The Day The Music Died

On February 3, 1957, the airplane carrying Richie Valens, Buddy Holly, and The Big Bopper (J. P. Richardson), and 60+ others crashed.  No one survived.

On February 4, 1957 (my 9th birthday), we read about it in the newspapers and heard about it from our local djs.

On October 24, 1971, the album American Pie, by Don McLean was released.  The song "American Pie" is one of those songs that is somehow both a part of the time of its release and a part of the childhood of everyone around my age:

A long, long time ago
I can still remember how that music used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And maybe they'd be happy for a while

But February made me shiver
With every paper I'd deliver
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn't take one more step

I can't remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died

The entire song consists of codes for the passage of time from those deaths to the time that the singer has taken the stage.

Did you write the book of love
And do you have faith in God above
If the Bible tells you so?
Now do you believe in rock and roll
Can music save your mortal soul
And can you teach me how to dance real slow?

Well, I know that you're in love with him
'Cause I saw you dancin' in the gym
You both kicked off your shoes
Man, I dig those rhythm and blues

I was a lonely teenage broncin' buck
With a pink carnation and a pickup truck
But I knew I was out of luck
The day the music died

Elvis and Don & Phil and Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard...Eddie Cochran...

Now for ten years we've been on our own
And moss grows fat on a rollin' stone
But that's not how it used to be
When the jester sang for the king and queen
In a coat he borrowed from James Dean
And a voice that came from you and me

Oh, and while the king was looking down
The jester stole his thorny crown
The courtroom was adjourned
No verdict was returned

And while Lenin read a book on Marx
A quartet practiced in the park
And we sang dirges in the dark
The day the music died

 
Bobby and Elvis again and John, Paul, George, and Ringo.

Helter skelter in a summer swelter
The birds flew off with a fallout shelter
Eight miles high and falling fast
It landed foul on the grass
The players tried for a forward pass
With the jester on the sidelines in a cast

Now the halftime air was sweet perfume
While the sergeants played a marching tune
We all got up to dance
Oh, but we never got the chance

'Cause the players tried to take the field
The marching band refused to yield
Do you recall what was revealed
The day the music died?

Mick and Keith and Roger McGuin and David Crosby and Chris Hillman.  And fifty thousand dead.

I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news
But she just smiled and turned away
I went down to the sacred store
Where I'd heard the music years before
But the man there said the music wouldn't play

And in the streets, the children screamed
The lovers cried and the poets dreamed
But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken

And the three men I admire most
The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died

Janis.  Jimi.  Four dead in Ohio.  And John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King (or so it always seemed to me). 

This is, really, a song about deaths, actual and figurative and spiritual.

And they were singin' bye-bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
And them good old boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye
Singin' "This'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die"

 They were singin' bye-bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
Them good old boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye
And singin' "This'll be the day that I die"

 
Good-bye to youth, to illusions.  Hello, reality.  Hello, death.