Eliot later said of The Waste Land that it was ‘just a piece of rhythmical grumbling’, and complained that one early critic of his poem had ‘over-understood’ it.Īre we in danger of similarly ‘over-understanding’ McLean’s ‘American Pie’: that is, of overinterpreting its lyrics and finding meanings within them which were not intended by the writer of the song?Īnd from that follows another question: if we do locate meaning within the song which McLean didn’t himself consciously intend, does that mean our interpretation is necessarily wrong? Eliot’s The Waste Land, that landmark work of modernist poetry which has invited a number of different, and often contradictory, interpretations.īoth Eliot and McLean have also famously refused to comment on the ‘true’ meaning or ‘real’ meaning of their best-known works. In their Behind the Song, Michael Heatley and Spencer Leigh call ‘American Pie’ rock music’s equivalent to T.
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