In a 2020 interview, McLean lamented that he “hadn’t learned to relax in the studio yet”, and wished that he’d been looser during the sessions. We knew we had something on our hands that was pretty special.” “When everybody came in the booth to listen to the track, it was magic. “Then I added pianist Paul Griffin and guitarist David Spinozza, and it got very exciting,” Freeman recalls. With McLean on acoustic guitar, accompanied by bassist Bob Rothstein and drummer Roy Markowitz, they nailed a rhythm track for the main body of the song in one confident take.

In May 1971, after two weeks of rehearsal, they entered the Record Plant in NYC. They’d be able to approach Don on the same level.” So instead of getting in a bunch of seasoned studio musicians who could knock it out in five minutes, I deliberately got musicians who were good, but weren’t slick, burned-out superstar players. “Don had not really had any experience playing with other people, and he was very leery about it. “To me, that’s the most crucial thing I did for that whole record,” Freeman says. The easy, fast & fun way to learn how to sing: 30DaySinger.Initially McLean wanted to record American Pie with just acoustic guitar, but Freeman “leaned on him” to use a rhythm section. In 2017, McLean's original recording was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being 'culturally, historically, or artistically significant'. However, the overall theme of the song is the loss of innocence of the early rock and roll generation as symbolized by the plane crash that claimed the lives of three of its heroes. (The crash was not known by that name until after McLean's song became a hit.) The meaning of the other lyrics has long been debated, and for decades, McLean declined to explain the symbolism behind the many characters and events mentioned.

The repeatedly mentioned phrase 'the day the music died' refers to the plane crash in 1959 that killed early rock and roll performers Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens. McLean's combined version is the fourth longest song to enter the Billboard Hot 100 (at the time of release it was the longest), in addition to being the longest song to reach number one. 1 in several countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. A truncated version of the song was covered by Madonna in 2000 and reached No. 5 song on the RIAA project Songs of the Century. In the UK, the single reached number 2, where it stayed for 3 weeks, on its original 1971 release while a reissue in 1991 reached No. Recorded and released on the American Pie album in 1971, the single was the number-one US hit for four weeks in 1972 and also topped the charts in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. 'American Pie' is a song by American singer and songwriter Don McLean.

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