3 Days, 1 Song, and a Lifetime
Music: Song for Guy
Artist: Elton John
Shared by: Richard for his Dad
“In a daze, I drifted through lessons and through the everyday routines of life. At home, we didn’t really talk about what had happened and didn’t express our feelings. There was no therapy or counselling, no hint of understanding.”
It was a normal Saturday night. December 2nd, 1978.
My Dad - Harry - had set off for his night shift as an engineer at the Hilton Hotel in Stratford-upon-Avon. He’d done this week-on nights week-off job for years - a way to secure a regular income to supplement his sporadic earnings as a self-employed plumber.
Just about two months away from my 16th birthday, I was old enough to stay up and watch ‘Parkinson’ - a regular weekend treat - and Elton John appeared. I wasn’t a big fan of his glam-rock style hits and didn’t know how good a pianist he was until he played that evening.
The song’s beautiful haunting melody, with a repeated refrain, moved me. This was all the more surprising given it had no lyrics (my normal route into a song). Well, I say that, but the lyrics kicked in about one minute before the end, when Elton started singing: ‘Life. Isn’t everything. Isn’t everything. Isn’t everything.’ He repeated these words over and over again.
He’d explained to Parkinson that the song was dedicated to a young man (Guy Burchett) from his record label who’d died in a motorcycle accident. This morning, Wikipedia revealed that Elton’s sleeve notes for the 7” single say that he wrote the song on the day of Guy’s death, but without knowing about it. The music and lyrics were the result of the musician’s contemplations about his own mortality; only later did he dedicate the song to the young man’s memory.
Whatever the origins of the track, the performance was mesmerising.
On Sunday, December 3rd 1978, the world changed. It was not a normal day.
My Mum got up to answer the phone (a landline, in the hallway downstairs) at around 6am. My elder brother Keith and I listened in from the top of the stairs. Dad had been taken ill at work and was in Warwick Hospital. We needed to get there. Fast.
While my eldest brother, Paul, drove over to pick us up (my Mum couldn’t drive and Keith had no car), she suggested I stayed at home to get on with my Latin homework. Forever obedient, and particularly so in that moment, I agreed.
In the hours that followed, I completed the work without ever considering the futility of the task. I do remember stopping to think, ‘What if he’s dead?’ but then dismissing the idea just as quickly.
I’m not sure I have the answer even now. But I do know that a massive heart attack had struck down my father, aged 47. He would never come back from that night shift. And I’d never see him again.
He was hardly ever ill, was slightly overweight and massively over-worked. He shouted at me only once, for swearing. He never hit me. He bought me a silver racing bike he couldn’t really afford in 1977, the year of the Queen’s Jubilee.
Nobody understood grief in the 1970s. We didn’t know what to do, or how to express ourselves. Today, we’d consider my Mum’s next decision to be as odd as suggesting I stay at home to do my homework. She sent me to school.
It was Monday, 4th December and even my teachers didn’t know what to say, let alone my classmates. In a daze, I drifted through lessons and through the everyday routines of life. This lasted for months and I never processed any of it. At home, we didn’t really talk about what had happened and didn’t express our feelings. There was no therapy or counselling, no hint of understanding.
To be fair to my Mum and everyone else in late-Seventies Britain, our society barely understands grief even today. But forward-thinking initiatives like yours are helping people to talk about the loved ones they’ve lost and to share their stories.
I listened to ‘Song for Guy’ for the first time in 47 years this morning. It made me cry, and inspired me to pour out my story. And it’s helped. Thank you.