No thread would be complete without Don McLean's ode to it, "American Pie":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr-BYVeCv6UMcLean never fully admitted what all the things he mentioned in the song were about, and although some of them are pretty obvious (the second verse talks about the 1960 era rock-and-roll dance music, the third about the folk revival, the fourth about Beatlemania and folk rock, and the fifth about the Altamont disaster before wrapping it up in the epilogue in verse six), some are less clear. McLean did, however, admit that, by and large, the song is about the death of Holly, Valens and the Big Bopper.