Vincent by Don McLean. It's one of the most moving, beautiful, insightful, could-listen-to-it-forever songs ever written, in my opinion. The song was written in 1971, the year I was born. I found this out recently when doing some research into Don McLean.
I was researching the singer because he was coming in to The Irish Times to appear on my podcast. He was coming on my podcast because when I got an email saying he was going to be doing some publicity for his shows and would I be interested in an interview, I instantly conjured this vision: Don McLean sitting across from me in the little Irish Times studio with an acoustic guitar, getting ready to sing Vincent, only pausing to dedicate the rendition to my mother.
I had a dream. And Don McLean was in it.
Vincent, inspired by the art of Van Gogh, is a special song for lots of people. One of them is my mother. In 1972 it went to number one in the UK and Ireland and by 1980, when my dad died, the song was still very much knocking around and, now a classic, it has never gone away. Vincent still comes on the radio all the time, or it's featured on The Simpsons, or somebody takes a guitar out at a party and tries to sing it. I say try, because really only Don McLean can sing Vincent. (Sorry Ed Sheeran). It's a family joke that my mother is guaranteed to weep buckets whenever she hears it.
Sometimes, when wine has been taken and most of her children are together, our acapella family version of Vincent will suddenly break out in various keys and my mother will sit there sighing and crying and laughing all at the same time. "Starry, starry night, paint your palette blue and grey, look out on a summer's day with eyes that know the darkness in my soul".
But it’s this line that does for her, for me, every time:
“And when no hope was left inside
On that starry, starry night
You took your life as lovers often do
But I could have told you, Vincent
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you.”
Don McLean has described it as a song that almost makes you feel happy to be sad. And when my mother is there, crying tears of gratitude at having known my father and tears of sadness that his mental illness led him to take his own life and tears of joy that all the children they made together are now happily murdering the beautiful song in unison, his point is perfectly illustrated.
My daydream was in serious jeopardy from the beginning. Don McLean's people said because he was going to be singing on The Late Late that night, he wouldn't be singing on the podcast. But sure what harm was there in getting hold of a really good guitar and leaving it lying around the studio just in case? No harm at all, I reckoned. The very nice people in X Music in the Red Cow Retail Centre let me borrow an acoustic which was dropped down to me that starry, starry morning, but unfortunately the guitar arrived just as Don was entering the building. And when Don spotted the guitar, he reiterated that he definitely wasn't up for a sing-song and was saving his voice for The Late Late. That sad sound you hear? A Don McLean daydream shattering into tiny pieces.
But being who I am, I couldn’t let it go. Or let it lie. Or leave it be. In the middle of the podcast, Don broke into a bit of another song. He will be 70 in October but that voice, the one Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys said, is still something else.
"Is there any chance you could give us an old bar of Vincent there, Don?" I said, chancing my arm, pushing my luck, tearing the arse out of it. Then a tiny bit of my daydream came true. Sitting across from me, Don McLean opened his mouth and sang the words: "Starry, starry night". Three little legendary words. I don't know if they are enough to make my mother cry but at least I tried.
Don McLean is the real deal. He has written songs that will ring through the ages. The Dublin dates are sold out but he’s touring across the country, and if you do one thing for yourself or your mother or your father, or any important people in your life, bring them to what will be a very special, super starry night.
Don McLean plays Derry’s Millennium Forum, June 2nd; Cork Opera House, June 4th; The Seapoint, Galway, September 25th; Vicar Street, Dublin, September 28th; Limerick University Concert Hall, September 29th, and the Waterfront, Belfast, September 30th
roisin@irishtimes.com