In 2009, Raymond Schuck was approached by his father about creating a book of essays, all revolving around Don McLean’s 1971 hit, “American Pie.” Three and a half years later, Schuck and his father have published a book.

This past September, Schuck, a Communications assistant professor at the Firelands campus, and his father, Ray Schuck, a professor of history at Ohio Northern, published “Do You Believe in Rock and Roll,” a book of eight scholarly essays.

“I think if you’ve grown up in the US in the last 40 years, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ve heard the song and you’ve seen it referenced in any number of other places,” Schuck said.

The idea for the book came from Ray, who incorporates music from the 1960s into his public history classes at Ohio Northern.

Ray plays guitar, sings songs and discusses their significance with his students.

When asked by students if he knew “American Pie,” Ray began incorporating the song into his lessons as well.

“And I realized I really didn’t have a full comprehension of the lyrics,” Ray said. “I thought, ‘If I’m going to sing it in class and we’re going to discuss it in class, then I should probably have a good comprehension of what the lyrics mean.’”

After his realization, Ray researched the song and its history until he came up with his own interpretation of the lyrics, but he also found there wasn’t much other information on the song.

“He also realized there wasn’t really a lot of scholarly work written about this,” Schuck said. “For as significant as a song this is, we basically found one essay in a book that talks about it.”

In 2009, Ray approached his son with the idea of compiling a collection of essays about “American Pie” into a book. They each knew what their own essays were going to be about, but there was still a matter of finding others who were interested in contributing.

To connect with others, they put a call out on a professional online mailing list, asking anyone interested in the book to send them a short overview of what they would like to write about.

University graduate Joe Burns, Communications professor at Southeastern Louisiana University, was told by a colleague about the book.

Burns said he had been lecturing about the meaning of “American Pie” for more than a decade and contacted the Schucks right away.

“I just tripped all over myself to get him a copy of the lecture,” Burns said. “And I’m thinking ‘Aw please, just let me be part of it.’ And here, I’m in the book and I’m ecstatic. I think it’s wonderful.”

Burns’ essay, a line-by-line interpretation of the lyrics, is the first in the book, followed by Ray’s interpretation.

Schuck’s piece closes the book, but his compares McLean’s song to Weird Al Yankovich’s “The Saga Begins.”

“It [The Saga Begins] came out at the time that the first ‘Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace’ came out,” Schuck said. “[Yankovich] used Don McLean’s song and parodied it, but told the story of ‘Star Wars Episode I.’”

Schuck said he talks about how well Yankovich’s song works because each song represents its own generation.

“It really works because he’s taking this song that stood for a generation growing up and applying it to the next generation and the sort of nostalgia that generation X was feeling over ‘Star Wars,’ similarly to the nostalgia that baby boomers were feeling with rock and roll,” Schuck said.

The eight essays in “Do You Believe in Rock and Roll” range in length from around 10 pages to about 40, Schuck said.

He said the book is dedicated to his mother, Mary Ann Schuck, who passed away from cancer during the writing process.

Both Schuck and his father feel that by focusing on a popular song like “American Pie,” their book can be found both entertaining through the subject matter and educational.

They both plan to reference the book in their own classes in the future.

“It was meant to be entertaining enough that people would read it and enjoy it,” Schuck said. “But at the same time, absolutely, it is a scholarly book and so these are essays that could and, we hope, will be used in classrooms.”

The book retails for $40 and can be found on Amazon.com.