Mexican War & Sectionalism
(1844--1860)
Civil War
(1860--1865)
Great Power
Reconstruction & Gilded Age
(1865--1886)
Third Great Awakening
(1886--1908)
World War I & Prohibition
(1908--1929)
Great Depression & World War II
(1929--1946)
Millennial
American High
(1946--1964)
Consciousness Revolution
(1964--1984)
Culture Wars
(1984--2005?)
Millennial Crisis?
(2005?--2026?)
The Day the Music Died
As a young boy, Don McLean was often housebound due to a bad case of childhood asthma. It was during this time that he developed his love of music and learned to play the guitar. The 1950s were an era of happiness and affluence for the burgeoning American middle class. Americans had a feeling of optimism about their prospects for the future, and pride in their nation which had emerged victorious from World War II, setting the world free from the tyranny of Nazi Germany. Popular music mirrored society. Performers such as Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, and Bill Haley and the Comets churned out feel-good records that matched the mood of the nation. Don's idyllic childhood came to a shattering conclusion between 1959 and 1963. His music idol, Buddy Holly, died in an airplane crash. His father died in 1961, when Don was 15 years old. John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963.
Don entered young adulthood during the 1960's as he develop into a musician and made connections in the music industry. He came of age during the Consciousness Revolution. It was marked by urban riots and campus rage, together with Vietnam War demonstrations and a rebellious hippie counterculture. It gave rise to feminist, environmental, and black power movements and to a steep rise in violent crime and family disintegration. The Civil Rights movement, Martin Luther King assassination and the Robert Kennedy assassination were major episodes during this tumultuous period. McLean wrote the song American Pie in 1970, about one-third through the Awakening era. American Pie presents an conceptual story of McLean's life from the 1950s until the end of the 1960s, and at the same time represents the evolution of popular music and politics over these years, from the happiness of the 1950s to the darkness of the late 1960s.
In 1970, the Vietnam War was at its height. Four unarmed college students had been shot dead at Kent State University by National Guardsmen while protesting the invasion of Cambodia in early 1970.
