Speak It To Me

The Day the Music Died

(This speech is called an informative speech and it's what I do for competition. This one is not as good as my other informs because it was my first one but still)
  
   Imagine you are on a road trip. Your father is driving and your mother is yelling at your sister to stop throwing food. Then your father turns on the radio and his favorite song comes on. While you sigh and your sister sings along with your dad your mom hums to a song we all know and love American Pie by Don McLean. When the song was created it stayed at number one for at least four weeks straight, but what's the real meaning of the song? What happened the day the music died? Hello, My name is Skylar Hopkins and Today I will start off talking about what happened on the day, what were McLean's inspiration and purpose for the song, and what do the lyrics mean?
   Buddy Holly and his band "The Crickets" were on their across states tour. Multiple other rock legends such as Ritchie Valens, Jp "The Big Bopper" Richardson and Dion and The Belmonts joined the tour over time. Tour bus conditions in 1959 were not so good. Multiple flu's and even frostbite were tossed around the band members. After stopping at their last stop, Growing tired of the poor conditions, Holly chose to travel by plane to their next venue in Moorhead, Minnesota. Other members join Holly on his decision but there were limited seats. Richardson swapped places with Jennings, while Allsup lost his seat to Valens on a coin toss. Soon after takeoff, in poor and wintry weather conditions, the pilot lost control of the light aircraft, which crashed into a cornfield. Everyone on board was killed. According to a Coroner's investigation by Ralph E. Smiley," the plane skidded and/ or rolled approximately 570ft from point of impact." Valens and holly's bodies were both found 17 feet away from the main crash site. Richardson on the other hand was 40 feet away across a fence into a cornfield.  
   The actual crash was not named "The day the music died" until thirteen years after it happened. McLean was only thirteen when Holly; one of McLean's idols, plus the other rock legends died. Ritchie Valens was seventeen at the time of the crash. Which means McLean was only four years younger than Valens. The Initial song was written about the death of Buddy Holly but other things as well. Talking about how he composed this song when he was a guest on the UK show Songbook, McLean explained: "For some reason, I wanted to write a big song about America and about politics, but I wanted to do it in a different way. As I was fiddling around, I started singing this thing about the Buddy Holly crash, the thing that came out (singing), 'Long, long time ago, I can still remember how that music used to make me smile.'I thought, Whoa, what's that? And then the day the music died, it just came out. And I said, Oh, that is such a great idea. And so that's all I had. And then I thought, I can't have another slow song on this record. I've got to speed this up. I came up with this chorus, a crazy chorus. And then one time about a month later I just woke up and wrote the other five verses. Because I realized what it was, I knew what I had. And basically, all I had to do was speed up the slow verse with the chorus and then slow down the last verse so it was like the first verse, and then tell the story, which was a dream. It is from all these fantasies, all these memories that I made personal. Buddy Holly's death to me was a personal tragedy. As a child, a 15-year-old, I had no idea that nobody else felt that way much. I mean, I went to school and mentioned it and they said, 'So what?' So I carried this yearning and longing, if you will, this weird sadness that would overtake me when I would look at this album, The Buddy Holly Story because that was my last Buddy record before he passed away." McLean admits that this song is about Buddy Holly, but has never said what the lyrics are about, preferring to let listeners interpret them on their own.
   So what do the song's lyrics really mean? The starting line "a long, long, time ago." means a few different things. American pie was written in 1971 But the time period McLean wrote about was about the 1950s. It seemed like a long, long time ago for McLean due to all the turmoil of the '60s. " But February made me shiver, with every paper I'd deliver, bad news on the doorstep, I couldn't take one more step." February 3, 1959, was the date of the crash. When McLean was thirteen he was a paperboy, so when he saw that his idol had died he must have been a little torn. The song also mentions a widowed bride, Her name was Maria Holly. At the time of the crash, Maria was pregnant with Buddy's child but she later had a miscarriage. Then the obvious line "the day the music died". That line is named the crash and is extremely catchy. Moving to Verse 2 the line "with a pink carnation and a pick-up truck" A pick-up truck was a major symbol of sexual freedom. The pink carnation was part of a Marty Robbins song  " A White Sports Car". The chorus is one of the most memorable parts of the song. The lyrics "Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry" Chevy represented American automobile obviously. The levee business shows that America wasn't fertile anymore (at least in the sense of music). And  "Chevy" rhymes with "levee." Another lyric from the chorus was "them good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye singing "This will be the day that I die, this will be the day that I die." this segment shows that were Americans were depressed with their current lifestyle (60's). The lyrics also comes from a Buddy Holly song  "That'll be the day," that eventually says "that I die."Another interesting note brought to my attention by Scott Tilles is that the Levee was a bar in Purchase, NY near McLean's hometown. There is also a Levee, NY which is about 15 minutes from the school he attended.      
   So, in conclusion, the day the music died was a tragic crash on February third, 1959. This crash impacted a young thirteen-year-old, Don Mclean, and pushed out one of America's favorite songs 20 years later. I hope this widened your view on the music world and the meanings behind the lyrics. Thank you