The Hit
Buckle up, because this one’s juicy.
A Belgian singer named Jacques Brel wrote the song that became Terry Jacks’ “Seasons in the Sun.” Moreover, it had a completely different story and vibe: Brel both wrote and set it in a Tangiers whorehouse. Titled “La Moribund" (and here's Brel performing it, with subtitles) it recorded the last words and final farewell by a heartbroken husband to his cheating wife and it featured verses like these (in French, obviously):
“Adieu, Francoise, my trusted wife,
without you I'd have had a lonely life.
You cheated lots of times but then I forgave you in the end,
though your lover was my friend.”
According to a wonderful, exhaustive 2014 interview on a site called Song Facts (again, just read that), Brel and Jacks met after the latter’s brighter re-working of the tune became an international hit; Brel even kept pushing Jacks to secure songwriting credit for his version, something the latter literally never got to it. Rod McKuen, another songwriter who re-wrote “Le Moribund,” did. Jacks, meanwhile, not only flipped the story into something earnest and innocent - fitting, seeing as he wrote it in memory of a close friend who died too young from leukemia - he added an entire extra verse and, if memory serves, changed the key. He does, however, own the rights to his version. Which became a big deal.
And yet, he never intended to record it. He first offered it to the Beach Boys, but it came during a turbulent phase for them. They flew Jacks down from Vancouver, BC, to produce it, but he could never get more than one Beach Boy at a time, they had to hide the tapes from Brian Wilson to keep him from dicking around with them, and he had to deal with rock-star bullshit to boot. As Jacks recalled:
“I remember Mike Love came in to do his lines in a guru outfit with some girl, and they were on a watermelon fast. His lines were like ‘We had joy, we had fun... Bom bom bombombom, bom bombombombaba.’ Typical Mike Love-type voice on that.”
Buckle up, because this one’s juicy.
A Belgian singer named Jacques Brel wrote the song that became Terry Jacks’ “Seasons in the Sun.” Moreover, it had a completely different story and vibe: Brel both wrote and set it in a Tangiers whorehouse. Titled “La Moribund" (and here's Brel performing it, with subtitles) it recorded the last words and final farewell by a heartbroken husband to his cheating wife and it featured verses like these (in French, obviously):
“Adieu, Francoise, my trusted wife,
without you I'd have had a lonely life.
You cheated lots of times but then I forgave you in the end,
though your lover was my friend.”
According to a wonderful, exhaustive 2014 interview on a site called Song Facts (again, just read that), Brel and Jacks met after the latter’s brighter re-working of the tune became an international hit; Brel even kept pushing Jacks to secure songwriting credit for his version, something the latter literally never got to it. Rod McKuen, another songwriter who re-wrote “Le Moribund,” did. Jacks, meanwhile, not only flipped the story into something earnest and innocent - fitting, seeing as he wrote it in memory of a close friend who died too young from leukemia - he added an entire extra verse and, if memory serves, changed the key. He does, however, own the rights to his version. Which became a big deal.
And yet, he never intended to record it. He first offered it to the Beach Boys, but it came during a turbulent phase for them. They flew Jacks down from Vancouver, BC, to produce it, but he could never get more than one Beach Boy at a time, they had to hide the tapes from Brian Wilson to keep him from dicking around with them, and he had to deal with rock-star bullshit to boot. As Jacks recalled:
“I remember Mike Love came in to do his lines in a guru outfit with some girl, and they were on a watermelon fast. His lines were like ‘We had joy, we had fun... Bom bom bombombom, bom bombombombaba.’ Typical Mike Love-type voice on that.”
