Life continues right or wrong

Don McLean opened his Araneta Coliseum concert the same way he began his elegiac song American Pie: with a tribute to Buddy Holly, whose tragic death in a plane crash in 1959 he immortalized with the song’s haunting refrain “The day the music died.” Pairing his usual Levi’s 501 button-fly jeans with a soft green shirt that recalled the McLean clan’s roots to the emerald isle of Mull in the Scottish Hebrides, he sang Everyday, Holly’s song that inspired him to buy his first guitar (a Harmony acoustic archtop with a sunburst finish) and sing his heart away. His Pinoy audience had the time of their lives tracing the evolution of American country music for the next two hours, from the black spirituals, to the immigrant ballads to the southern honky tonks.

He confided, “I’m very concerned that I give everything I possibly can because it might be the last time I’m ever there, you never know. I treat every show as if it’s the last one.”

The most applauded were his romantic chart toppers: If We Try of anticipated love that makes life exciting; And I Love You So, of found love that makes life worth while; and the haunting Empty Chairs of  love irrevocably lost. A hush fell on the crowd when he sang, “I feel the trembling tingle of a sleepless night

Creep through my fingers and the moon is bright

Beams of blue come flickering through my window pane

Like gypsy moths that dance around a candle flame.”

He articulates his pride in the second song, since it was the last one recorded by the late King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley. The lilting strains of Wonderful Baby brought a smile to his face, reminiscing the late Fred Astaire, who rendered it and for whom he composed it.

In What Will the World be Like, he worries about the kind of life adults are leaving behind for their children, asking the questions:

What will the world be like when you’re on your own?

What will the world be like when you’re almost grown?

What will the world be like when you pack your things,

when you leave your home?

What in the world will tomorrow bring?

The BA degree holder doesn’t really like the term the “American Dream.” He said: “The problem with my country is that people really do dream too much and now they’re getting a very rude awakening,” And one remembers his The Grave, written to condemn the atrocities of his country’s wars. “Therefore,  I prefer to set goals for myself and try to achieve those goals so I couldn’t wait to get at those goals and try to achieve them the day after I got out of college,” he explained.

His curls may not be as black and bouncy as when he was the maverick ingénue of the early ’70s, but his voice has retained the strength of his troubadour years when he sailed up and down the banks of the Hudson with his idol Pete Seeger, trying to advocate for the river’s preservation. He hit the high notes of the Roy Orbison hits Crying and Love Hurts without straining his vocal cords, so that when he sang his signature Vincent, his mostly golden aged audience said a silent prayer for this March night despite the drizzle.

It is chronicled that Mc Lean wrote Vincent, also known as Starry, Starry Night, in the fall of 1970, while he was working for the Berkshire School District. He was living in the Sedgwick House, a beautiful Federal style house in Stockbridge, Massachusetts that was full of antiques. The muse came to him one morning while he was sitting on the veranda staring at a book about Vincent Van Gogh. As he studied a print of the tortured genius’ painting Starry Night, he realized that a song could be written about the artist through the painting.

This is the gift of McLean, his poetic lines inscribed in soothing melodies that lift the pall of sorrow and tenderly lead you to the break of a new day.

Surprisingly, he doesn’t really think of himself as a poet or a songwriter even. In an interview, he confessed, “I don’t really think of myself as anything. I’ve only done this my whole life; I’ve never worked for anybody or been in an office setting or been around a boss. I’ve made up my own life as it’s gone along and did what I felt like doing. So in the days when I had recording contracts and I was a young artist I drifted into songwriting but I also loved singing other people’s songs and so I did that as well.”

Lori Lieberman, the singer behind Killing Me Softly With his Song thinks otherwise. The words of the song now closely identified with McLean were written by Norman Gimbel and set to music by Charles Fox, tailored specifically for the gentle unaffected voice of Lori, a young folk singer from the West Coast. She was the first to record it, after describing her experience of watching McLean sing in L.A. once, though it was not until Roberta Flack cut her plaintive version that it became an international hit.

Flack recounted in a song this strong feeling she had listening to McLean: “I felt all flushed with fever / Embarrassed by the crowd / I felt he had found my letters / And read each one out loud / I prayed that he would finish / But he kept just right on…”

Thus, biographer Allan Howard titled his life story Killing Us Softly with His Song.

But of course, the signature song that brought the house down was American Pie, and the senior citizens forgot their arthritis to stand at the aisles and liberate their itchy toes to dance to this longest recorded anthem, about the terrible cataclysms that fell upon the generation lost in space. Will wonders never cease! My husband and I could not remember what our youngest son’s birthday wish for that day was (consisting of only three letters), yet could sing all the lines of this 8.5 minute epic, just like we did in high school.

Having given his all, he bid his audience goodbye, thanking him for listening to his music, his four-piece band following him down the stage. But the deafening ovation made him sling his guitar back for some encore, among them his classic Birthday Song, where he substituted the lovers for the sweet fish, in his flippant way —

Now you see me now you don’t watch me dive below

Deep down in your love lake where the sweet fish come and go

And I might sink and I might drown but death don’t mean a thing

‘Cause life continues right or wrong when I play this birthday song

I learned from you, and you can’t even sing…

We, March Birthday girls (Tina, Mimi and I), who have met with life’s ups and downs agree that life continues right or wrong, but Don McLean’s Manila concert made it mostly right.