Time moves on, we all grow older.

I bet you can't guess who this is until you hear his voice.

Don McLean of course, he of "American Pie" fame, the simply superb album that is, not the appalling film of the same name.

Released at the end of 1971 as a single which went straight to the top of the UK charts despite being cruelly cut in half to suit the three minute attention span of your average radio DJ, the album was released shortly afterwards and then the full version became known to all of us who ever listened to late night radio when the DJ's spoke with soft voices and had the freedom to play what the hell they liked rather than stick to chart music.

It was six months later in the summer of '72 when I was 15 years old that the second single "Vincent" was released and whilst I liked "American Pie" I loved "Vincent", being that I was an art student and it was, well, arty, you know, Van Gogh, you knew that didn't you, for gods sake tell me you knew that.

My weekend and summer holiday job was to work for my uncle at the famous Headingley cricket ground and my wage for selling sweets and scorecards at the five day test match was completely spent in buying the "American Pie" album, I even sneaked off work early one afternoon to pop into Leeds to purchase it.

The song in the video above "Castles in the Air" came along later, but this is the one that made me buy the album, again, the years have not been kind to him, or me come to think of it...







I was sat alone in the office yesterday afternoon getting bored with the local radio station when I noticed a box of audio cassettes that had somehow found their way down here when we moved house, most of them were knackered but one which still played was an interview that McLean had done with radio 2 in or around 1995 or 96, (maybe it was for the 25th anniversary of the release of American Pie), its an hour long programme of interviews and all of the tracks on the album and it meant that I sat in the office until it was quite late listening to it and I missed my evening meal, so i starved last night for this artist.

Its a great album, it should be in your record collection - NOW.