This Tragic 1974 No. 1 Pop-Rock Hit Was Inspired by a Heartbreaking True Story

Tragedy songs were commonplace in the early to mid-1970s. Who can forget Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods’ war-themed song, “Billy Don’t Be a Hero,” and David Geddes’teen tragedy hit “Run Joey Run?”

In 1974, Terry Jacks topped the charts with the gut-wrenching soft rock hit ”Seasons in the Sun.” The song peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March of that year. It was Jacks’ only hit in the U.S.

The song was a rewrite of “Le Moribond” (“The Dying Man”), a song originally written by singer/songwriter Jacques Brel about a man heartbroken by his wife’s infidelity. Brel’s song was translated from French and recorded as “Seasons in the Sun” by the Kingston Trio in 1961, per American Songwriter.

Nearly a decade later, Canadian singer Jacks rewrote part of the lyrics to include a heartbreaking real-life goodbye to a close friend who was dying from cancer. “Goodbye my friend, it’s hard to die / When all the birds are singing in the sky,” is one of the saddest lyrics from the song.

A long history

In an interview posted by Barry Scott of the Lost 45s, Jacks revealed that when he first heard the original version of the song, about a man who was “dying of a broken heart” because his wife had been unfaithful with his best friend, he was mesmerized by it.

“The song and a mystique to it,“ he said. “There was something about the song; it never left my mind. The song was translated into English by Rod McKuen. I didn’t like the translation, but there was still something about that song.”

Jacks originally suggested his version of “Seasons in the Sun” for his friends, the Beach Boys, but the song didn’t work out for them, so he recorded it himself, according to Stereogum.

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Recording his version of “Seasons in the Sun” was a bittersweet experience for Jacks. In a 1996 interview shared by Mimre TV, Jacks recalled, “I rewrote that song after one of my best friends passed away, and I didn’t feel right about singing the song and making money from it. So that’s probably why I stopped doing live performances.”

Jacks noted that Brel’s song was more of a “romantic tongue-in-cheek French song” and that his was based on the real heartbreak of a friend’s final days.

”We were playing golf, and he told me that he didn’t have very long to live,” Jacks said of his late friend. “And I didn’t believe him, but he had acute leukemia, and 30 years ago, there wasn’t really a cure for that, and he died four months later. So I wrote the song about Roger and how it must have been, you know, how hard it was to tell his best friend and his father and his girlfriend that he was going to die.”

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