PARAMOUNT+ DOCUMENTARY ON DON MCLEAN’S “AMERICAN PIE” IS HERE

Don McLean and his song “American Pie” are now the subject of a full-length feature documentary, The Day the Music Died: The Story of Don McLean’s “American Pie,” airing now on Paramount+.  The 90-minute documentary starts when a single-engine plane carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and Jiles P. Richardson, the “Big Bopper,” crashed into a cornfield north of Clear Lake, Iowa, on Feb. 3, 1959, killing the three stars and their pilot. McLean was 13, living in a suburban, middle-class home in New Rochelle, NY, when the crash occurred. Young McLean adored Elvis, Gene Vincent, and Bo Diddley but especially Holly, whose death deeply affected him. Years later, McLean turned that pain into “American Pie.”