A nearly mile-long winding driveway separates the abode from a road that leads to the small coastal town of Camden, Maine, which it overlooks.
While McLean has previously talked about the alleged mental abuse, she musically addresses what she calls “psychological warfare” stemming from her father for the first time on her new album, Another Life.
Jackie does not allege any physical abuse by her father, but when she describes her father’s alleged emotional and mental abuse, she and her mother both describe fear for their own safety and “survival” in the house, language that is common to survivors of any type of abuse.
Four decades after its release, the nostalgic elegy to rock & roll and bygone eras was added to the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry in 2016. In 2001, it was voted Number 5 in the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment of the Arts’ list of Songs of the Century.
“It’s this feeling that there’s one person who is completely in charge and who’s almost supernatural, who knows everything and who has all the answers and who is somehow in charge of the world.
“It’s like somebody who says they love you the most in the world is being the worst to you and you want to reconcile those two things and somehow make it so that they act like they love you because they’re saying that they do,” she says.
“My dad couldn’t find a key to a piece of furniture and he thought that I hid it and he was just screaming in my face,” she says.
“You’re conditioned to feel like he has power over you… like he had ultimate power,” she says of the atmosphere in the household growing up.
If I yelled at you for five minutes you’d think I yelled at you for an hour because it’s shocking.
“I was hurt a lot by my sister, my mother, my father, I was hit a lot and all that… that’s why this stuff stuns me that she says these things because I never wanted to cry or feel that,” he says.
Jackie’s references to a cult-like feeling in the home echo her mother Patrisha’s claims. While referring to her 29-year marriage to Don McLean before their eventual divorce, Patrisha told the Irish Times last year, “I do feel there is an element of brainwashing there.
In addition to denying any abuse, Don denies Jackie’s allegations of isolation and conditioning, and insists,“I empowered my children.” “I was a father of a family who was there for anybody who had any questions and who needed any answers,” he adds.
“My dad decorated it very carefully and didn’t like it to be disturbed in any way.” Her bedroom was frozen in time, she claims; the same as it was when she was a child.
Jackie says the environment in the home led to her developing coping rituals, anxiety, depression and OCD and as she developed, she says things worsened.
As she was growing up, Jackie says her dad “spearheaded” “a strong culture of misogyny … in big ways and in small ways,” which ultimately conjured shame.
“This record that we’re talking about now, whatever it is, she asked me to sing on that record with her and I said, ‘No I don’t want to.’” He says he had stopped trusting her after they had a falling out in 2016.
Aside from everything that surrounded her parents’ 2016 divorce, she says “the most traumatic point” in her life came while dating Ebinumo “Ebi” Amabebe, whom she met in high school and began dating after graduation and into college.
She says her father was on a “campaign” to get her to stop seeing him and that the near-daily calls from her dad were inescapable.
Amabebe says at first they dated in secret: “I wouldn’t come up to the house or anything like that.” He recalls trouble starting shortly after meeting her father.
He says at first it started with Jackie saying she was told that interracial relationships are hard, and then it “escalated into ‘break up with him or I’m going to divorce your mom and move across the country.’” He says the younger McLean appeared “very upset” after her dad would call.
Don denies he had any issues with Jackie dating a black person.
What to Don was just fatherly vigilance McLean experienced as verbal and mental abuse, which amplified when she would visit home from college.
“My ability to trust has been still compromised by trusting somebody — my dad — over and over and over again and extending myself over and over and over again,” she says.
In July 2016, as part of a plea agreement, he pleaded guilty to four charges, with the domestic assault charge being dismissed a year later.
Jackie says that over the years, she would go through periods where she would distance herself from her father, but she says around the time of her parents’ divorce, she reached out.
He tells her she can talk to him about anything, offers apologies, and acknowledges he may have been “dictatorial and I was a little frightening” and a “control freak.” But when, on the recorded calls, McLean brings up moments that traumatized her, he denies some of her recollection of events.
“He was calling me obsessively every day and going on these long tirades where he was screaming and demanding that I do something to help him, demanding that I call my mom and tell stop the proceedings towards the divorce.
In an effort to maintain a relationship, Jackie attempted to set boundaries, which were pushed and questioned on the calls.
“I think she was in that abusive world for so long, she didn’t recognize it didn’t know how to face it” when they were younger, McLean’s friend Callie Hand says.
“It’s basically an open diary of my own feelings and impressions and efforts to work through trauma and come out of it on the other side a happier and more functional person,” she says.
Don says that in 2016, he and his daughter discussed events from when she was younger “over and over” and that he apologized to her.
“She turned on me and she said, ‘you promised me this and that and the other thing, you promised me all this money and you haven’t given it to me and you’re just afraid I’m gonna say things about you if you don’t give me money,’” he claims. “And basically I said it sounded to me like extortion, like if you don’t start giving me money again like you always have, I’m gonna say some stuff about you.
Jackie says she reached a turning point following a series of texts from November 2019 and an email thread that began in June 2020, which led to her cutting off ties with her father for good.
“He has always used the promise of money to control me.
In their email exchange, he writes, “Furthermore if you ever say anything negative about me on social media or anywhere again, our relationship will officially terminate and you will be written out if my will.” “I’d value a healthy relationship with you more than the money,” Jackie replies.
I hope that they realize that what they’ve experienced is valid and real,” she says.
McLean says opening up about the alleged abuse and addressing it in Another Life has been transformative.