I REMEMBER… Don McLean

BING CROSBY ALWAYS SEEMED TO BE ON THE RADIO when I was three or four years old. During Christmas, his song “White Christmas” was on constant rotation, and it felt like such a magical time to me growing up in New Rochelle, New York. Eventually we got a television, around 1953—about two years after everyone else. My father thought TV was just a fad so he figured I could visit other people’s houses to watch but finally we got our own set. I remember being glued to Duncan Renaldo in The Cisco Kid. That was my favourite.

THERE WASN’T REALLY ANY FUN IN OUR HOUSE. My father was Scottish and he was kind of always up against it—always worried about money and so on, and also he was sick. He died when he was 56