Grab,

I had a go-through myself...try replacing the Gm chords with B-flat7 (sorry, it's the barre chord from hell, but I'm sure it's the right sound, what does your ear say?) I've come across that chord in another Don MacLean song in the key of D major (Did You Know? - no, not a question, that's the name of the song) It's worse than a barred F! I just slip an open-style A7 up 1 fret, then barre the 1st fret. Sounds so easy!!!

There's another bit that doesn't seem to quite fit, to my ear anyhow: "My (Bm)future was dim, my (F#m)spirit was crushed" - I'm testing variants of Am instead of that F#m. It helps but it still isn't it.

In the instrumental break, you're right, it's an Fdim. I haven't worked at this part yet, but after finding the notes he uses to be apparently impossible to play comfortably, and I have large hands, I looked up the chord in my trusty reference book. It shows the Fdim with the E and A strings not played, then D-3rd fret; G-4th fret; B-3rd fret; E-4th fret. Like all dim.'s, you can repeat the pattern every 3 frets for different versions of the same chord.

I have not yet tested this Fdim for usability. Well, I'm sure that it's usable, but I mean to get the sound he gets. There is just enough production gimmickry on the recording that I wonder if a few notes didn't get laid down on a separate track. I also haven't tested the basic musical math that says that in this version of Fdim, both the D string and B string could be left open, though I don't expect that 2 strings sounding B (the latter case) will sound very good in that context.

Lastly, on the F#m on "free" I'm going to see what gives using Am on those twiddles (great word, by the way) like the part where "my future was dim." Those notes and chords are there SOMEwhere.

Whaddya think? Anyone else know how to get this sounding right?