BYE-BYE, “AMERICAN PIE” LYRICS

It may be the most analyzed song in pop music history: Don McLean’s “American Pie.” From the time it was released in 1971, fans and media alike began trying to decipher the 8-minute, 29-second pop masterpiece.

By April 7, 2015, any mysteries surrounding the long and winding lyrics should disappear. That’s when McLean’s original manuscript goes up for auction at Christie’s in New York. The 16-page draft — 237 handwritten and 26 typewritten lines (complete with notes, edits, and deletions) — is expected to reel in $1.5 million. And fans of the song will find out for sure what it all means: “The writing and the lyrics will divulge everything there is to divulge,” McLean told Reuters.

From the beginning, McLean acknowledged that Buddy Holly’s death was the springboard for “American Pie.” Early in the song, he took us back to the winter morning in 1959 when, as a young paperboy, the shocking headline jolted him: Buddy Holly, his musical idol, had died in a plane crash along with fellow pop stars Ritchie Valens and J.P. “Big Bopper” Richardson.

       February made me shiver/With every paper I delivered
       Bad news on the doorstep/I couldn’t take one more step
       I can’t remember if I cried/When I read about his widowed bride
       But something touched me deep inside/The day the music died.

Pictured: 1972 publicity photo of Don McLean.

Otherwise, he left “American Pie” shrouded in mystery, even as listeners probed, examined, and chewed on it. Over four decades, though, all that probing and chewing has made collective sense of the 872-word song. One of many lengthy analyses on the Internet appears at a website called  www.UnderstandingAmericanPie.com. Its creator, Jim Fan, reviews the lyrics verse by verse, line by line, and offers this summary: “McLean was clearly relating a defining moment in the American experience — something had been lost, and we knew it.”

Holly’s death, for McLean, marked the beginning of that loss. As the new decade unraveled, the social climate in America “was changing radically,” as Jim Fan wrote, “passing from the optimism and conformity of the 1950s and early 1960s to the rejection of these values by the various political and social movements of the middle and late 1960s.”

Buddy Holly’s death was the inspiration behind “American Pie.” Don McLean grew up during the jukebox and sock-hop days of the 1950s, when Holly songs like “That’ll Be the Day,” “Peggy Sue,” and “Words of Love” were part of any teen’s soundtrack.

So as he raced through the imagistic verses of “American Pie,” McLean mourned the nation’s fading idealism. His references, as countless analysts have noted, were heavy on pop culture. Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan are there (“While the King was looking down/The jester stole his thorny crown”), and so are Beatles, multiple times (“The quartet practiced in the dark” and, later, “The sergeants played a marching tune”). The Byrds also appear (“Eight miles high and falling fast”), and the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger is supposedly “Jack Flash,” who “sat on a candlestick, ‘cause fire is the devil’s only friend.”

McLean also uses a football field, speculators have written, to symbolize the battles between the establishment and all kinds of champions of change. Back to Jim Fan: “As the 1960s revolution gathered momentum, the youth movement itself also gathered more players, as the more organized and pragmatic unity of the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left … began fragmenting into the Women’s Rights, Black Power, and Antiwar and Counterculture movements,” among others.

When McLean’s “American Pie” manuscript details circulate, they’ll no doubt corroborate these and other widely held interpretations. For now, McLean is at least painting broad strokes. He posted this personal note at his website in February 2015:

McLean was the cover boy for the May 1973 issue of UK magazine Zigzag.

“For more than 40 years I have rambled around every state of the union and many, many countries of the world. My primary interests in life have been America, singing, songwriting, and the English language. I love the English language as much as anything in life, and words really do mean something.

 “I thought it would be interesting as I reach age 70 [Oct. 2] 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. It was an indescribable photograph of America that I tried to capture in words and music and then was fortunate enough, through the help of others, to make a successful recording.

“I would say to young songwriters who are starting out to immerse yourself in beautiful music and beautiful lyrics and think about every word you say in a song.”

So… will McLean’s “American Pie” manuscript reach $1.5 million? If it even comes close, it’ll be in good company. Consider these prices paid for lyric manuscripts of iconic pop songs in recent years:

• $2.045 million for Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” lyrics, written on four notebook pages. (Sotheby’s, 2014)

• $1.203 million for John Lennon’s “A Day in the Life” lyric, a single page. Paul McCartney’s middle section (“Woke up, got out of bed…”) was not included. ( Sotheby’s, 2010)

* $1 million for Lennon’s “All You Need Is Love” one- page lyric. (Cooper Owen in London, 2005)

• $833,653 for Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance” one-pager. (Christie’s, 2008)

• $485,000 for Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” lyrics, a two-page document. (Sotheby’s, 2014)

Collectors of important pop culture artifacts clearly will open their wallets for historical, one-of-a-kind items. Here’s hoping that whoever winds up with “American Pie” will share the backstory.

• • • • • • •

 

STRIDE TOWARD FREEDOM: COLLECTING DR. KING

Did you know it took a 32-year fight before Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday became a national holiday in all 50 states? Four days after King’s assassination in Memphis on April 4, 1968,  Representative John Conyers put forth a motion to make King’s birthday a holiday in honor of his efforts to win equality for all via peaceful means.

Eleven years passed before the motion even went up for a vote in the House of Representatives. Despite the support of the highest office in the country — President Jimmy Carter — it fell short by five votes of the required two-thirds majority. The bill finally passed in 1983, but the majority of our states didn’t enact “Martin Luther King Jr. Day” right away. Incredibly, it wasn’t until 2000 that all 50 states bought in.

For a man who embodied courage, exhibited love in a sea of hatred, and campaigned tirelessly for Civil Rights, the holiday reminds us of what he fought for: justice. As Dr. King himself once said in a letter, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

In the collecting marketplace, King memorabilia prices have never been at the level of his contemporary John F. Kennedy, but there’s always interest when an item he signed — a letter, magazine cover, book, photograph — comes up for auction.

Pictured: a detail from a Dec. 20, 1960 letter Martin Luther King wrote to entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. thanking him for his support in his Civil Rights work. The two-page letter sold for $10,158 in 2006 but could command upwards of $15,000 today.

DOCUMENTS: In this area, content is king. A great example turned up at Heritage Auctions in 2013: a group of eight 4 x 6-inch index cards on which King penned notes for a speech in late 1959. The group sold for $31,250. The speech was his goodbye after six years as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala.; his Civil Rights efforts and other commitments (including his presidency of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference) were leaving him with little time by 1959. It led to, as he wrote within the index cards at Heritage, “the frustration of doing so many things that you are doing any [of them] well.”

Another King prize: a stenographer’s notebook containing a draft of a letter he wrote soliciting funding for his Civil Rights initiatives. The notebook sold for $12,500 in April 2014. Two months later, the winning bidder flipped it, getting $18,000.

And a letter Dr. King wrote to thank the doctor who treated him after a stabbing incident went up for auction at Sotheby’s in 2013 and brought $8,125. The catalog describes the document’s unique content:

“On 20 September 1958, Izola Ware Curry, a mentally disturbed African-American woman, stabbed King in a Harlem department store as he autographed copies of Stride Toward Freedom, his memoir of the Montgomery bus protest. At Harlem Hospital, a team of physicians, including Dr. Helen D. Mayer, successfully removed the letter opener used by the attacker, still lodged close to Dr. King’s heart. Dr. King spent most of October recuperating in New York. [In this letter], Dr. King expresses his warmest and most sincere thanks to Dr. Mayer: ‘I will long remember the many times that you came into my room with a warm smile and a radiant countenance expressing genuine concern for my welfare. I am sure that your thoughtful considerate gestures of goodwill went a long, long way to give me the strength to face the ordeals of that trying period.'”

(A DailyMail.com report on Jan. 20, 2015 noted that Izola Curry, 42 at the time of the standing, is still alive. Now 98, she reportedly lives in a  New York nursing home.)

Dr. King’s first appearance on Time magazine was in 1957. [Photo courtesy of Heritage Auctions]

MAGAZINES: Collectors who prefer more visual items look for signed magazine covers. One such item: the Feb. 18, 1957 issue of Time, which marked the first of his four appearances on the magazine’s cover. The image, painted by Boris Chaliapin, is an impressive color portrait of King with a background illustration depicting him speaking at a podium. Unsigned, the magazine sells for $100–$200, dpending on condition. If signed, the price skyrockets, of course. An example offered by Heritage in 2013, an autographed Canadian-edition Time, bears the signature “Best Wishes/Martin Luther King.” It brought $6,875. Another example: the Jan. 3, 1964 Time, which anointed King as Man of the Year. An autographed but well-worn copy of that issue sold at Heritage for $3,000 in 2014. A signed copy in pristine condition would easily double that price.

Autographed books by Martin Luther King Jr. can sell for several thousand dollars. [Photo courtesy of Heritage Auctions]

BOOKS: Then there’s the subcategory of autographed books written by King. His 1960 tome, Stride Toward Freedom/The Montgomery Story (New York: Harper & Bros.), can fetch $4,000–$8,000 if bearing an inscription. His 1967 book Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? (New York: Evanston, and London: Harper & Row, London) commands a similar price range. (Unsigned first editions of those and other King books, including 1964’s Why We Can’t Wait [New York: Harper & Rowe], can be had for $75–$150.)

PHOTOGRAPHS: Vintage photographs of King can provide a historical look at the man’s life and times. If signed, they can sell for a few thousand dollars. Example: Profiles in History (a California auction house) made $8,000 on an autographed 8×10 PR photo issued by Meet the Press in advance of King’s appearance on that NBC program on April 17, 1960. King was only the second African-American guest on the show. Adding to the value is the fact that King inscribed the photo to the founder of Meet the Press: “To Lawrence Spivak, with great respect and admiration, Martin Luther King, Jr.”

Dr. King was only the second African-American to appear on Meet the Press. [Photo courtesy of Profiles in History]

Also, an 10×6.5-inch photo of King snapped while he was addressing a crowd brought $7,000 at Alexander Historical Auctions. King inscribed the center of the photo to a friend named Ray. And an 8×10-inch original print of King walking with supporters sold for $2,870 at Heritage—and that was back in 2006.

Even unsigned vintage photos can be valuable, depending on photographer, the image, age of print, and condition. For example, Walker’s, a Canadian auction house, sold a vintage gelatin print of an iconic Yousuf Karsh (1908-2002) portrait of King for $1,425 in January 2015. And Swann Auction Galleries got $1,250 for an unsigned but high-impact 14×11-inch print of King reaching out to supporters from a motorcade in Baltimore in 1964. The photographer was Leonard Freed (1929–2006).

Martin Luther King greets onlookers from a motorcade in Baltimore, 1966. [Photo courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries]

ODDITIES: Collectors also search for nicely preserved uncommon items, both signed and unsigned. Examples we’ve seen sell at auction in recent years:

Near-mint copy of Martin Luther King comic book, a 10-cent item in 1957. [Photo courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries]

• An autographed 1958 comic book called Martin Luther King and The Montgomery Story sold for $2,250, despite being a little ragged, at Heritage in 2014.

• Swann Auction Galleries sold two unsigned but near-mint copies of the same comic book for $700 in 2014. One of the editions was in English, the other Spanish (Martin Luther King y La Historia de Montgomery).

• An unsigned Southern Christian Leadership Conference broadside measuring 14 x 22.25 inches sold for $2,000 at Heritage in 2014.

• An autographed booklet—a program of events for a rally on March 13, 1966—sold for $1,350 at Swann.

• Two American Express receipts signed by King each brought $1,600 at Early American Auctions in January 2015. One was for a charge at the Hyatt House in L.A. in 1962 ($87.38), and the other was for a charge at the Palmer House in Chicago in 1966 ($71.30).

• A signed bulletin from White Rock Baptist Church (Philadelphia) on Oct. 22, 1961 sold for $1,554 in 2006 at Heritage.

• And an inscribed $1 bill (“With Best Wishes for Peace…,” on the reverse) sold for $1,400 at Signature House Auctions. Without King’s signature, the bill is worth… $1.

Broadside poster from a 1960s event.