"American Pie" manuscript going to auction; song was the anthem of a generation

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Don McLean's 16-page manuscript for "AMERICAN PIE," the song that became the anthem of a time when hopeful idealism disintegrated into disillusioned loss, will be auctioned by Christie's in NYC on April 7th. The stack of handwritten notes is the whole thing, with all the songwriting process laid bare, the cul-de-sac ideas that didn't make it, and all that did.

It was the # 1 hit song of 1972. It defied radio's "3-minute rule," which was cast in concrete until that eight-and-a-half-minute song came along and listeners refused to accept the butchered radio-cut version. It's still the longest song ever to top the Billboard Hot 100. The album, which also included the enduring song "Vincent," was released to much acclaim, later being included in the book "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die."

McLean was a protégé of Pete Seeger, having played with him in the 1960s. The album "American Pie" was intended as a unified work. McLean said that he was influenced by The Beatles' "Sgt Pepper" album and envisioned "American Pie" to be a similar album.

When released in 1971, it was fresh commentary on the '60s, the defining decade of McLean’s generation. The compelling, thoroughly engaging song has a melancholy feel and rather sparse arrangements. At the time he wrote it, McLean’s first marriage was failing, and his own sense that the course of music had been forever altered by the death of his musical idol, Buddy Holly, when McLean was a 13-year-old paperboy on a bicycle. Still, McLean struck universal chords with his somewhat cryptic lyrics into which each listener projected their own sense of tragically incongruous and contradictory times.

"American Pie" has always lent itself to that. It still does. For years, Mort Saul told his audiences the song was about the death of JFK. It wasn't, but for many who heard it, it was. College courses examined the song and its role as a key summation of an era.

One recent reviewer, referencing the song, says, "...the optimism and hopefulness of the 1960s was giving way to the nihilism and hedonism of the 1970s," though we don't buy that at all.

We argue that the 1970s brought the purposeful group movements and grassroots funding and political activism for saving the environment, stopping exploitive runaway developments, and curbing pollution; it was a time characterized by championing causes like saving whales and redwoods and rain forests and wild rivers, and zero population growth, and the birth of the pro-solar and anti-nuke movements, and much more. And nobody was a bigger music star in the '70s than John Denver, with his anthems about celebrating and protecting the planet for future generations, and getting out and experiencing and enjoying nature. Sure, there was the disco music that still sucks, and the cocaine snorting scene that went with it, but don't tell us that is what characterized the '70s. If you think it was, you probably think the '60s were about go-go boots.

Far more, the era when "American Pie" was being demanded on the radio was what would come to be called, decades later, the folk americana and folk rock, post-psychedelic era. It was a time of taking account of what had been happening, what could be done by working through disillusionment and loss, and what could be done together. It was the music of Arlo Guthrie and Jackson Browne and the Eagles and Linda Ronstadt and Neil Young and bands called America and Heart and the amazing anthems of ELO and the horns of Chicago and the pop of Elton John and Olivia Newton-John and one-hit-wonder Sammy Johns and back around all those "Johns" to John Denver. Hardly evidence for a time of universal self-absorption. And it was Don McLean's "American Pie."

Christie's expects the Don McLean song manuscript will sell for $1.5 million.

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