Top 94 Quotes & Sayings by Don McLean - Page 2

All you gotta do is think of the song in your head. And it doesn't matter whether you can play it or not, you can get somebody to play it. With songs I've written, there's a song called "The Statue", which I can't play. There are songs that I've written that I've actually just hummed on - there's a song on one of the albums they have there on the Internet called "My Love Was True" and it's almost operatic. I can't play it. But I can sing it.

Everything has become very corporate and very careful. Before we had a real democracy going and there were a lot of freedoms and now there's this terrorism thing that everybody's focused on, which is really a boondoggle in my opinion. It's just an excuse to clamp down on people's free speech. And corporations intimidate people and everybody's gotten intimidated and that's really what it is, and they just keep going along. It's almost like - a little bit like that Charlie Chaplin movie, Modern Times, or 1984, Orwell

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

It's really hard to teach me anything. I can't read music. I never learned how to read music. I read books about things and try to learn - I don't like to learn from anybody. Later on I would, once I'd get the hang of things. Like I ride horses, I'm good at that, Western riding. I learned all about it reading and studying. I'm always learning about horses, I like that.

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

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.

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

Something touched me deep inside The day the music died.

And when no hope was left inside on that starry, starry night, you took your life as lovers often do. But I could have told you, Vincent, this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.

Bad news on the doorstep;I couldn’t take one more step

That's the hard thing - getting started. You get started for a long time until you finally get to this point where people call you an icon or whatever they call you. It's nice. Suddenly the audience is with you more and they help you along and it's not so much that you have to do everything.

Because of an off-hand funny comment I made backstage at a concert years ago, a story circulated that the song has been a burden and even that I didn?t sing it for a while. That?s completely false. I am very proud of ?American Pie? and the many satellites that grow from it and revolve around it. For many years I carried my songs around and now they carry me around. I have always sung ?American Pie? for my audience and would never think of disappointing them since it is they who have given me a wonderful life and untold affection for almost 30 years.

I like to bring my audience on a journey during my 90 minute concert. I will tell stories every few songs about the creation of a tune etc. and it gives the listener a glimpse inside my songs and then as you get to the last half hour you pick up the pace and work harder and get more into the show. It's all about stagecraft.

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

Every thread of creation is held in position by still other strands of things living. In an earthly tapestry hung from the skyline of smoldering cities so gray and so vulgar, as not to be satisfied with their own negativity, but needing to touch all the living as well.

I'm living in a world that was created a hundred years ago with vaudeville and people traveling around and medicine shows and things and making live music on stage and I'm still doing that. I like it that way. I like to present something to people that's had 40 years of being honed and perfected. It's something that you're not going to find with an artist who's been around for two or three years, or even ten years.

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.

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.

As you can imagine, over the years I have been asked many times to discuss and explain my song "American Pie." I have never discussed the lyrics, but have admitted to the Holly reference in the opening stanzas. You will find many interpretations of my lyrics but none of them by me. You will find many “interpretations” of my lyrics but none of them by me. Isn’t this fun? Sorry to leave you all on your own like this but long ago I realized that songwriters should make their statements and move on, maintaining a dignified silence.

We're going to have another rude awakening, a war or depression where people are going to have to value one another again and not value money and winning alone. On the political environment we now have a President who likes winning and money and he represents aspects of the spectacle we were alluding to, and yet he's my President and I am for anyone who is my President. I'm an American and yet it's the style thing. We’ll see what happens. He’d like to see things work well and trying to get us to that place as a country.

Helter skelter in a summer swelter.

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

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

And if she asks you why you can tell her that I told you That I'm tired of Castles in the Air I've got a dream I want the world to share in castle walls Just leave me to despair Hills of forest green where the mountains touch the sky A dream come true, I'll live there 'til I die I'm asking you, to say my last good-bye The love we knew, ain't worth another try

Do you recall what was revealed the day the music died?

We live in a world of empty spectacle, the world of spectacle rock, songs you can't remember, it's all about the expression of money, power and kind of empty and fascistic. Where technology has changed society, where people are not using their brains as much, not seeing the bigger picture but constantly looking down at the cellphone and not seeing the bigger picture. Today's songwriter need to be on outside, find their own trip if you will and find a way to connect from a place that no one has heard before. It might be taken as weird but that is what makes it unique.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

It's a video world now, you know? It's not a musical world. It's a video world. I can watch videos. I see videos, you know, Britney Spears, she's sexy. I like to watch her videos. It's not like the music is what I'm hearing. It's different now. But it's not my world. It's the world of young people and they have what they want and they have what the technology and the society produces as a result of all these advancements that have occurred. And the in the future we'll have something else. Maybe we'll have holograms and, you know, all kinds of stuff.

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.