article_snippet.sent: Of course, like all poets, McLean didn't give us a key to the riddle of what McLean song was about when McLean released McLean multi-million-selling single.
article_snippet.sent: it means I'll never have to work again,' McLean would joke about how much money his song had made McLean, leaving us to work out for us what the 'sad news on the doorstep' was exactly, and why McLean 'couldn't take one more step' when McLean read one more step'.
article_snippet.sent: McLean, according to his song, anyway, was 14 and delivering papers in the rather smart New York suburb of New Rochelle where McLean grew up.
article_snippet.sent: Then, in between every verse, would come that cryptic chorus about driving his 'Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry'.
article_snippet.sent: When asked to give a few hints as to the meaning of the lyrics for this week's auction catalogue, Only McLean simply said that 'the song was not a parlour game', but 'an indescribable photograph of America that I tried to capture in words and music'.
article_snippet.sent: Although Only McLean said before the auction of Only McLean song's lyrics that the pages would 'divulge everything there is to divulge' about this 'mystical trip into my past', they clearly don't.
article_snippet.sent: But the material does cast some light on how his song changed before Only McLean recorded his song.
article_snippet.sent: Originally, Only McLean had intended a positive ending, suggesting an extra verse that the music Only McLean once loved would be reborn in happier times.
article_snippet.sent: What Only McLean does do, however, is give excellent advice to songwriters who are just starting out: 'Immerse yourself in beautiful music and beautiful lyrics and think about every word you say in a song.'
article_snippet.sent: But then you turn on the radio and realise that, with just a few exceptions, an appreciation of good music and lyrics has played little part in the education of so many of today's songwriters.
article_snippet.sent: Most people will probably think of 69-year-old Don McLean as a one-hit wonder — now living in semi-retirement, and no doubt the lap of luxury, with his wife in Maine.
article_snippet.sent: But at around the same time, his also wrote two other pop classics.