New young love for Seventies legend, but old magic sadly lacking in his latest album
At 72, Don McLean has one of the most prized songbooks and enduring careers of his generation and has sold 40 gold and platinum albums. Even Madonna is among stars who have covered his classic Seventies hit American Pie.
Now his new album, Botanical Gardens, is full of (barely dignified) musing over young love. But he’s keen to stress it wasn’t inspired by new girlfriend, Playboy model Paris Dylan, 24 – and was finished before they even met. “Someone wrote in a review that she was involved with the writing of the songs. That’s false,” he says. “And I don’t want you to make that mistake.” Er, sure Don.
Divorced from wife Patrisha in 2016, six months after admitting a domestic violence charge, he eagerly posts pictures of himself and Paris on social media – but refuses to discuss their relationship. “It’s out there, but I don’t talk about it. Sorry.”
Her arrival in Don’s life, however, appears timely when you listen to Botanical Gardens. The album’s songs are full of the hope of new love just around the corner.
Is Don getting all clairvoyant in his later years? “I know things are gonna happen before they happen, and that’s all I can tell ya,” McLean claims.“I did not know this person when I wrote all those songs. I knew something was happening in my life. And that’s what that album really is about.
“So have fun thinking about that.” Or perhaps not, given the effect the album had on me. Maybe it is best to remember Don’s good stuff – like the anti war number The Grave which George Michael sung in protest at the Iraq War. “I was very proud he used my song,” says Don. “I thought he did a brilliant job.”
He’s also proud the late great Roy Orbison called him “the voice of the American century”.
He says: “I’ve had so many wonderful things said about me in my life by people I respect, that it’s inoculated me to some degree against pain when a reviewer doesn’t like something. I think ‘well, Roy would like it’ or ‘Elvis would like it’. That’s enough for me.” Neither are here to prove his point – but I’m sure it’s true, Mr McLean, I’m sure it is. With his usual dark cloud hanging over him, Mark Oliver Everett’s first release in four years is portent and omenfilled. Bone Dry captures a mood of urgent unease, Rusty Pipes’ distant choir and insistent throb adds stalker-at-thedoor atmospherics, while The Epiphany yearns for a past that can never be reclaimed. Happy face Mister E falls flat on You Are The Shining Light but, with its stark and simple piano spelling out a stunning sentiment, There I Said It breaks the heart clean in two. Refusing to be overshadowed by his classic 1977 debut single Whole Wide World, Hull hero Eric Goulden carved one of post-punk’s most splenetic and fortifying careers. This timely and imposing album has a big bold sound, shot through with WE’s sour and sharp sense of humour. Tender reflections, never wrongsided by soppy sentiment, mark colourful tunes embedded in the the past but looking to the future with pitiful wails and righteous rocking. Dazed and beautiful.