Don McLean says "American Pie" was written in Philadelphia, not the upstate New York bar that has long laid claim to it. Last week, the Glens Falls Star-Post published a story that begins by citing a plaque next to a booth in a Saratoga Springs bar called the Tin & Lint that claims that is the exact spot where McLean started to write "American Pie" in the summer of 1970. It turns out that this is not true. “First of all, it was written in Cold Spring, New York, and in Philadelphia, and it was performed first at Temple University when I was just getting started with Laura Nyro. I was opening for her at Temple University.”