Singer, songwriter and poet Rod McKuen has passed away.

Rod McKuen was in many ways one of the shrinking violets of the music industry but he was incredibly prolific as a songwriter. He wrote over 1500 songs, which amassed in excess of 100 million records for an eclectic range of artists including Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Perry Como, Petula Clark, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Pete Fountain, Andy Williams, the Kingston Trio, Percy Faith, the London Philharmonic, Dusty Springfield and Johnny Mathis.

However for the Record Press author, Rod McKuen has a special place in my heart because he translated two of my favourite ballads for Canadian singer Terry Jacks. When in the early 1960s Rod McKuen moved to France, he met the Belgian singer-songwriter and chanson singer Jacques Brel, who was very influential on Scott Walker’s music with the Walker Brothers in the 1960s.

Rod McKuen began to translate the work of Jacques Brel into English, which led to the song “If You Go Away”, based on Jacques Brel’s “Ne me quitte pas”. This was the follow up to Terry Jacks’ 1974 UK and international No1 “Seasons in the Sun”, wich was translated and adapted by Rod McKuen from Jacques Brel’s “Le Moribond”. Rod McKuen also translated songs by other French songwriters, including Gilbert Bécaud, but it is for his facilitation of Terry Jacks’ beautiful ballads “Seasons in the Sun” and “If You Go Away”, that I shall best remember him.

There is a certain irony on the occasion of Rod McKuen’s death, that many will remember him best for “Seasons in the Sun”, the lament of a dying man as he says goodbye to his partner and child…….

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