As I was writing this song one Sunday, I imagined myself floating into space and looking down at my own body. I was imagining myself dying. Morbidly obsessed with these thoughts, I wrote this song about death. The next day I was told that Guy [Burchett], our 17-year-old messenger boy, had been tragically killed on his motorcycle the day before. Guy died on the day I wrote this song.
— Elton John, from the sleeve notes of the 7-inch single
I think the photo of Elton above is about my favourite of him. That could quite easily adorn my living room alongside my son’s Rocky IV poster. Song For Guy is the ending track to Elton’s A Single Man album. It is an instrumental piece and as stated above was written on the day Guy Burchett, the messenger boy for Elton, was killed in an accident. It’s one of the only Elton John songs solely credited to Elton as most of his songs were written with lyricist Bernie Taupin. In a 2013 interview with Rolling Stone, Elton John said:
I made it (A Single Man) without Taupin. Bernie and I never split up. But we were doing a lot of drugs and drinking heavily, and he was beginning to write with other people, which made me a little jealous, but I decided I’d write with some other people. We never discussed it, we just let it go, and it hurt. It hurt him and it hurt me, but we both had the resilience and the intelligence to know that if we didn’t let each other write with other people, it would be the end of our relationship.
My favorite track from A Single Man is “Song for Guy” – it was different, it was an instrumental, it was just me doing everything. It meant so much to me, that track. It was a huge record in England and everywhere else in the world, but it was my first single that didn’t make the Top 100 in the U.S. That was the reason I got bloody-minded and left MCA Records. I wanted to have an instrumental on the charts. They said, “You can’t.” So I said, “F/&k you, I’m joining Geffen.” In retrospect, that was a big mistake.
According to Wikipedia:
The song opens with a solo piano, which is then accompanied by a looped Roland CR-78 drum machine,with occasional shaker and wind chimes alternating; other keyboards are often layered in shortly after, with a bass guitar mainly accompanying this. It is instrumental until the end, in which the words “Life isn’t everything” are repeated….
The song was one of his most successful singles in the UK, peaking at No. 4 in January 1979, and remaining on the chart for ten weeks. It marked his return to the Top Ten for the first time since 1976’s Don’t Go Breaking My Heart, which reached No. 1 on the same chart. The single was not released in the US until March 1979 where it barely made the charts, peaking at No. 110.
[Chorus]
Life isn’t everything
Isn’t everything
Isn’t everything
Life, life, life, life
Life, life, life, life, life, life
References:
1. Song For Guy – Elton John
“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand
Observation Blogger 
Gosh, I haven’t heard “Song For Guy” in decades. I’ve always liked it, even though it’s a relatively simple instrumental without much variety. Nevertheless, I dug it immediately and still enjoyed listening to it after all these years. I first heard “Song For Guy” in the late ’80s on the radio back in Germany where I recall it got a good deal of air time.
I’m glad you were able to enjoy hearing it again after such a long time. ‘Song For Guy’ seems to have that ethereal, timeless quality to it.