Well Fading Away,first of all,Madonna's version is the pits! [img]tongue.gif[/img] A dance version?!! Ugh!
Only version worse than that (no kiddng) is The Brady Kids!
The song itself is about 2 things really.
One is the untimley "passing" of 1950s "rocker" Buddy Holly ("That'll Be The Day","Peggy Sue") in a Feb. 1959 plane crash that also claimed the life of Richie Valens ("La Bamba","Donna")and the Big Bopper ("Chantilly Lace","Big Bopper's Wedding" ). The plane went down in a winter storm. I believe it landed in a farmer's field.
A young Waylon Jennings was to have also been on that plane but he lost the coin flip and ended up in the frezzing cold tour bus,that had no heat.
Watch the movie,"The Buddy Holly Story" (1978) with a then "saner" Gary Busey as Holly,he's awesome in it! Also,"La bamba" (1987) with Lou Diamond Phillips as Valens. he's good too altough I don't think he really looks enough like him.
The second thing the song is about is Don MacLean's generation (1950's teens like my mom and dad)and their loss of innocence when not just this incient occourd but more so later when President Kennedy was killed on Nov. 22,1963. (Two days after my parents got married!)
Other things mentioned deal with howthe American landscape changed in the face of hippies,the vietnam war,civil rights marches and the violence of the era in general. As well as the music scene,I can only guess "jack flash sat on a canle stick" is a reference to The Rolling Stones or The Doors maybe. I take it he wasn't crazy about the music scene at the time.
All that is why the song is 8 mins. +. The ending is a statement of his own feelings about the state of America in the late 60s & early 70s. America was no longer "innocent" but then again,was it "really" ever?
It was a big #1 hit in January of 1972. I have the CD,it's all great.