Don McLean has sharp dark eyes which are quite capable of fixing you like an insect on a pin if you put a question to him which he doesn't particularly like. It can be difficult, if not embarrassing, to be pinned like that by one's heroes. I'm a great admirer of Don McLean's work but I think I ask too many of those sort of questions. I got a distinct air of guardedness from all his answers.

It was 9am in the Presidential Suite of Sydney's Sebel Town House and McLean seemed to be struggling, like everyone else, to cope with the early start to the day. Some of the journalists present seemed to be struggling equally to find a reason as to why they were there at all. "How do you relate to Punk?" one asked. Don McLean, after all, has not been an enormous chart influence in Australia since 1972. American Pie which was released in Australia that year has become, unfortunately perhaps for McLean, a monster which has dominated his career ever since. It was inevitable that someone would ask him about it.

Has he been able to follow it up?

McClean: "Perhaps I could have but I haven't been allowed to. I think that the record industry decided that it was finished with me, but I'm still writing."

Why then have there been such gaps between his albums, four years for example between Prime Time and Chain Lightning and one song 'Castles in the Air' re-released three times? Did he find it difficult to write new material or were there contractual hassles? Both it seems.

McClean "I only write about six good songs a year. I don't believe you can force it otherwise you'll hype yourself into believing something's good and it isn't. I've had a pretty chequered career with record companies. I have a disagreement with somebody and find myself back out on the street for six months looking for someone to record with."

Prolific or not, however, Don McLean is a songwriter extraordinaire. 'Homeless Brother', 'Andrew McCrew' and 'Vincent' are masterpieces. He's a songwriter's songwriter whose lyrics are to say the least exceptional and many people take them very seriously. American Pie for example was even the subject of a doctoral thesis.

Did he see this as a great responsibility? Someone, thankfully not this writer, asked him if he would like to be viewed as a prophet.

McClean: "Why?" he snapped.

"Why not?" they asked.

"Because we're all fallible human beings," he replied.

I took this up and suggested that as a writer who gives vent to ideas and who makes them public in his songs, he should be prepared to elaborate on them and to take the responsibility for the effects that those ideas produce.

He seemed slightly annoyed,

McClean: "You want me to police the whole world and tell them what each song means, that's crazy. Look, I had a friar in my front garden one morning who told me that he joined a monastery because of my music. What could I say? I told him I had to mow the lawn. The songs have to stand for themselves. On stage, I rarely introduce them and I don't explain them."

Did it worry him then that by leaving his meaning vague, it gave people the opportunity to project all sorts of things onto him.

McClean: "Well the songs are out there, what can I do about it?"

Clarify them I thought, but I wasn't quite game to say so.

It is an interesting phenomena in the past 10 years to watch the rise of the singer-songwriter who is purposely obtuse when questioned about the meaning of his work. Paul Simon takes similar stance. They deny being spokesmen and refuse to claim the philosophies apparently inherent in their work.

Is it because remaining obscure, our poets can be all things to all men, and thus more commercially viable, or is it because of an intellectual commitiment to the proposition that every person has a right to approach his work with a level of understanding appropriate to himself? McLean doesn't say.

He still has his cause, but is not so involved these days. He refuses to be drawn on the subjects of Ireland and Israel despite the poignant comment of such songs as 'The Mountains of Mourne' and 'Jerusalem.' Perhaps it would be financially imprudent since he is an immensely popular figure in both countries. It is one thing, it appears, to make statements in verse but quite another to make them in quotable conversation. Perhaps the game of King Lear's fool - saying one thing in song and denying it in speech - has become a necessary survival tactic for the modern singer-songwriter, particularly for one as influential as McLean.

Ultimately though, it is disconcerting to come face to face with such disclaimers over a 9am cup of coffee. It called to my mind what was written so perceptively of him in Roberta Flack's 1973 hit single (which ironically pipped McLean's 'And I Love You So' for Grammy honours that year) where it says, "he sang as if he knew me in all my dark despair; but then he looked right through me as if I wasn't there."

PAT DRUMMOND (reprinted by courtesy of POL Magazine)