McLean returned to London to do a free concert in Hyde Park in May 1975. Before the concert, British actress Vanessa Redgrave insisted on meeting him at his hotel. Redgrave was an active member of the Socialist Workers’ Party and a vocal campaigner. She wanted McLean to use his Hyde Park concert as an opportunity to announce that he had joined her party and to encourage others in the audience to do so. No matter how many times he refused, she kept telling him he had to do it. Redgrave has often supported unusual causes. Two years later, when she received an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in Julia, she denounced Zionism on live television. Don later said, “I admired her devotion to principle, and I think she is a terrific actress, but I do not like being coaxed.”

Eighty-five thousand fans attended the free concert at Hyde Park. It was the second largest concert in the UK up to that time, and it was broadcast, live, on Capitol Radio, the most popular music station in London. The concert received critical acclaim, and the tour was a stunning success. But McLean describes the Hyde Park concert as torture. He regretted not performing with a band. He felt he could not get enough sound out playing solo. “However,” he said, “The audience gave me so much love it made everything okay.” Don was now moving toward using musicians on the road.

While still reeling from a nervous breakdown that had been caused, to some extent, by being in the spotlight of the world, there he was, in front of 85,000 people, with millions listening on the radio. He was at the highest level of fame a music star could hope to achieve. He loved the music, not the publicity and pressure. After Hyde Park, he vowed that he would step back from the spotlight, but he was adjusting. He says, “When an artist’s ambition is bigger than his emotions can handle, something gives way inside. I needed a ton of time away to let things come back into balance. That’s what I was trying to do, get back into balance.”

Besides providing material for the fine Solo album, the 1975 tour also led to the inclusion of “Crying” in McLean’s repertoire. His driver on that tour was Burt Smith, a street-wise, former Teddy Boy who was a huge Roy Orbison fan. While traveling from venue to venue, McLean and Smith spent a lot of time discussing Orbison’s music and listening to “Crying” more than anything else. It made Don think that perhaps he should try to sing “Crying” in his own shows. Orbison had encouraged him to perform the song, but McLean thought it might be beyond him. However, when he returned to the States, he started singing the song at some club dates. The reaction was gratifying. He said,

“One of the reasons that I started singing this song was that I felt I had lived it. I felt that I had experienced a breakdown as a teenager. I suppose the definition of a breakdown is when you can’t stop crying. I was just broken. We didn’t know about therapy, and we couldn’t have afforded it if we did. Music helped me fight my way out of it.”

Based on his own personal experiences, “Crying” seemed to fit like a glove. McLean felt that he understood the song better than anybody other than Roy Orbison. And it signaled a turning point in his career, for it represented a change in musical style that has lasted to the present day. He said,

“There was no way I was going to sing “Crying” and play the banjo anymore. It just didn’t fit. I had refined my musical style to the point where I no longer played songs that were suited for the banjo. There were two other reasons that I stopped playing the banjo. One was Earl Scruggs, the other was Pete Seeger. I thought that I really couldn’t do much that was different from either of those two guys, so there really wasn’t much point in me playing it.”