An uncharitable suspicion is that your teacher confused 'levy' with 'marquee'. The next 'ten years', of course, were the '60s, and the less said about that the better.įinally, I draw a complete blank on any connection between 'levy' and movie theaters. 0:00 / 8:47 Don McLean - The meaning of American Pie (UPDATE) lonestarsound 7.7K subscribers Subscribe 34K Save 5M views 15 years ago This is a revision to previously posted videos.

An entirely reasonable interpretation (hampered by the fact that McLean grew up entirely in the Northeast) is that the local teenagers would get together out on some levee to party and get drunk, although that's such universal behavior that McLean should have had no trouble visualizing it. It's not actually clear what 'the levee was dry' means, but part of American Pie's charm is its ability to mash up phrases and keep going. As Wikipedia points out, US use of 'levee' is pretty much restricted to the Midwest and Deep South, and 'good ole boys' refines the location. NEW YORK - Don McLean has listened for decades as people belted out his classic song 'American Pie' at last call or at karaoke - and applauds you for the effort. He knows a bunch of 'good ole boys' and drives to a levee. (This despite the fact that McLean himself went to prep school in New York.) He has a paper route, he drives a pickup, he goes to dances in the high school gym. 09:00, Updated 17:59, Bookmark 50 years ago music icon Don McLean released the smash hit record 'American Pie' loved by music fans across the world. The first verses of 'American Pie', that is, the verses preceding the second chorus, place the singer as a high-school student in the US south. Except, perhaps, what he'd read in the magazines. Speaking as an American who is roughly contemporaneous with Don McLean, I'm afraid you were the victim of a British teacher who had no concept of 1950's US culture. Exactly 50 years ago on January 15th, Don McLean’s seminal song American Pie hit No.

Meaning of the song american pie