There hasn't been a day that the music died for Don McLean. The singer-songwriter chats to Helen Brown

I WAS supposed to speak to Don McLean on the very day that the sale of the lyrics to American Pie was going under the hammer at Christies in New York. He’d got caught up in the machinations of the sale and my interview got cancelled. When I eventually got hold of him I asked how he felt about the sal, which earned him the princely sum of $850,000.

“Well, I mean how could you not feel good about it?” he says. “You know, I decided for a whole bunch of reasons that I’m going to start getting rid of stuff – which happens you know, when you get old. I’m 70 this year, so I figure, what do I have, maybe ten good years left if I’m lucky, maybe five or six? I’ve definitely got to start thinking about these things. I like to be realistic. In any case, I’ve had a long relationship with Christies – we are gonna do another sale in a couple of years of a whole bunch of other stuff. I have the lyrics to all the songs on the American Pie Album, many of the ones on Tapestry, the Don McLean album and much more.”

With the money he aims to ensure his Don McLean Foundation supports food shelters, soup kitchens and "places like that" in the state of Maine. His wife regularly goes out to help at shelters.

“We are especially involved with the Rockland Homeless Shelter. We’ve also got Warren Buffet’s and his sister Doris, who have given millions of dollars to homeless causes and are set to give more and we want to match it. As I travelled around, and particularly when I was doing the Homeless Brother Album, I’d see people living under the hall or in a box somewhere and I just can’t imagine that in America today a person can’t take a shower or find a place to sleep. Ever since I’ve had this foundation, which has been existence for 20 years, the goal is to help these people.”

Although he sang a lot with Pete Seeger in the 1960s, McLean feels he's a loner of the music business after performing for 47 years. "Sometimes people think I’m aloof. But I’m not. I just do what I do and then I want to come back home and be left alone. There’s a lot of Greta Garbo in me – I don’t want to be alone, I just want to be left alone.”

Seeking his personal musical influences triggers a siege of famous names.

“Oh, so many people, the singing of Frank Sinatra when I was a teenager, I liked his phrasing and I liked the way he controlled slow songs, and I worked on that. I was influenced by the Weavers in early 1950s when I got to know all them and when I sang with Pete Seeger it was as a member of the Weavers. I loved Buddy Holly and the way his band sounded and was especially influenced by Elvis Presley. I loved the sound of The Jordanaires, who backed him, and their gospel sound. I ended up making hit records with the Jordanaires in the 1950s and we appeared on a TV Special in the UK, Don McClean and Friends, which came out of Pebble Mill.”

McLean has no intention of considering retirement and says: "Jeez I don’t think I’ll retire as long as I can sing and I look all right. I've a new album coming out in August called Botanical Gardens and one of the songs is on You Tube right now. It’s called The Waving Man and is about a little man who sits in his wheelchair outside the old folks home and he waves at everyone who passes, so I wrote his life story in this song.”

He calls today's songwriters blogging to music. "Irving Berlin could write a song. He could say more in a phrase than today’s writers manage in a whole song. I wrote songs because I’d sung every darn song you could imagine and they didn’t say what I wanted to say. I have relatively limited talents, but I think I’m a good singer. I’m also very tenacious, I never give up,” he says.

One concession to the passing of time has seen McLean give up horse-riding "cos my eyesight isn’t so good and my reflexes aren’t as fast and I don’t want to get hurt. I have three of them right now, they’re getting a bit old too. I had a beautiful Arab horse in the 1970s. It was a crazy horse that just couldn’t be gentle, he was well trained but you couldn’t touch him. When I sat on him one day he went sky high and he drove my head into the drive. I was lucky; I could have ended up in a wheelchair.”

Don McLean, Sage Gateshead – Hall One, Friday, May 29. Box Office: 0191-443-4661 or sagegateshead.com