McLean said he’s selling the manuscript because “my wife and children don’t seem to have the knack for making money, and I seem to have that.” He said he plans to hold a larger sale in about two years that includes a wider array of his memorabilia and other items he’s collected in the past decades.
Legal Paper
The manuscript, which he partially wrote on legal paper he found in a Manhattan trash can, was stored in “a banker’s box in my library on the third floor of my house where I would toss work products from songs for albums through the years,” he said.
The buyer will probably be a private collector because museums usually can’t afford memorabilia with such a hefty price tag, and items in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame are almost all donated, said Warwick Stone, a curator for the Hard Rock Hotel Las Vegas’s memorabilia collection.
Chinese buyers have shown an interest in American pop culture memorabilia, particularly items from Michael Jackson and Marilyn Monroe, he said.
“They’re driving the price up like crazy,” Stone said. Christie’s held an exhibit in Tokyo of the manuscript on March 25 and 26. The documents will be on view at Christie’s in New York April 2 to April 6.
McLean, who lives in Camden, Maine, and starts a tour of the U.K., Ireland, and the U.S. in May, said he “couldn’t care less” who buys the lyrics. “They’re not mine anymore,” he said. He said he won’t attend the auction.
He said if he could own another musician’s manuscript, it would be one by George Gershwin or Irving Berlin. His own music resonates with listeners of any age, he said.
“It’s a family song,” he said. “It gets passed down from generation to generation.”