On This Day in 2015, Don McLean Sold the Original Manuscript to “American Pie” for $1.2 Million: “This Song Was Not a Parlor Game”

On April 7, 2015, singer/songwriter Don McLean sold the original manuscript of his world-famous 1971 song “American Pie” at an auction. The manuscript sold for a whopping $1.2 million. Apparently, Don McLean wanted to sell this little piece of music history for a specific reason.

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The Reason Why Don McLean Wanted To Sell the Original Manuscript Lyrics of “American Pie”

After the manuscript sold back in 2015, McLean said that he “thought it would be interesting as I reach age 70 to release this work product on the song ‘American Pie’ so that anyone who might be interested will learn that this song was not a parlor game.”

What exactly did he mean by that? Well, it helps to know that “American Pie” had been the subject of quite a bit of speculations through the years, at least in terms of its cryptic lyricism. “The day the music died” is the lyric that everyone understood to be about the infamous plane crash in 1959 that took the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper, essentially ending an era of rock and roll music. 

However, the whole theme of the song goes quite far beyond mourning the deaths of music icons. The lyrics get quite cryptic. Some believed that they were gibberish, and others believed that they alluded to specific social changes that took place across the United States in the 1960s.

Famously, Don McLean never elaborated on the lyrics of “American Pie”. But when the manuscript sold in 2015, it included songwriting notes that explained many of the real meanings behind the more symbolic lyrics of the song. 

The notes explain a few different things. To start, the manuscript notes that the introduction of the song is about his childhood aspiration of becoming a singer. The chorus, likewise, is symbolic of the old generation passing the torch and references a Buddy Holly song.

“I was trying to capture something very ephemeral and I did,” said McLean. “But it took a long time.”

Later in 2022, McLean would elaborate further on the symbolism of the song in a documentary. He said that “American Pie” was an impressionist-inspired work. Many of the speculated symbols in the song were debunked by him.

Photo by kpa/United Archives via Getty Images

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