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Hello and welcome to Marshall Matters with me, Winston Marshall.

Today I am joined from California by one of the greatest American songwriters of all time, Don McLean.

Don's songs have resonated through the ages and have been covered by the likes of Madonna,

George Michael, Ed Sheeran and Elvis Presley.

And I Love You So, Vincent and of course American Pie are all firm favourites in the American Songbook.

The latter American Pie, released 50 years ago in 1971, might even be considered an alternative national anthem.

It was voted number five Song of the 20th century in the US.

The original working manuscript from American Pie sold for $1.2 million at Christie's.

This is testament not only to the power of Don's music, but to the power of his lyrics.

Don, thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you for having me. What a lovely introduction.

I'm generally thrilled. I remember singing your songs even as a boy.

I have a memory of being at a wedding, age five or six,

and seeing all the adults taking their ties off, the men taking their ties off, dancing on the

table, singing American playing. Yeah, that has the effect on people. Party time. Yeah, exactly.

It's supposed to be unbelievable, to have a song even resonate with one other

person, but to resonate with so many people year after year, decade after decade, very few

songwriters could even imagine that having that experience. Well, I guess it has a sort of a prismic

effect, you know, you see things in it as you grow older and it stays with

people. I had a lot of fun writing the song and actually all the songs on the American Pie

album and making that album was magic. Even the cover, the cover was fantastic. The guy that took

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