Bye, bye $1.2 million!

A bidder forked over that amount Tuesday for an original manuscript of Don McLean’s iconic song “American Pie” at a Christie’s auction in Midtown.

The winning bidder — who declined to be identified, Christie’s said — got 18 pages of McLean’s messy handwriting and the typewritten lyrics to the 1971 classic tune about the “day the music died” — generally thought to be a reference to the 1959 plane-crash deaths of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson.

The notes include a verse that didn’t make the final cut:

“And there I stood alone and afraid / I dropped to my knees and there I prayed / And I promised him everything I could give / If only he would make the music live / And he promised it would live once more / But this time one would equal four / And in five years four had come to mourn / and the music was reborn.”

In Christie’s catalog, McLean said of the unheard lyrics, “I was trying to go in different directions to see if anything spoke to me, and that section didn’t.”

American Pie http://t.co/2IhGsIj1ku Auction http://t.co/gyCGfjXXHJ Today. Overwhelmed by interest and coverage.

— Don McLean (@donmclean) April 7, 2015