Vincent - Don Mclean (at The Dominion Theatre, London, 1982)

Vincent
Music & Lyrics by Don McLean

Don McLean interview: why I had to write 'Vincent’
- by By Helen Brown
“In the autumn of 1970 I had a job singing in the school system, playing my guitar in classrooms,” he says. “I was sitting on the veranda one morning, reading a biography of Van Gogh, and suddenly I knew I had to write a song arguing that he wasn’t crazy. He had an illness and so did his brother Theo. This makes it different, in my mind, to the garden variety of 'crazy’ – because he was rejected by a woman [as was commonly thought]. So I sat down with a print of Starry Night and wrote the lyrics out on a paper bag.”

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