and talent! Miss him!
     
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  6. tmoore

    tmoore Forum Resident

    Location:
    Olney, MD
    I wasn't talking about tabloid newspapers (doubt that tabloid newspapers would be delivered door-to-door - but maybe I'm wrong there too).
    McLean doesn't make that clear.
     
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  7. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    It was front page on a number of papers (just googled and saw several), but, yes, there's literal and not literal imagery in the lyrics.
     
  8. EdogawaRampo

    EdogawaRampo Senior Member

    If you think about, it was a smart move for McClean to never have given us his explanation for the lyrics -- we're talking about them 47 some odd years later.

    As for Seeger having a 'thorny crown', wasn't he harrassed, black-listed, etc., for his political views, making him something of a martyr? I seem to remember something like that. All just guesses, though.
     
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  9. EdogawaRampo

    EdogawaRampo Senior Member

    Actually, having just read a book on the subject, there were fires all over the place at Altamont -- partiers ripped down fences, sheds (I think) belonging to the neighboring farms, ripped up thousands of dollars of wooden crates that the lighting had been transported in, etc. It was cold and no one had any problem ripping down any available wood for fires.
     
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  10. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    Yes, it's an original pressing, and I am surprised you don't know the song. You must be younger than me.

    It turns out that the original pressing of "Sweet Pea" was released on all of the ABC label variations!
     
  11. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    It seems pretty clear Dylan is the Jester. The way McLean sings the line "The Jester sang for the King and Queen" places a Dylanish emphasis on the word "Queen" to get the point across. Why is he a jester? Well, a jester isn't just a comedian, he's someone who mocks the status quo and sometimes those in power. Beyond which, there's piles of humor in Dylan's big three albums of 1965-66, and he was a guy who often seemed to delight in making up lies about his past or saying ridiculous things at press conferences seemingly just to get a reaction. I think the "coat he borrowed from James Dean" is not literally clothing or appearance, but more the mantle of being the face of youth culture and/or youth rebellion.

    The King is likely Elvis. "While the King was looking down" would refer to the period when Elvis was wasting time doing movies instead on concentrating on music, which was also the time period when Dylan rose to popularity. Who is the Queen? I don't know. I think McLean probably just threw that in because he needed a word to rhyme with "Dean."

    Which brings up another point... I don't think any of the stuff in the song is intended to be directly analogous in a 100% exact way to real people and events. There's things that seem to refer to various people and events, but I don't think McLean intended it to be a perfect match or for everything to fit neatly in a way that could be precisely decoded to reveal a specific, clear message.

    It would only be priggish if McLean were literally expressing his own attitude towards the Stones, which I doubt is the case. Is McLean the narrator? Does he share the same attitudes and beliefs as the narrator? That is uncertain. It's also unclear if the Stones are being referenced or if Jagger is being suggested as Satan. I don't think McLean intended things exactly that way. If Mick is Satan then the line "No angel born in hell could break that Satan's spell" would seem to suggest that Mick was to blame for Altamont and the Hell's Angels were trying to put a stop to the violence, which would be ridiculous. I don't think McLean is that stupid. I think it's intended more as an impressionistic comment on the events and the general tenor of the post-Altamont world, rather than a literal description of the events of the day.
     
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  12. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    The more I read about the meaning of the lyrics to "American Pie" the more I like it. I have a new respect for it.
     
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  13. AppleBonker

    AppleBonker Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    I basically agree with your take on the Jester, but it's a pity that it isn't a little more precise; the pieces really have to be molded by the listener to make the Dylan reference work. McLean seems to be trying to be obscure, but he also wants you to understand what he's saying. Those two approaches seem to be in conflict IMO.

    Not just ridiculous but borderline slanderous.

    I guess the more I think about the song (a dangerous activity!) the more I think it expresses a fairly conservative worldview. Not politically conservative, but conservative in the sense that McLean bemoans the change that came after Holly's death and seems to delight in playing the scold throughout the song. OK, it's possibly true that McLean does not have the same worldview as the narrator, but I still feel it's fair to criticize the narrator's attitude and call him a prig. And since it's all in first person, I don't think it's out of bounds to assume (perhaps unfairly) that Don McLean shares these views.

    I agree, based on what I know about it, that Jagger's culpability for Altamont is limited to a certain lack of due diligence when it came time to choose the Hells Angels as the security (and he might not even have been the one who made that decision (someone know?), it might have been Allen Klein or whoever, or you could argue that Klein as their manager had a responsibility to rein in their more careless tendencies if only to protect them from litigation). But the song says:

    As the flames leapt high into the night
    To light the sacrificial rite
    I saw Satan laughing with delight.

    Did McLean see Gimme Shelter? Mick was most certainly not laughing, with delight or otherwise, when things got out of control. To even imply that he was taking joy in what happened is really not fair. Sacrificial rite also implies that "Satan" was orchestrating a ritual to hurt or kill someone. McLean/the narrator completely missed what happened at Altamont, and I feel he opens himself up to criticism for it. IMO, of course!
     
  14. AppleBonker

    AppleBonker Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    Yeah, that's a good guess. Dylan seemed to go out of his way to distance himself from protest music, though. It's not an exact fit.

    (Still think the King is Elvis, though). :laugh:
     
  15. AppleBonker

    AppleBonker Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    Interesting. Thanks for the info. I was focusing mostly on what was happening onstage. It didn't occur to me that the fires might have been elsewhere on the grounds (it's still not what the concert is primarily known for, though!).
     
  16. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    Thirteen years later, Don McLean wrote a song about this tragedy: “American Pie,” an 8½-minute epic with an iconic lyric about “the day the music died.” Now, the original 16-page working manuscript of the lyrics has been sold at auction for $1.2 million.

    “I thought it would be interesting as I reach age 70 to release this work product on the song American Pie so that anyone who might be interested will learn that this song was not a parlor game,” McLean said in a Christie’s catalogue ahead of the sale. “It was an indescribable photograph of America that I tried to capture in words and music.”

    ........

    “People ask me if I left the lyrics open to ambiguity,” McLean said in an early interview, as the Guardian reported. “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.”

    WaPost April 8, 2015
     
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  17. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    McLean has said the general message of the song was “Things are heading in the wrong direction. It is becoming less idyllic. I don't know whether you consider that wrong or right but it is a morality song in a sense."

    Beyond that general premise, I don't think many of the individual parts have a clear, specific meaning, and I do not think he wanted to be understood. I think he was deliberately obscure and deliberately vague, and several of the characters and images deliberately are not perfect fits with any one person or event.

    I still feel pretty sure he did not intend to suggest Mick Jagger was the "Satan" referenced in the song, because as I said that makes no sense and I don't think he'd be stupid enough to misunderstand the events of the day that profoundly. I think more likely he means Satan was at Altamont in a spiritual sense... his evil influence was there. If anything, Mick is "Jack Flash" not Satan or the devil.
     
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  18. tmoore

    tmoore Forum Resident

    Location:
    Olney, MD

    I think we established via other posts that I am younger than you; however, I do know the song very well.
    I can see why you thought that. I didn't write that last post very well.
    What I meant when I said "I don't know that single offhand" was that "I don't know what the 45 looks like labelwise", or "I don't know what that single looks like visually">

    Anyway, I came to the same conclusion as you did about "Sweet Pea", that it was released on all of the ABC label variations at that time. My Goldmine says it was on ABC-Paramount label, and on two different ABC labels. It says for the ABC labels "Reissue - this was the common version when this song was a hit; earliest copies have "ABC Records" standing alone (not in a circle)."

    But - I am still confused because you said your copy had a boxed ABC logo.

    In the label section of my Goldmine 45s catalog - it says the following for ABC for the years in question:
    1955-1965: "ABC-Paramount" along top of black label with rainbow design underneath
    1966: Label becomes simply "ABC". First issues have black labels with "ABC RECORDS" in two lines in silver print at top.
    1966-1967: Black label, "abc" in white circle at top, no box around outside.
    1967-1972: Black label, "abc" in white circle at top with multi-color box around it.

    I have versions of the 1955-1965 label via Ray Charles 45s, and the 1967-1972 label via Tommy Roe's "Dizzy". But I don't have any examples of the other two labels listed above. I know I have seen the 1966-1967 label as described above, but I do not ever remember seeing the 1966 label as described above.

    What's confusing me is that "Sweet Pea" was a 1966 single, yet you are saying your version has a boxed ABC, but Goldmine says that boxed ABC doesn't appear until 1967. As I do "not" see (in Goldmine) any later pressings of "Sweet Pea" on the 1967-1972 label, something isn't adding up. Maybe Goldmine has it wrong??
     
    Last edited: Jan 3, 2018
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  19. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    :D:D
    I agree he's talking about Altamont. This isn't some attack on the Stones. Altamont left everyone shaken. Including the Stones, as a matter of fact. But McLean isn't reporting on the Stones. It's the event he's providing commentary on.

    McLean himself won't say, but the way I interpret it is that the 60's went up in flames when everything went so wrong at Altamont.

    But anyway...what's the next song? :D
     
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  20. tmoore

    tmoore Forum Resident

    Location:
    Olney, MD
    I remember reading that after the song was a hit, McLean tried to drop "American Pie" from his playlist, but received a lot of complaints, and only reluctantly put it back in his playlist. So for whatever reason, at least for a while (and maybe even now deep down) he didn't want to be remembered just for that. But I have a feeling that is what he will ultimately be remembered for.

    I am saying the same thing -- that Altamont was about more than just the Stones, it was one of the events that ended the "peace and love" era. As it occurred in early Dec. 1969, not only is it a figurative end to the '60s but it is effectively a literal end to them as well.
     
    Last edited: Jan 3, 2018
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  21. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Yes, please!
     
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  22. SITKOL'76

    SITKOL'76 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Colombia, SC
    Most people are discussing 'American Pie', maybe we moved on too early lol
     
  23. tmoore

    tmoore Forum Resident

    Location:
    Olney, MD
    The next song was already mentioned (but I have a feeling you already knew that).
     
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  24. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!


    Did you check out the link I provided in my last post?
     
  25. EdogawaRampo

    EdogawaRampo Senior Member

    I never identified Jagger with Satan in this song, either.
     
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