Let me repeat that with emphasis: “I didn’t plan anything out. And the way he started explaining the song’s birth reveals a key point: “I didn’t plan anything out. I know because he told it to me decades ago.

I’m not saying that McLean was being disingenuous, per se, when he said that the 18 pages of handwritten and typed lyrics and revisions to one of the most iconic songs in classic rock divulge “everything there is to know” about “American Pie.” But he’s not telling the whole story. And its writer, Don McLean, finally – as headlines blared on CNN.com and in the Washington Post – “revealed” the “last secret” (England’s Daily Mail) behind the ongoing phenomenon of speculating about, analyzing, parsing and deconstructing its text. On April 7, 2015, the working manuscript of the eight-and-a-half minute 1971 song that hit #1 on Janu(and stayed there for four weeks) was sold by its writer for a cool million and then some, fetching “the third highest auction price for an American literary manuscript,” notes its auction house, Christie’s.

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The song american pie what does it mean