Miss American Pie
Nevermore to be Heard
I interviewed Don McLean around 10 years ago and I forget most of what we talked about but one thing that really stuck in my mind was when I brought up Bob Dylan and McLean said Dylan was overrated, and it sounded so conceited as if McLean really believed he was a better songwriter and poet than Dylan, ,which he isn’t and will never be, or maybe he just couldn’t admit that maybe he was not the best singer-songwriter in the world, despite the resounding and enduring popularity of McLean’s anthem on rock and roll, “American Pie.”
I hadn’t thought about McLean or that interview for probably 10 years until I read a column in today’s N.Y. Times about McLean’s ex-wife, Patrisha, and the many years she claims she was physically and emotionally abused by her famous husband, the writer of such warm and poignant tunes as “Starry, Starry Night.” I proceeded to Google more about the McLeans and found a Rolling Stone story about the musician’s estranged daughter, Jackie, who went on in great detail about the years of emotional and psychological abuse she endured from her famous daddy.
And now I don’t know if I can listen to “American Pie,” “Starry, Starry Night” or any of the many songs that I so enjoyed and were penned by McLean, who evidently has been abusive in so many ways to his former wife and daughter. And the way that the two women described the famous man reminded me of the conceit that I heard in his voice during that interview a decade ago.
The McLeans were married for 29 years before the night five years ago that she made a 911 call, leading to the arrest of McLean on suspicion of domestic violence. He was charged with six misdemeanors and pleaded guilty to four as part of a plea agreement in which the domestic violence charge would be dismissed after a year. The other charges, criminal restraint, criminal mischief and making domestic violence threats, led to around $3,000 in fines. Since the court case, Ms. McLean founded “Finding Our Voices,” a Maine-based nonprofit dedicated to educating people about domestic abuse and providing services for victims. And Mr. McLean was honored in August with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The question is whether artists should be appreciated for their art and should not be judged by their shortcomings. I tend toward avoiding the foibles of artists and instead focusing on their art but I do find myself not wanting to listen to any of McLean’s music now.
And it goes back to cancel culture and whether artists or any famous people, for that matter, should be cancelled or blackballed from the popular culture if they are found to have behaved badly, whether being physically or sexually abusive, racist, homophobic, xenophobic or a dozen other phobics that are generally considered totally unacceptable. It extends to the ongoing controversy over historical figures such as Columbus or Robert E. Lee and whether monuments to them should be toppled much like a great song like “American Pie” should be toppled off the airwaves. If that is so, erase the total catalogue of Woody Allen films, films that have brought such humanity and joy to millions of people, including me, because he allegedly sexually abused his young child. And never again watch “Chinatown” or any other of the masterpieces crafted by the great director Roman Polanski because of his illicit relationship with a young girl many years ago. And avoid Elvis Presley because he was known to have sex with young teens and John Lennon because he was alleged to have physically abused his first wife and take down “Guernica” and all of the Picasso masterpieces because he was a known abuser of women. And the list is seemingly endless and the question remains of whether to patronize the great artists and political leaders if they are found to have sinned. And then there is that saying, “Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone” which just about gets everybody off the hook because everybody has sinned.
I have intentionally avoided reading the ongoing salacious reports about Woody Allen’s alleged sexual perversions because I just don’t want to know and I just don’t want to give up watching the art of one of my favorite filmmakers and stand-up comics. And yes, I feel more than a bit hypocritical when I condemn the wrapper, R. Kelly, after he was found guilty of rape, sex trafficking and racketeering but it’s no skin off my back because I never listen to R. Kelly so agreeing to never listen to him again, on moral grounds, is a lot of hot air from me. And please don’t take away “Don’t Be Cruel” and “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Help” and “Yesterday” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” But I am OK with canceling out Frank Sinatra, who sounds like a totally unlikable soul, because I never liked him that much anyway.
Cancel culture has become deadly not just to artists but to politicians who find themselves victim of on-line slam campaigns, whether the slurs are true or not. As with so many other things, cancel culture has been weaponized by the left and the right to the point where it may have less to do with whether a famous person was abusive and more to whether that famous person is a Democrat or a Republican.
So if you adhere to the philosophy of cancelling, here is a short list of who ought to be targeted.
Pablo Picasso seemed to revel in his chauvinism, having once referred to women as “machines for suffering.”
“Being one of Picasso’s women meant watching as he slept with hundreds of people behind your back and treated you like trash. He once said he thought women were either goddesses or doormats, and it seems he enjoyed turning the former into the latter,” according to a report in Grunge.com.
The French painter, Edgar Degas, was a rabid anti-Semite, who once went into a screaming fit because he found out a model was Jewish, and “Fittingly, by the time of his death in 1917, Degas had been abandoned by his friends, who were fed up with his racism.”
Johnny Cash was a womanizer and drug abuser who cheated on his pregnant wife, June Carter, and even had a reported affair with June’s sister, Anita.
The legendary Chuck Berry served three years in prison for taking a 14-year-old girl across state lines with “immoral” intentions. In 1989, Berry was accused of videotaping women in the bathroom of one of his restaurants.
Jerry Lee Lewis revolutionized rock and roll when he wasn’t losing his monstrous temper with any of his seven wives, including two who died mysteriously, one from drowning and one from a drug overdose. Lewis’s seventh marriage was to 13-year-old Myra, the ex-sister-in-law of his third wife.
Miles Davis, the embodiment of jazz, admitted in his autobiography that he beat his wives and abused cocaine and heroin.
The great James Brown physically abused his wives, according to a memoir written by his daughter, Yamma. She described one incident where she saw “Blood spurted from my mother’s face. She started thrashing around, kicking her legs, holding up her arms to ward off the punches and trying to break free, trying to save herself.”
The domestic violence Ike Turner unleashed on his then-wife, Tina, is well documented. Tina wrote in her autobiography that their lives together were “defined by abuse and fear.”
The list goes on and on so do you just throw up your hands and say artists are just people and have the same strengths and weaknesses of most people or do you stop patronizing them and punish them for their crimes? Just asking.