Having aimed so many stinging barbs at the Royal Family in his bestselling memoir Spare, it was easy to overlook one choice comment Prince Harry made about America’s very own king – Elvis Presley.
Describing a visit to Graceland – Elvis’s home in Memphis – Harry wrote that it was, ‘Dark, claustrophobic. I walked around saying, “The King lived here, you say? Really?”’
He recalled that he stood ‘in one tiny room with loud furniture and shag carpet and thought, “The King’s interior designer must have been on acid.”’
Unsurprisingly, Elvis fans didn’t take kindly to his attempt at humour, not least singer-songwriter Don McLean, who tartly remarked on X, ‘“Prince” Harry should shut his mouth about Graceland and Elvis. He is a hot house orchid, a show horse who never did a thing.’
As Don says now, ‘He doesn’t understand that Elvis is like the poor man’s king. He came from nowhere and his recordings are among the greatest ever made.
US singer-songwriter Don McLean (pictured), 78, who is most famous for his 1971 hit American Pie, has just released the album American Boys
‘His family were as poor as they could be and Harry criticised Elvis’s home as if he’s comparing it to Buckingham Palace, and that misses the point completely. Here’s a fellow who has been brought up to be mannerly, but you don’t criticise America when you’re living here as our guest.’
Don adds of the prince, who recently listed the US as his primary residence, ‘He just doesn’t get America.’
As the man who wrote American Pie – considered by many to be the quintessential song about the US and its spiritual decline – Don McLean is in a pretty good position to comment.
The song’s meaning has been pored over for half a century, but for Don, its success (it brings in around £400,000 in royalties every year) has meant, quite simply, that he’ll ‘never have to work again’.
Yet work he does. His latest album, American Boys, has just been released. He’s also been invited to speak at Oxford University, and will be headlining The Long Road country music festival at Stanford Hall, Leicestershire, in August.
At 78, he’s decided not to do any more lengthy tours. ‘But I’ll go over for two or three shows. I love the British audience,’ says Don, whose father had Scottish origins, speaking from his home in Palm Desert, California.
Fans will be treated to songs from the new album such as the brutally comic The Meanest Girl, which he insists is not about his ex-wife Patrisha Shnier from whom he was divorced acrimoniously eight years ago, and The Ballad Of George Floyd – the black 46-year-old whose death at the hands of a white police officer four years ago helped propel the Black Lives Matter movement.
While the repercussions of Floyd’s death were divisive, the song references his final moments when he called out for his mother. ‘When I was little, I had really bad asthma attacks and nearly died a few times,’ says Don.
‘My mother gave me a baseball bat and said to pound it on the floor if I couldn’t breathe and she would come. I remembered that and somehow my heart went out to him.’
The new album is sure to add to his net worth, which has been estimated at £40 million – but that, according to Don, is conservative.
Don McLean performing at the BBC TV Centre on 1 January 1973. His hit American Pie brings in £400,000 in royalties every year
‘That figure is very low. It’s actually more than double that. I own my records, books, trademarks, everything. And I’m a bond investor so I could use the money I’m worth and make probably a billion dollars; but the way I feel, I’ve been so lucky to make the money I’ve made that I’m really happy where I am.’
One of the other reasons for his happiness is his girlfriend Paris Dunn, a model and Instagram star of considerable pneumatic charms whom he hired in 2016 to manage his social media and who has been with him ever since.
‘She’s everything to me,’ says Don, who wrote the track Mexicali Gal on his new album for her. ‘We have a blast together and everybody on both sides of my family absolutely adores her. There had been so much stress when my previous marriage was not working, I don’t think I’d have lived this long if it hadn’t been for her.’
Did he ever fear that Paris, who at 30 is 48 years his junior, may have been after him for his money? ‘No,’ he says, unequivocally. ‘The person who’s after my money is the person I divorced. She got more than $11 million of it.’
It’s fair to say that the vicious fallout from Don’s divorce from Patrisha, his second wife, has all the hallmarks of a bad Country & Western song.
Married for 29 years, their relationship came to an abrupt end in 2016 after Don was arrested at their Maine home when Patrisha claimed he had ‘terrorised me for four hours until the 911 call that I think might have saved my life’.
He subsequently pleaded guilty to domestic violence and accepted the charges, he later insisted, ‘because I was 70 years old. I couldn’t stand it. I thought there was going to be bulls*** and stories and everything else, so I thought, “Fine. In a year’s time all the bad charges will be thrown out.”’ As part of the resulting plea bargain, he avoided jail.
Since then the rancour between the former spouses has continued, but Don says, ‘I know there’s this negative mark on my biography that will follow me forever, but I have lived an exemplary life. I have never hurt anyone and not one single person ever came out and said, “Don McLean is abusive.”
Far from being abused by me, my family got whatever they wanted, when they wanted
‘When all that s*** was going down eight years ago, that was the time for people to pile on, but nobody said anything.’
He handed Patrisha the $11 million (£8.8m) divorce settlement amicably, though. ‘We spent 30 years together, so I didn’t ever mind paying her,’ he says.
The couple had two children – Wyatt, now 31, and Jackie, 34 – the latter of whom unleashed a further bombshell three years ago when, in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, she claimed she had experienced emotional and mental abuse from her father, though no physical abuse.
It led to Don disinheriting his daughter to the tune of almost £2.5 million (with Jackie subsequently insisting she had disinherited herself). ‘That was very hard to do,’ he admits. ‘I feel very bad for my daughter because the fingerprints of other people are all over some of the things she’s done.’
Jackie is a singer-songwriter like her father. ‘She’s very talented and very smart and there’s nothing, really, that she can’t do,’ he says. ‘But I don’t think she realises how much work is involved to really get somewhere.’
He says her claims couldn’t be further from the truth. ‘Far from being abused, my family got whatever they wanted, when they wanted. For 30 years I felt I was protecting and providing for them, and I was very proud of my work in that it provided them with a royal existence.’
The family lived in a house in Maine on the US east coast. ‘I decorated it, designed it, did everything. My children had big rooms with their own bathroom and could do anything they wanted in their room,’ he says, adding that he liked having the remainder of his home kept just so.
‘My daughter said in her interview it was like living in a museum, and she was right about that. I did not want crap all over the rest of the house!’
Certainly, it suggests a man who likes a degree of control – a word that crops up frequently as Don describes having to take the reins of his own life from a very early age.
Growing up in New Rochelle in New York state to parents Donald and Elizabeth, he was 15 when his father died suddenly. ‘It was a big watershed moment in my life,’ he says.
‘He and I were alone in the house and after his heart attack he looked at me and smiled because he was proud I had taken control and called the ambulance.
Don pictured with his girlfriend Paris Dunn, 30, a model and Instagram star. The pair have been together since 2016
‘He died a few hours later, and from that moment on I was in control. My mother was completely shattered by the whole experience. She would say, “I have to sell the house,” and I’d say, “No, we’re not going to.”’
They rented out their house for seven years and by the time Don was in his twenties and had secured a record deal, he was able to move his mother and his older sister, Betty Anne, back into the family home.
‘When the primary breadwinner dies, the household sometimes goes down,’ says Don. ‘Well, I wasn’t going to let that happen.’
But success for Don didn’t come immediately. His debut album, Tapestry, which included the hit And I Love You So (which was played at Harry and Meghan’s wedding reception), was rejected 72 times before its release in 1970.
Yet by the time his second album, American Pie, was released the following year, his stardom was assured.
Working non-stop between 1968 and 1974, however, led to a breakdown. ‘I was being pushed and pushed and I just crashed,’ he says. His friend, producer Joel Dorn, helped him slow down.
‘And I took control of the pace from that point on. I can say that I’ve lived my life exactly the way I’ve wanted to and I only make the records I want to make.’
Of his own mortality, Don concedes, ‘I’m 78 and I’m going away – I’m in that zone.’ He is therefore ensuring that the considerable wealth he has accumulated over the years will eventually go towards his Don McLean Foundation.
‘We will give money away to soup kitchens and shelters, and we really want to help out with the homeless problem.’
He also has plans to make the 175 acres of his property in Maine the centre of the foundation. ‘It will be decorated exactly the way I want,’ he says, ‘and people will be able to look inside and see how I lived for 30 years.’
Should Prince Harry decide to pay a visit, hopefully this time he’ll remember to bring his manners.
- Don McLean’s latest album, American Boys, is on sale now. For more information, visit donmclean.com.
