(CNN)"A long, long, time ago..." 

Those five words, when uttered or sung, makes baby boomers immediately think of Don McLean's pop masterpiece "American Pie." It's hard to believe that his phenomenal 8½ minute allegory, which millions of Americans know by heart, is 44 years old. All sorts of historical cross-currents play off each other in this timeless song, brilliantly gilded with the unforgettable chorus, which starts as "Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie." There is no real way to categorize McLean's "American Pie" for its hybrid of modern poetry and folk ballad, beer-hall chant and high-art rock. 

On Tuesday, Christie's sold the 16-page handwritten manuscript of the song's lyrics for $1.2 million to an unnamed buyer. 

McLean was a paperboy when, on February 3, 1959, he saw that Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson had been tragically killed in an airplane crash in Clear Lake, Iowa. "The next day I went to school in shock and guess what?" McLean recalled. "Nobody cared. Rock 'n' roll in those days was sort of like hula hoops and Buddy hadn't had a big hit on the charts since '57." By cathartically writing "American Pie," McLean has guaranteed that the memory of those great musicians lives forever. 

Having recorded his first album, "Tapestry," in 1969, in Berkeley, California, during the student riots, McLean, a native New Yorker, became a kind of weather vane for what he called the "generation lost in space." When his cultural anthem "American Pie" was released in November 1971, it replaced Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A Changin" as the Peoples Almanac of the new decade. It's important to think of "American Pie" as one would of Henry Longfellow's "Evangeline" or Johnny Mercer's "Moon River" -- an essential Americana poem emanating wistful recollection, blues valentine, and youthful protest rolled into one. There is magic brewing in the music and words of "American Pie," for McLean's lyrics and melody frame a cosmic dream, like those Jack Kerouac tried to conjure in his poetry-infused novel "On the Road." 
Where is Don McLean from?
 McLean, a native New Yorker