For a Dancer - Single Version

"I wrote this for a friend of mine who died in a fire," Browne said of the poignant song in 2016. "He was in the sauna in a house that burned down, so he had no idea anything was going on. It was very sad. He was a really interesting guy. Besides being a great dancer, he was an ice skater - he had a job in the Ice Follies. And he was a great tailor - he would make his friends clothes. He was a Renaissance man. When I wrote him the song - it's a song I've sung many times, other times when people have died - but I was making a metaphor out of the dance. Just the idea that your life is a dance. And there's a line in it, 'In the end, there is one dance you do alone.' That's one of the songs I've sung all through the years, and for me, it's like going to that place, and dealing with the fact that life will end. It's a sad song, but at the same time, it feels good to sort through that reality and touch base with it, and then go on."

Browne sang this at Phil Hartman's memorial service in 1998. It was also played at John Belushi's service in 1982.

After Jackson Browne's wife, the model Phyllis Major, died in 1976, some songs he'd written before became mysteriously about the tragic event. After writing "For A Dancer" about a friend who died when he was living with Major, it gradually became about her. "That's how songs work," he told Mojo magazine. "They migrate into other parts of your life and other experiences."