# American Pie, keep the rye but hold the whiskey. Recording oddity **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** liquor-alcohol\ **Created:** [August 25, 2019, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-pie-keep-the-rye-but-hold-the-whiskey-recording-oddity/839216 "2019-08-25T15:33:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2019, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-pie-keep-the-rye-but-hold-the-whiskey-recording-oddity/839216/1 "2019-08-25T15:33:26Z")
I was listening to this very cool isolated vocal and bass track of American Pie: [american pie isolated bass and vox](https://youtu.be/RylVJaDQ848) The bass lines are fast and cool all the way through (either the guy was playing with a pick or had lightning fingers). But something strange stands out: whenever the chorus comes around and Don McLean starts singing about “And them good ole boys were drinking _whiskey_ and rye” the word whiskey has been absolutely surgically removed, just like a word sliced out of a document by a censor’s razor blade. You can even see on the Audacity waveform that it’s completely dead at that moment (particularly in the slow first and last chorus). Why would this be the case? It’s a full length recording of the song, already guaranteed to have copyright claims against it, so I can’t imagine any YouTube shenanigans going on here. Any thoughts on why this was done? Was it the YouTube uploader or someone back in the early 70s who did this? ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2019, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-pie-keep-the-rye-but-hold-the-whiskey-recording-oddity/839216/2 "2019-08-25T17:33:28Z")
Well, unless there’s some track bleed going on (I can hear acoustic guitar faintly), he doesn’t have a copy of the master and this isolated track is made by subtractive methods on things that are in both channels of the recordings. Here’s a tutorial doing it one way in Audacity: [https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/tutorial\_vocal\_removal\_and\_isolation.html](https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/tutorial_vocal_removal_and_isolation.html) So, it’s probably an artifact of the method used to isolate the tracks. ---
**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2019, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-pie-keep-the-rye-but-hold-the-whiskey-recording-oddity/839216/3 "2019-08-25T18:10:13Z")
IIMHO, not a chance of it just being an artifact. This was intentional. Every single chorus he sings “And them good old boys were drinking \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ and rye” [First chorus](https://youtu.be/RylVJaDQ848?t=72) [Second chorus](https://youtu.be/RylVJaDQ848?t=151) [Third chorus](https://youtu.be/RylVJaDQ848?t=227) [Fourth chorus](https://youtu.be/RylVJaDQ848?t=303) [Fifth chorus](https://youtu.be/RylVJaDQ848?t=379) [Final chorus](https://youtu.be/RylVJaDQ848?t=468) I’m kind of wondering if the word was recorded differently in the original recording, and they put in the “whiskey” that we are familiar with in post. (IMHO, this came from a proper copy of an old-school multitrack tape, it was way too crisp. The bleed through was from adjacent tracks on the tape. Audacity filtering tricks can’t make something so clean as this especially when separating bass.) ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2019, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-pie-keep-the-rye-but-hold-the-whiskey-recording-oddity/839216/4 "2019-08-25T18:30:12Z")
I agree with **minor7flat5**. A multitrack source is a must for this quality and separation. If whoever mixed this particular bass+voices version wanted to, they could easily remove the vocals during the “whiskey” word without affecting the bass. As to why censor only “whiskey,” I can’t imagine. “Rye” is OK, whiskey is not? But I am puzzled by something else…an original multitrack recording is unlikely to include any echo, yet I hear a very small amount on the vocals. That could have been added by the (recent) mixer, but why? Is this intended to be a bass instruction lesson with maybe a little echo just made it sound more “normal”? ---
**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2019, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-pie-keep-the-rye-but-hold-the-whiskey-recording-oddity/839216/5 "2019-08-25T18:32:19Z")
It’s probably not the dry original master, but could very well be something further along in the mix. You are correct, this is for bassists, and the vocals are just there to give us something to hang our hat on as we follow through the bass line. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2019, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-pie-keep-the-rye-but-hold-the-whiskey-recording-oddity/839216/6 "2019-08-25T18:33:33Z")
Interesting. I’ve always wondered about that line, as rye is (a type of) whiskey, so it’d be like singing “wine and Bordeaux” or “lager and beer” (if you reverse the order to preserve meter). But, hey, it’s just a song. If there were different lyrics, I’d be curious about that. ---
**Author:** ![74westy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/74westy/32/3950_2.png) [@74westy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/74westy)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2019, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-pie-keep-the-rye-but-hold-the-whiskey-recording-oddity/839216/7 "2019-08-25T18:36:47Z")
It’s like they recorded “good ol’ boys were drinking Coke and rye” and later they decided they couldn’t for copyright or something. It’s pretty common for some people to have access to the original tracks. An example is Rick Beato on youtube. Check out his [“What Makes This Song Great”](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=what+makes+this+song+great) series. On preview, yes Musicat, the “original tracks” I hear from Beato have lots of post processing on them. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2019, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-pie-keep-the-rye-but-hold-the-whiskey-recording-oddity/839216/8 "2019-08-25T18:47:31Z")
> [@74westy](#): > > On preview, yes Musicat, the “original tracks” I hear from Beato have lots of post processing on them. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but in my studio experience, not common to include echo on individual master tracks, for the simple reason that you can always add echo later, but not easily remove it later. As **minor7flat5** suggests, maybe these aren’t “true” originals? ---
**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2019, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-pie-keep-the-rye-but-hold-the-whiskey-recording-oddity/839216/9 "2019-08-25T19:57:35Z")
Huh, what is this? Sure he says Whisky, no mistake whatsoever. The version you link to has it edited out, is this some sort of woosh? ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2019, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-pie-keep-the-rye-but-hold-the-whiskey-recording-oddity/839216/10 "2019-08-25T20:22:03Z")
> [@minor7flat5](#): > > The bass lines are fast and cool all the way through (either the guy was playing with a pick or had lightning fingers). Eh, as a bassist I’ll agree that it sounds as if it was played with a pick, based solely on the “attack” of each note. But there’s nothing about that bass line that an intermediate player couldn’t play with their fingers. As for the obvious edit, I suppose it’s possible that these tracks are from a version of the song intended for release in a jurisdiction that didn’t allow drug and alcohol references on-air. I’ve heard classic rock tracks that mention a specific drug getting the word edited out when the station airs the song before 10PM. Or perhaps it was used in a children’s movie. As for why they’d cut “whiskey” but not “rye”, this could again be a version of the song intended for a child audience. I was a child myself when I first heard the song, and while I knew that “whiskey” was an alcoholic beverage, I didn’t know the same for “rye”. I only knew of rye as a kind of bread or cracker, and recall wondering how one would drink it. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2019, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-pie-keep-the-rye-but-hold-the-whiskey-recording-oddity/839216/11 "2019-08-25T21:05:18Z")
> [@Mister\_Rik](#): > > As for the obvious edit, I suppose it’s possible that these tracks are from a version of the song intended for release in a jurisdiction that didn’t allow drug and alcohol references on-air. I’ve heard classic rock tracks that mention a specific drug getting the word edited out when the station airs the song before 10PM. Or perhaps it was used in a children’s movie. I had a recording of _American Pie_ that I’d made in college, dubbed from a mix tape that my roommate had. His recording, in turn, had been dubbed from a mix tape that one of his brothers had made, while he was in Spain, and had recorded it off of the radio. Apparently, at that time, there was a law there against mentioning God in a song, or something along those lines. So, the line in the final verse, “The Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost” was bleeped out entirely. (Edit: it may be that the line was seen as potentially in violation of [Spain’s blasphemy laws.](https://www.loc.gov/law/help/blasphemy/index.php#Spain)) So, I suppose that it’s possible that “whiskey” got removed from a dub of the song for similar reasons. ---
**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2019, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-pie-keep-the-rye-but-hold-the-whiskey-recording-oddity/839216/12 "2019-08-25T21:39:52Z")
> [@Mister\_Rik](#): > > Eh, as a bassist I’ll agree that it sounds as if it was played with a pick, based solely on the “attack” of each note. But there’s nothing about that bass line that an intermediate player couldn’t play with their fingers… Most of the song is intermediate level, though it would be quite a workout, but there are moments that I think only a pick would work. For example, right [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RylVJaDQ848&feature=youtu.be&t=252) “Fast…It landed foul on the grass” During the word “grass” the bassist plays a lick on the Em chord: 4th slide 5th, b7, R-b7-5th. It’s not a rare or complex lick, but he plays it really fast and super crisp. No way I could play that crisply plucking each note–I would have to do a hammer-on/pull off. ---
**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2019, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-pie-keep-the-rye-but-hold-the-whiskey-recording-oddity/839216/13 "2019-08-25T22:18:51Z")
> [@casdave](#): > > Huh, what is this? > > Sure he says Whisky, no mistake whatsoever. > > The version you link to has it edited out, is this some sort of woosh? No woosh. I wouldn’t ask the question if it were someone’s random posting of the track off of the LP or CD. But this was something that was clearly from a studio tape, with individual tracks isolated. Why would that word get clipped out so precisely in a studio multitrack tape? ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2019, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-pie-keep-the-rye-but-hold-the-whiskey-recording-oddity/839216/14 "2019-08-26T00:13:35Z")
Was the song ever used in something like the Guitar Hero or Rock Band (was that the name?) games? I know a lot of isolated tracks on YouTube come from those. ---
**Author:** ![Lamoral](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lamoral/32/16078_2.png) [@Lamoral](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamoral)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2019, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-pie-keep-the-rye-but-hold-the-whiskey-recording-oddity/839216/15 "2019-08-26T21:05:17Z")
As a fellow bassist I too was intrigued by the question of how those notes were articulated. So I asked the most knowledgable bassist I know, Bruce Thomas, to weigh in. (He played for many years with a rather well-known singer…let’s call him “Ennis Castillo.”) Saith Bruce: > [@](#): > > To be honest, I can play that lick fingerstyle. There’s also the possibility that the bass tack has been varispeeded – ie played slower and sped back up – because it all sounds too strictly crisp and neat to me. I have no doubt that he could, in fact, play the lick fingerstyle. I myself tried and failed. ---
**Author:** ![Lamoral](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lamoral/32/16078_2.png) [@Lamoral](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamoral)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2019, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-pie-keep-the-rye-but-hold-the-whiskey-recording-oddity/839216/16 "2019-08-26T21:06:53Z")
Or maybe it would be more accurate to say I failed to play it with that same crisp articulation. It’s easy to play by doing a pull-off, but then you don’t get that same distinct attack on each individual note. ---
**Author:** ![BlankSlate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blankslate/32/80_2.png) [@BlankSlate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlankSlate)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2019, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-pie-keep-the-rye-but-hold-the-whiskey-recording-oddity/839216/17 "2019-08-26T21:50:09Z")
> [@Mister\_Rik](#): > > Was the song ever used in something like the Guitar Hero or Rock Band (was that the name?) games? I know a lot of isolated tracks on YouTube come from those. Yep. The word ‘whiskey’ is missing from [Band Hero.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TdbIH6Bpjs) That’s just absurd. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2019, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-pie-keep-the-rye-but-hold-the-whiskey-recording-oddity/839216/18 "2019-08-26T22:23:09Z")
> [@BlankSlate](#): > > Yep. The word ‘whiskey’ is missing from [Band Hero.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TdbIH6Bpjs) That’s just absurd. Huh. Nice find. How bizarre to censor “whiskey” and not “rye,” (I mean, if you’re gonna be dumb and censor it for whatever reason) but I guess either the censors didn’t know what rye was or figured nobody else would. Weird. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2019, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-pie-keep-the-rye-but-hold-the-whiskey-recording-oddity/839216/19 "2019-08-26T22:54:19Z")
> [@74westy](#): > > It’s like they recorded “good ol’ boys were drinking Coke and rye” and later they decided they couldn’t for copyright or something. Pepsi and rye? Whiskey and lye? I agree “whiskey and rye” doesn’t make much sense, and I fully endorse this conspiracy theory. ---
**Author:** ![BlankSlate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blankslate/32/80_2.png) [@BlankSlate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlankSlate)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2019, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-pie-keep-the-rye-but-hold-the-whiskey-recording-oddity/839216/20 "2019-08-26T23:28:35Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > Pepsi and rye? Whiskey and lye? > > I agree “whiskey and rye” doesn’t make much sense, and I fully endorse this conspiracy theory. McLean’s original [handwritten lyrics](https://natedsanders.com/lot-45616.aspx) (scroll down) sold at auction for $1.2 million at auction in 2015, and it’s indeed _whiskey and rye._ Eh, he needed ‘rye’ for the rhyme. Weirdly, the line ‘_and the banjo rang while the people sang_’ was originally part of the chorus. I’m glad that got chopped. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-pie-keep-the-rye-but-hold-the-whiskey-recording-oddity/839216.md?page=2)