Latest Don McLean Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• 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.

  Don McLean

  Country, War, Winning

  Interview with Keith Chagall, centurycity.news.

• 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.

  Don McLean

  Song, Hard Work, Journey

  Source: centurycityview.org

• The society that produced The Who, The Stones, Dylan, Paul McCartney and later on people, like myself, is over. The materialistic society that produces these kinds of bombastic performances that don't have any value or musical meaning, is very conspicuous, look at me, I'm rich, dig my brand. That's what missing, Bob Dylan made us feel worthy, I try to do the same thing. Respect for the audience with music that is meaningful and soulful. Go for what moves you and not necessarily what you think will be commercial.

  Don McLean

  Meaningful, Moving, Thinking

• 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.

  Don McLean

  Song, Taken, Unique

  Interview with Keith Chagall, centurycity.news.

• 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.

  Don McLean

  Song, Thinking, Internet

• I'm gonna say this and I really mean it - I'm very thankful that I'm not a huge star. I've all the stardom and celebrity that I can handle. But I also have peace and quiet. I am left alone. And I am not recognized everywhere I go and it's perfect. I can come and fill the theatres and I get on stage ... people say: "Well, oh yeah, that must be him," you know?

  Don McLean

  Mean, People, Perfect

• 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.

  Don McLean

  Horse, Book, Reading

• There's enough ugliness - you know, we got wars going on and people dying and sickness and everything. We don't need to have our art be ugly. But it is, in a lot of it. And these people justify this crap by saying, "Oh we're just representing what's out there, man". Basically, you're making it worse and number one, the artist's job is to elevate people and to lift people up and to give them a place to go, something to hold on to.

  Don McLean

  Art, War, Men

• When writing I just go with the song. I go with the song and try to tell the story. So the story may be "Wonderful Baby", which is a little song. Or it might be a gentle song, "Empty Chairs". Or it might be a rock and roll song like "Prime Time" or "Run, Diana, Run", or "American Pie". I don't know where it's gonna go. I don't have any idea what I'm doing. I just do it. I just keep doing it. I keep taking adva

  Don McLean

  Running, Song, Baby

• The horrible thing about Death of princess Diana - the sacrificial lamb, which she was. And I believe, in a sense, John Kennedy, Jr. was the same thing. These are people that we loved so much that we drove them berserk with all the attention and they basically didn't have any particular stellar talents. They were just in some kind of a position somewhere where we fixed on them and they became, literally, sacrificial lambs

  Don McLean

  Believe, Princess, People

• 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.

  Don McLean

  Artist, People, World

• 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.

  Don McLean

  Sexy, Technology, People

• 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

  Don McLean

  Real, People, Democracy

• I've always been on the outside of all that political stuff so I just sort of watch it and I'm appalled and I think people should be screaming about a lot of things right now and they're not. They're just letting everything happen. I don't know. At some point the wheels are going to come off and we're going to have a real problem. The people are going to get angry and it's going to be too late.

  Don McLean

  Real, Thinking, People

• 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.

  Don McLean

  Nice, Long, People

• I have no idea how I do anything. I never have. You know I just started playing guitar and started singing and started working on this act that I would call "Don McLean" when I was probably in high school. And I have been doing this for 40 years, adding songs and writing things, cobbling together albums, doing live things, you know, albums and tours. And then I have records on the charts. I have no idea how this happened.

  Don McLean

  Song, Writing, School