The other night, while I was trying hard to relax, I saw an item on my server homepage, perhaps, the saddest thing I've ever seen. It received the kind of attention that, I imagine, was once accorded to circus oddities. It was featured in that fixture of my childhood home, "The N.Y. Daily News". Don Mc Clean was arrested, on a charge of domestic violence. He was holding up a numbered placard, for his mug shot - hair still long, but white as my own, face, once so preternaturally boyish, now grown old. The Daily News, never shy about filling salacious details, quoted his 45 year old wife, "It was NOT much ado about nothing!" I'm sure it wasn't. And my heart goes out to her.
To most of you, Don Mc Clean is an unknown figure from the misty past. And since I am also an unknown figure from the misty past, let me explain: In the early '70s Mc Clean's song "American Pie" & album of the same name were published. Today, it is hard to understand why it was such a phenomenon! For starters, it was 8 MINUTES LONG - a complete oral history of Rock' n Roll music, from 1958, to that time. (for many years, I could recite the whole thing, without a break. Today, I can hardly remember my own name) We spent 2 days, in my high school English class decoding "American Pie". It is ironic that none of us who bought the millions of copies of "American Pie" ever got its message. We were babies in 1958, when Buddy Holly, Richie Valenz, & "The Big Bopper" were all killed in a wintry plane crash over the Midwest. He was actually blaming US, & our evolving tastes, toward bands, like the Beatles & the Stones, for destroying the music he loved!
Most of the songs on the album were lilting ballads. The best known of the "others" was his homage to Van Goh, "Starry, Starry Night" Remembering those words made me weep, the night Robin Williams died: " And when no hope was left in sight on that starry, starry night you took your life, as lovers often do. But I could've told you, Vincent, (Robin) this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you!" In another song, "Empty Chairs", he penned a poignant line, which seems ominous now: "And I wonder if you know that I never understood, although you said you'd go, until you did, I never thought you would".
A year or so later, another singer, the great Roberta Flack, took the Country by storm, with another poignant ballad: "I heard he sang a good song. I heard he had a style. And so, I came to see him, to listen for a while. And there he was, this young boy, a stranger to my eyes - Strumming my pain with his fingers, singing my life with his words, killing me softly with his song". It was soon publicized that "Killing Me Softly" was about Don Mc Clean. We who had enjoyed "the other" songs, readily understood. Perhaps now, you can see why it was so sad to read that the man who strummed others' pain with his fingers, was arrested for balling up those fingers & striking his own wife.
I remember watching John & Jackie Kennedy taking off for Texas. I remember watching U.S.C. runningback, O.J. Simpson striding, majestically toward the Heisman Trophy. And listening to the Jackson Five, led by young Michael. And I laughed at Bill Cosby's jokes until my belly hurt. The great irony of approaching death is. I really doubt that anything of my soul will be left, when I get there.
