At the time, Buddy Holly was his musical idol. In an extensive interview for the film, McLean talks about delivering the paper that carried news of the crash, something he alludes to towards the start of the song’s lyrics. The first part of the film covers McLean’s early life, including his time as a paper boy in the suburb of New York City where he grew up. More, it features a moving interview with Valens’ sister Connie, who we see thanking McLean for immortalizing her brother in song. The film-makers scored a coup by bringing on camera a man who saw that fateful concert, as well as the man who owns the aviation company that rented the doomed plane. The documentary begins with that event, traveling back to the Surf Ballroom, where the stars played their final show. On a frigid night in 1959, a small plane carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and JP Richardson (The Big Bopper) crashed in a corn field in Clear Lake, Iowa, minutes after take-off, killing everyone on board. The event, which McLean dubbed “the day the music died”, shattered the pop world of its day and had a formative effect on the songwriter. In addition, it offers an emotional account of the tragic event that McLean used as his jumping off point for the larger story he wanted to tell. “This film was a concerted effort to raise the curtain.” “I told Don, ‘It’s time for you to reveal what 50 years of journalists have wanted to know,’” Proffer said. By contrast, the new documentary offers the first line-by-line deconstruction of the song’s lyrics, as well as the most detailed analysis to date of its musical evolution. Throughout the years, journalists have subjected the song to a Talmudic level of scrutiny, while its songwriter, Don McLean, has doled out dribs and drabs of insight into his intent. Over the years, it has been interpreted by artists from Madonna (who created a commercially triumphant, if aesthetically limp, take in 2000) to Garth Brooks to Jon Bon Jovi to John Mayer.

In fact, American Pie has only gained in fans and expanded in meaning as it has hit successive generations and generated fresh covers.

Meaning of american pie song