DON McLEAN - “Vincent”
(#314, 17th June 1972)
“They did not listen, they’re not listening still.”
Always a ‘they’, of course. Never a ‘we’.
“Vincent” is Don McLean’s second 1972 hit about untimely death. His first, “American Pie”, is a lot more famous, and - butt of subsequent jokes and groans though it is - a good deal better. ”Pie” became the rock music version of Kit William’s Masquerade, but deep in the bones of the song is a smaller, good record about being a lonely kid with a paper round and a record collection and a frustrated crush on rock and roll. “American Pie” has lines which point to McLean’s love and understanding of rock, and moments which reveal his resentment of it, too. Someone else is kicking off their shoes and dancing in the gym - McLean casts himself as voyeur and embalmer (and then voyeur again, “hands clenched in fists of rage” watching Mick Jagger, who is enacting the difference between loving pop and living it) (and oh, Don, I can sympathise).
There’s life and grief and rage in “American Pie”, then - even if it’s a different grief from the one the record seems to be selling you: “Pie”’s not really a story of what rock was becoming at all. In “Vincent”, on the other hand, I don’t hear any real grief or rage, and I do hear that story. The romantic cult of death - men set apart from others, too great for this world, suffering and dying to show us love or set us free - was becoming written into rock. Stories like Buddy Holly’s of bad snap decisions leading to worse luck, were giving way to tales of creative madness and awful destiny. By the 90s rock would be littered with Van Goghs.
Van Gogh himself, meanwhile, was doing just fine - as an idea, anyway. The fame which had started to come his way in his last year of life had turned posthumously into international renown and martyrology even before the First World War. By 1972, he was art’s saint: taking a side against the world that ignored Van Gogh is taking no side at all. It’s a cheap way of self-identifying as a sensitive yourself - Don isn’t like “them”, he understands, he’s let the artist open his eyes.
That’s not to say that it’s wrong to feel for Vincent Van Gogh, or to love his work, or to shudder at his illness: what’s wrong with this hollow record is that it makes such a point of that feeling, and implicitly denies it to the unenlightened, to the “them”. (Presumably some of those “them” had seen the light, as Van Gogh had become probably the most loved artist of the previous 100 years). As a performance, “Vincent” is pretty, more than competent, limpid and overlong perhaps but effective enough that I’m marking it down for putting its ideas across well, because I think its ideas (as I see them) are bad.
“Vincent” is a convenient scapegoat for one of the great inescapable traps in pop discourse. Construction of a “them” to react against is an act of creativity itself, that sometimes seems to jumpstart other creativity, and sometimes seems to clog it up and weigh it down. But picking up a constructed-them and adopting it, without questioning, without self-questioning, is lazy, and that’s what McLean’s doing. Doubly infuriating that he’s fitting Van Gogh, a great fierce poet of the everyday who painted flowers and friends and his bedroom window views, into this wretched system.
Of course I recognise McLeanish tendencies in myself - just look at (or don’t!) my “Why I Hate Indie Kids” essay, where there’s a whole history of identification and rejection and infatuation and compromise hidden behind the lame me-against-them stuff, though you might never know it. In “American Pie” you could hear McLean’s equivalent history, no matter how much Don tried to disguise it with wordgames and smugness. In “Vincent”, though, self-satisfaction beats art and beats life. 1
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Marcello Carlin on March 29th, 2007
I do know that Webb song; it sounds to me like a Lion King number battling with systematic radio signal interference from latterday Scott Walker. No bad thing.
Lena on March 29th, 2007
I just googled the lyrics as this song isn’t played on the oldies shows I listen to - not rollicking enough, unlike “American Pie” - and the ‘them’ I get mostly are the subjects of his paintings themselves which he is trying to (according to McLean) ’set free.’ So I guess this means that Van Gogh’s own vision of the world (which sees into the darkness of the narrator’s soul) is to create beauty out of the ordinary or even ugly. This is not a new idea in art, to say the least…now, but in Van Gogh’s time, it was the new thing.
For me, inevitably, the literary equivalent in a way is Plath - a not-unknown-to-poetry-circles person in her life, and only after her death did her great fame (and greatest works) get their due, alongside a great deal of understandable sentiment, which could get melodramatic at times, to say the least. Somehow, for me anyway, the sentiment is justified by the greatness of the work because it is sad to see great talent die young, whatever the medium…and “Perhaps, they never will…” can either mean “There will always be people who think the Mona Lisa is the best painting ever and everything after that is just messing around” or “There will always be people who buy a print of ‘Sunflowers’ and put it up on the wall in their house because it ‘goes’ with their decor who don’t know the slightest thing about Van Gogh besides he seemed to like the color yellow, so maybe they should get something else by him.”
Izzy on March 29th, 2007
I’ve never heard this song, but that’s a fantastic review.
FT's Tim on March 29th, 2007
It seems to me that the limpidity of the performance makes the problems Tom’s talking about worse. The record sounds sane and balanced.
Setting up a ludicrous “them” in a context which feels like a wild cry for help or attention (or whatever) is a very different matter from setting up a bad “them” in a song which feels like it’s tellling a tale with a clear point or (worse) a clear moral.
FT's wwolfe on March 29th, 2007
This review expresses why I’ve always disliked this song. It made me think of the following by Robert Christgau:
“Evan Dando is a good-looking guy with more luck than talent and more talent than brains who conceals his narcissism beneath an unassuming suburban drawl. Twenty years ago he would have affected an acoustic guitar and acted sincere; now he affects a slacker-pop band and acts vulnerable. His songs don’t bite, they sidle over and nibble your ear when you’re not looking, and if you throw him a withering glance, no problem–he’ll just move on to someone else.”
I actually was disappointed there wasn’t a “Too high” choice for this song. Clearly, there’s something about McLean’s attitude and strategy you’ve described that pushes my buttons. That says as much about me as it does about the song, of course, but it doesn’t make what you’ve said any less true.
I love the backing track of “American Pie.” It’s especially enjoyable to hear the drummer’s determination to never repeat a fill over the seven minutes of the song, and Paul Griffin’s sped-up piano-roll fills.
Here’s an aspect of “Pie” that I’d never thought of before now that’s both startling and all-too-familiar: the “all is lost” view of pop and rock circa 1971-72 is based solely and completely on music made by white artists. Other than the early mention of the Book of Love, there’s not a single black artist referenced anywhere in the song. As ever, that’s a disturbing and infuriating view of popular music in the 1960s and ’70s. But, even if we buy his argument that white music was beyond redemption by this time, a roll call of the black acts who were having huge hits with great music at exactly the moment Mclean was recording “Pie” make his argument look plain silly.
DV on March 29th, 2007
OMG, “Masquerade”! I though me and my sister were the only people in the world who knew about this! Thanks for supplying the key details required to find out more about it on the Interweb.
FT's Tom on March 29th, 2007
Vicar if you listen to the Lollards Of Pop Week 3 you will find a lengthy bit on Masquerade by me! I nicked it all off Wikipedia mind you so you might as well look there.
It sold a grillion copies so I can’t imagine it’s been forgotten!
FT's Alan on March 29th, 2007
i still have my copy
Marcello Carlin on March 30th, 2007
Apropos “Pie” and blacks, Hendrix is routinely assumed to be one of the “three” he admired the most.
Rosie on March 30th, 2007
When I hear ‘Vincent’ I don’t here a lecture in elementary art history. I hear a song about mental illlness, about depression in this case. It’s a cousin of Without You and somehow I’ve always linked the two in my mind. If I were a psychiatrist I’d be much more concerned about Don’s gentle melancholy than Harry’s raging despair. Harry will get over it; Don is far more likely to slash his wrists quietly in a hot bath with an empty bottle of absinthe and a severed ear beside him.
True, there’s a ‘they’ in there. But isn’t there always, in the rhetoric of the depressive? For me, the key line is with eyes that know the darkness in my soul - that’s the one that first comes to my mind. That’s the only ‘my’ in the song and it hits harder for that. “I’m lonely, and nobody understands me, just like they didn’t understand you. While everybody else is out grooving to Bolan, I find a kindred spirit looking at your paintings, but they don’t understand that.’
Self-indulgent? Yes, of course it is, and in spades. But that’s what depression is all about.
Erithian on March 30th, 2007
DV, try and get hold of a copy of Bamber Gascoigne’s “Quest for the Golden Hare”, which details the history of “Masquerade” and includes very entertaining accounts of how some Masqueraders went about solving the puzzle. One bloke had a conspiracy theory – “it has to involve the Queen…” and when Gascoigne explained to him precisely how the puzzle worked, he replied, “Codswallop”.
Marcello Carlin on March 30th, 2007
Rosie absolutely OTM there.
FT's Tom on March 30th, 2007
Yes, Rosie’s is the most convincing counter-argument so far. I guess my specific response would be that I don’t see darkness in most of Van Gogh’s paintings, but that’s not to say McLean didn’t or couldn’t of course.
Rosie on March 30th, 2007
It’s true that I can’t see much darkness in the morning fields of amber grain but I do see darkness in the self-portraits, eg http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/gogh/self/gogh.self-whitney.jpg
Weathered faces lined with pain indeed.
Mark Grout on March 30th, 2007
I agree completely with the review.
However, 1 point is way too harsh.
Does this put it lower than “All around the world” ?
Marcello Carlin on March 31st, 2007
Now Mark, you know that would be telling.
Also don’t forget there are two “All Around The World”s coming up…
Tommy Mack on April 1st, 2007
I think the thing that’s always bothered me most - not really this particular song as it was a childhood favourite (my mother’s original 70s tape with the orange label which had been played so often bits of it were silent where the tape had snapped and my mum had sellotaped it back together) but 70s folk-rock singer-songwriter drippiness and much Serious’n'Sensitive music in general - is that I suspect that most of the ‘they’ who ignored Van Gogh’s revolutionary, visceral genius would be exactly the sorts to lap up Don and his peers’ (very pretty, skilled) musical conservatism and self-consciously bruised, sensitive (white male middle-class heterosexual denim jacket) misunderstood outsider folksman world view, giving themselves a big pat on the back for doing so. What I mean is that the very people who were buying and listening to this song and thinking ‘gosh, how awful Vincent Van Gogh was so misunderstood by all those narrow-minded fools, not like us’ were probably unaware or dismissive of the revolutionary things going on around them at that very time. But then that’s me lazily siding against Steven Wells’ constructed ‘them’!
Tommy Mack on April 2nd, 2007
Also, McLean seems to see Van Gogh’s works as extension of his tortured soul, whereas Jonathan Richman (in Vincent Van Gogh) sees his mental illness as the awful price to be paid for his genius. I don’t get the impression either Don or Jojo have it half as bad as Van Gogh, but then Richman doesn’t subtly and slyly pretend to and his song is all the more affecting for not letting teenage pomposity spoil its sentiment.
Waldo on April 5th, 2007
If Rosie wants depression, bring on “Seasons in the Sun”…
Rosie on April 5th, 2007
Waldo, I will have lots of things to say about Seasons in the Sun when we get there. Not many of them complimentary.
(I do hope Tom will have acquainted himself with Jacques Brel’s Le Moribond before we do. A grasp of colloquial French might help too)
Waldo on April 6th, 2007
That’s actually a good call, Rosie. I’m sure Terry Jacks would be flattered, but “Seasons” was indeed rather Brelesque in its outlook, if for nothing else. The B-side, a song about Terry’s dog getting hit by a car was not so much Jacques Brel than Tommy Cooper. Wonderful. Roll on 1974.
Rosie on April 6th, 2007
Well, Waldo, let’s wait until we get there, shall we?
Waldo on April 6th, 2007
Yes, Rosie. Absolutely. Come on, Tom. Let’s crack on!
FT's koganbot on April 11th, 2007
I run in terror whenever near this song, so I am not one to comment on it; but in general, even when setting up a “they” as a foil is totally justified, calling them “they” isn’t very good writing. They who use the word “they” should really try something more evocative: e.g., “the members of the requisition and procurement committee did not understand Jacques Derrida and they never will.”
Fwiw, from 1968 to 1972 pretty much all my rock heroes and faves were getting worse, including the ones who then overdosed. Dylan was the most obvious, but also Lou Reed, the Kinks, the Airplane, the Stones, the Beatles, the Who (though “Baba O’Riley” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again” were a lot more touching than “American Pie” as laments of the condition), the Byrds and on and on. Would’ve helped if I hadn’t underrated Zeppelin and Deep Purple and Sabbath and had been paying more than cursory attention to the Temptations and Funkadelic and Kool & the Gang, etc. and if I’d heard the Stooges and Slade and the MC5 and T. Rex (not to mention the Beginning Of The End and Chakachas and Manu Dibangu and U. Roy, assuming I’d have known enough to appreciate them, which is questionable). But the great Sixties rockers did seem to be crapping out en masse, to be replaced by godawful soft rock and country rock (which turned out to have a few performers who weren’t so godawful, but that was mostly a later judgment on my part - though I was prescient among my social set in not hating the Carpenters). Of course this death of rock cleared the way for other interesting rock, but I knew how McLean felt in “American Pie,” even if his labored metaphors were worth a lot of guffaws.
wichita lineman on July 25th, 2008
The marimbas should be enough to raise this a notch above I See The Moon and My Old Man’s A Dustman, lyrical discourse aside!
As it goes, I’m with Rosie in bracketing this in my mind with Without You, and when I found the album in a Purley jumble sale circa 1980 I loved it almost unconditionally. There is a warm, thundercloud of reverb all over it, giving Sister Fatima and Til Tomorrow an oppressive beauty that reminds me of the atmosphere of Scott 3. An unusual and quite adventurous sound for ‘72 when you set it against the dead, carpeted sound of Tapestry or Heart Of Gold.
The flip of Vincent was the divine Castles In The Air, with cowardly hick Don leaving his high-class girl but asking someone else to deliver the message: “I know I’m weak, but I can’t face that girl again”. Tom, I know the quality of a flip doesn’t alter the score but give it a try, “pur-leeease” (as the Stargazers said on their very own single-pointer).