SOME OF THE mystery behind one of US pop culture’s most recognisable songs and debated lyrics has been lifted by its writer.
Singer-songwriter Don McLean has sold the original manuscript and accompanying notes to his 1971 classic ‘American Pie’.
The 16 pages sold today for $1.2 million when they were auctioned at Christie’s in New York.
The song memorably refers to the deaths of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “Big Bopper” Richardson as “the day the music died”.
Rock enthusiasts have, however, long pored over what McLean was referencing across the six verses and eight minutes of the song.
McLean has always refused to divulge the song’s meaning in interviews. He is even once said to have joked that the song “means I don’t ever have to work again if I don’t want to.”
But McLean has now provided some insight to Christie’s, saying it describes the decline of the US.
“Basically in American Pie things are heading in the wrong direction,” he said according to The Telegraph quoting the auction catalogue.
“It is becoming less idyllic. I don’t know whether you consider that wrong or right but it is a morality song in a sense.”
The penultimate verse of the song is especially grim with McLean singing that ‘the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost caught the last train for the coast’.
The manuscripts also detail a deleted verse that finished on a more upbeat tone in which McLean speaks about the music being “reborn”.
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