Don McLean’s eight-and-a-half-minute epic about the death of Buddy Holly – “the day the music died” – was inescapable in 1972 and has gone on to become a standard.

I can’t say this dreary song is a favourite of mine but it was so inescapable at the time – early 1972 – that I have to include it. Love it or loathe it, American Pie was part of our lives.

I’m surprised to find it never made it to No.1 because it seemed to be on the radio all the time, perhaps because it also seemed to last for ages. And it did: more than eight minutes in its full version.

For nearly half a century American Pie has become such a part of music mythology that it’s prompted rather more analysis than I would have thought strictly necessary. I can’t say that, when I was just turned 14, I was unduly interested in the meaning of the lyrics, or even the song’s theme – the loss of innocence of the early rock’n’roll generation, symbolised by the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly.

McLean himself has encouraged the mystique by declining to discuss the lyrics, occasionally making remarks about how they are “beyond analysis – they’re poetry” and, when asked what the meaning of the song is, saying glibly: “It means I don’t ever have to work again.”

Many think it’s one of the greatest songs ever written; others are not so sure. In 2017 Bob Dylan was asked for his thoughts on being referenced as “the jester” in the lyrics.  “A jester?” he responded, hopefully with a raised eyebrow and a curl of the lip. “Sure, the jester writes songs like Masters Of War, A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, It’s Alright Ma… some jester. I have to think he’s talking about somebody else. Ask him.”

Five years ago McLean finally announced that he would reveal the meaning when his original manuscript was sold at auction in New York – for a staggering £1 million. His revelation was bathos personified: “Basically in American Pie things are heading in the wrong direction,” he explained. “If (life) is becoming less idyllic. I don’t know whether you consider that wrong or right but it is a morality song in a sense.”

I think I’d want my million pounds back.