‘Prince Harry should shut his mouth… he just doesn’t get America’: American Pie singer Don McLean on his $11 million divorce, his young model girlfriend – and why the ‘show horse’ prince should learn some manners

After directing so many stinging jabs at the royal family in his best-selling memoir Spare, it was easy to overlook one excellent comment Prince Harry made about America’s own king: Elvis Presley.

Harry described a visit to Graceland – Elvis’ home in Memphis – and wrote that it was “dark and claustrophobic.” I walked around and said, ‘The king lived here, you say? Real?”‘

He recalled standing in a small room with loud furniture and shag carpet and thinking, ‘The king’s decorator must have been on LSD.’

Unsurprisingly, Elvis fans were not happy with his attempt at humour, not least singer-songwriter Don McLean, who pointedly commented at X that ‘Prince’ Harry should keep his mouth shut about Graceland and Elvis. He is a warm orchid, a show horse who has never done anything.’

As Don says now, “He doesn’t understand that Elvis is the poor man’s king. He came from nowhere and his recordings are some of the best ever made.

‘His family were as poor as they could be and Harry criticized Elvis’ house as if he were comparing it to Buckingham Palace, which completely misses the point. Here you have a guy who was raised with decency, but you don’t criticize America when you live here as our guest.”

Don adds of the prince, who recently listed the US as his primary residence: “He just doesn’t get America.”

As the man who wrote American Pie – considered by many to be the definitive song about the US and its spiritual decline – Don McLean is in a pretty good position to comment.

The meaning of the song has been pondered for half a century, but for Don its success (it generates around £400,000 in royalties annually) simply meant ‘never having to work again’.

Still, he does work. His latest album, American Boys, has just been released. He has also been invited to speak at the University of Oxford and will headline the Long Road country music festival at Stanford Hall, Leicestershire, in August.

At the age of 78, he has decided not to do long tours anymore. “But I’m going there for two or three shows. I love the British crowd,” said Don, whose father was of Scottish descent, from his home in Palm Desert, California.

Fans will be treated to songs from the new album such as the brutally comedic The Meanest Girl, which he insists is not about his ex-wife Patrisha Shnier, from whom he was bitterly divorced eight years ago, and The Ballad Of George Floyd – the Black 46-year-old whose death at the hands of a white police officer four years ago helped propel the Black Lives Matter movement.

Although the fallout from Floyd’s death was divisive, the song references his final moments as he cried out for his mother. “When I was little, I had really bad asthma attacks and almost died a few times,” says Don.

“My mother gave me a baseball bat and told me to hit it on the ground if I couldn’t breathe and she would come. I remembered that and somehow my heart went out to him.”

The new album will certainly add to his net worth, which is estimated at £40 million – but Don says that’s conservative.

Don McLean performing at the BBC TV Center on January 1, 1973. His hit American Pie earns £400,000 in royalties annually

‘That figure is very low. It’s actually more than double. I own my documents, books, trademarks, everything. And I’m a bond investor, so I can take the money I’m worth and probably make a billion dollars; but the way I feel, I’ve been so lucky to have made the money that I’m really happy where I am.”

One of the other reasons for his happiness is his girlfriend Paris Dunn, a model and Instagram star with considerable pneumatic charms who he hired to manage his social media in 2016 and who has been with him ever since.

“She is everything to me,” says Don, who wrote the track Mexicali Gal for her on his new album. “We have a blast together and everyone on both sides of my family adores her. There had been so much stress when my previous marriage didn’t work out, I don’t think I would have lived this long if it hadn’t been for her.’

Did he ever fear that Paris, who at 30 is 48 years his junior, might be after him for his money? “No,” he says unequivocally. “The person who is after my money is the person I divorced. She got over $11 million from it.”

It’s fair to say that the brutal consequences of Don’s divorce from Patrisha, his second wife, has all the hallmarks of a bad country and western song.

They were married for 29 years and their relationship came to an abrupt end in 2016 after Don was arrested at their Maine home when Patrisha claimed he “terrorized me for four hours into the 911 call that I think could have taken my life.” to rescue’.

He then pleaded guilty to domestic violence, accepting the charges, he later insisted, “because I was 70 years old.” I couldn’t stand it. I thought there would be bulls*** and stories and everything else, so I was like, ‘Okay. In a year, all the bad charges will be thrown out.’” As part of the resulting settlement, he avoided jail.

Since then, the grudge between the former spouses has continued, but Don says: “I know there is a negative mark on my biography that will follow me forever, but I have lived an exemplary life. I have never hurt anyone and not a single person has ever come out and said, “Don McLean is abusive.”

“When all that shit was going on eight years ago, that was the time for people to move on, but no one said anything.”

However, he amicably handed Patrisha the $11 million (£8.8 million) divorce settlement. “We spent 30 years together, so I didn’t mind paying her,” he says.

The couple had two children – Wyatt, now 31, and Jackie, 34 – the latter of whom set off another bombshell three years ago when she claimed in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine that she had experienced emotional and mental abuse at the hands of her father. but no physical abuse.

It led to Don disinheriting his daughter for a sum of almost £2.5 million (with Jackie subsequently insisting that she had disinherited herself). “That was very difficult to do,” he admits. “I feel very sorry for my daughter because other people’s fingerprints are all over some of the things she’s done.”

Jackie is a singer-songwriter, just like her father. “She’s very talented and very smart and there’s really nothing she can’t do,” he says. “But I don’t think she realizes how much work it is to actually get anywhere.”

He says her claims couldn’t be further from the truth. ‘My family was not abused, but got whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. For thirty years I felt that I was protecting them and caring for them, and I was very proud of my work because it provided them with a royal existence.’

The family lived in a house in Maine on the east coast of the US. ‘I decorated it, designed it, did all kinds of things. My kids had big rooms with their own bathrooms and could do whatever they wanted in their room,” he says, adding that he liked the rest of his house to stay that way.

‘My daughter said in her interview that it was like living in a museum, and she was right. I didn’t want any clutter in the rest of the house!’

Certainly, it indicates a man who likes a certain degree of control – a word that often comes up when Don describes having to take control of his own life from a very young age.

He grew up in New Rochelle, New York, the son of parents Donald and Elizabeth, and was 15 when his father died suddenly. “It was a big turning point in my life,” he says.

‘He and I were alone in the house and after his heart attack he looked at me and smiled because he was proud that I had taken control and called the ambulance.

Don pictured with his girlfriend Paris Dunn, 30, a model and Instagram star. The couple has been together since 2016

‘He died a few hours later, and from then on I was in control. My mother was completely devastated by the whole experience. She would say, ‘I have to sell the house,’ and I would say, ‘No, we’re not going to do that.’

They rented their house for seven years and by the time Don was in his twenties and had landed a recording contract, he was able to move his mother and his older sister, Betty Anne, back into the family home.

“Sometimes when the main breadwinner dies, the household collapses,” Don says. “Well, I didn’t let that happen.”

But success for Don did not come immediately. His debut album, Tapestry, which included the hit And I Love You So (which was played at Harry and Meghan’s wedding reception), was rejected 72 times before its release in 1970.

But by the time his second album, American Pie, was released the following year, his fame was assured.

However, the non-stop work between 1968 and 1974 led to a crisis. “I was pushed and pushed and I crashed,” he says. His friend, producer Joel Dorn, helped him slow down.

‘And from that moment on I took control of the pace. I can say that I have lived my life exactly the way I wanted to and that I only make the records that I want to make.”

Of his own mortality, Don admits, “I’m 78 and I’m leaving – I’m in that zone.” He therefore ensures that the considerable wealth he has amassed over the years will ultimately go to his Don McLean Foundation.

“We’re going to give away money to soup kitchens and shelters, and we really want to help with the homeless problem.”

He also has plans to make the 175 acres of his Maine estate the center of the foundation. “It will be decorated exactly the way I want,” he says, “and people can look inside and see how I lived for thirty years.”

Should Prince Harry decide to visit, hopefully he will remember to bring his manners with him this time.

• Don McLean’s latest album, American Boys, is available for purchase now. For more information, visit donmclean.com.