Don McLean label for his second album, "American Pie." The album launched two number one hits in the title song and "Vincent". "American Pie"'s success made McLean an international star and piqued interest in his first album, which charted more than two years after its initial release. McLean's magnum opus, "American Pie", is a sprawling, impressionistic ballad inspired partly by the deaths of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. Richardson (The Big Bopper) in a plane crash in 1959, and developments in American youth culture in the subsequent decade. The song popularized the expression "The Day the Music Died" in reference to
Lokomotiv Yaroslavl plane crash Korolev and Brad McCrimmon. The accident was the second plane crash in Russia involving a hockey team. The entire VVS Moscow team died in the 1950 Sverdlovsk plane crash near Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg). Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who had been on his way to Yaroslavl for the Yaroslavl Global Policy Forum, sent his condolences to the families of those killed in the crash and visited the crash site along with Governor of Yaroslavl Oblast Sergey Vakhrukov. René Fasel, president of the International Ice Hockey Federation, called the crash "the darkest day in the history of our sport." Manchester United chief