Don McLean: Playin' Favorites
Paul Gambaccini, Rolling Stone, 20 December 1973
DON McLEAN could well be the pop Orson Welles of the Seventies, a talented man who happened to make his initial impact with one of the most famous works his field had produced. No matter what he did, Welles could never overcome the prejudice that his later art was necessarily inferior to Citizen Kane. Sure enough, within less than a week of the release of Playin' Favorites, a trade magazine whined that "grits and chitling ain't no 'American Pie'."
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