Because I realized what it was, I knew what I had. And then one time about a month later I just woke up and wrote the other five verses. I came up with this chorus, crazy chorus. And then I thought, I can't have another slow song on this record.
And I said, Oh, that is such a great idea.
I thought, Whoa, what's that? And then the day the music died, it just came out. 'As I was fiddling around, I started singing this thing about the Buddy Holly crash, the thing that came out (singing), 'Long, long time ago, I can still remember how that music used to make me smile.' 'For some reason I wanted to write a big song about America and about politics, but I wanted to do it in a different way,' he said. When he was a guest on the UK show Songbook, McLean talked about how he composed this song.
