By Brian Lee
I have a confession to make — I like Seasons in the Sun. It’s a lonely thing to say publicly because it only sold 13 million copies and is the biggest selling single by a Canadian. Ever. But it’s a song people hide their fondness of for fear of ridicule.
According to the liner notes in Terry Jacks’ recently released retrospective CD, people either loved or hated the song since its 1973 release.
"One DJ in New York (who didn’t like the record and was tired of getting so many requests for it) decided to have a contest. If more people hated the record than liked it, he would throw it off the Empire State Building. If more people liked it, he would personally cover his car with records and drive around New York for a week.
"Later, this DJ was credited for having the first vinyl rooftop."
Around here, Jacks is better known for trying to pass off his Fruit of the Looms for proper swim attire at the Pender pool. But I was lucky enough to have a sister six years older than me. Not only did that mean girls old enough to have boobs occasionally dropped by the house, it meant my first experience with music was angsty 1970s teen girl pop. And the first song that survived my developing memory was Seasons.
Up until that point, music had been the Carol Burnett Show theme or hits from my grandpa’s accordion. Seasons was different. To my infant mind, the song contained a profound mystery. I fixed on the album cover for clues and for 40 years I held that image. But in researching Jacks for the story on page 14, nothing I found matched what I had imprinted. This was Pender Harbour before cable, so I guessed my sister probably didn’t get the third copy off the press.
Sure enough, after some lengthy internet sleuthing, I found it. The album was a 1976 K-Tel compilation called Terry Jacks and The Poppy Family:
I distinctly recall puzzling over the expressions of the pretty lady and the guy with cotton candy hair who was missing so many shirt buttons. With Seasons scratching away on our old turntable, I pondered what drama so concerned them. Despite the sad musical clues and theories gleaned from Gunsmoke plots, I never solved the riddle.
Album covers must have been my thing at the time because the other record I remember fixating on was Kiss’s Love Gun:
I didn’t solve that one either.