It’s funny how our opinions change in the fullness of time.
I was 24 years old and a regular listener to Top 40 radio when I first heard Terry Jacks singing “Seasons in the Sun” in 1974.
I hated it. There was a sing-songy quality about it that was truly annoying and the story told of a man who was dying and saying goodbye to the people he loved just didn’t do it for me.
There are some songs that made me turn up the volume when they came on the radio, and there are others that made me change stations or turn the radio off.
“Seasons in the Sun” was the second type.
I literally could not listen to it.
There were lots of silly songs in the early ’70s, songs like “Kung Fu Fighting,” “The Night Chicago Died” and “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia.” That last was so contradictory that my wonderful friend Bill Madden, the funniest person I have ever known, took it apart, pointing out that it was the night the lights went out in Georgia.
That implied the electrical surge of an execution by electric chair, but the next like was “the night that they hung an innocent man.” Of course hanging didn’t involve electricity.
Then came the line that “the judge in the town had bloodstains on his hands,” and neither hanging nor electrocution were executions involving blood.
But I digress.
Again.
“Timothy” from 1970 was a better death song, involving a mine cave-in and cannibalism. The fascinating thing about that song was that it was written by Rupert Holmes, who nine years later had the final No. 1 song of the 1970s. “Escape (the Pina Colada Song)” wasn’t about death or cannibalism, but it was pretty horrible.
At any rate, none of them were as bad as “Seasons in the Sun,” which escaped being the worst song of the decade only became Rick Dees put out “Disco Duck.”
So the ’70s passed into history and so did the ’80s and ’90s. It was late in the first decade of the 21st century that I first started to become aware of French popular music of the ’60s and ’70s. I became a big fan of Johnny Hallyday, aka the French Elvis, and I also learned of my wife’s favorite singer, Jacques Brel.
I had heard of Brel because of the off-Broadway show and later film, “Jacques Brel is Alive and Living in Paris,” which was essentially a jukebox musical decades before “Mamma Mia” and “Jersey Boys.” But I didn’t know his music all that well, and imagine my surprise the first time I heard “Le Moribond.”
It’s the original “Seasons in the Sun” before Rod McKuen sappified the lyrics. Where Terry Jacks sings of how sad he is to die, Brel’s lyrics have an undercurrent of anger. The English subtitles help, although I should point out that where the translation is “soul,” the subtitles says “saul.”
If Hallyday was the French Elvis, Brel seems to me to be the French Bob Dylan. Although technically he would be the Belgian Dylan for the land of his birth.
“Le Moribond” is far from Brel’s best song, but it is quite a wonderful song in itself.
And surprise of surprises, it made me appreciate “Seasons in the Sun” more than I once did. I can actually listen to it all the way through now. Although to be fair, maybe at age 74 I can appreciate the sentiments of someone dying more than I could at age 24.
Ya think?