GET
BACK, HONKY CAT
So--Elton John
is going to sing "Candle in the
Wind" at Diana's funeral, substituting
for the opening line "Goodbye, Norma
Jean" the phrase "Goodbye,
England's rose."
I'm drained of
all cynicism and snide comments regarding
Diana, but the NPR announcement about Elton
John's choice of elegy brings me back to
familiar territory--the well-meaning
thoughtlessness of rock stars.
(By the way,
don't bother trying to correct me--it's
"elegy" if it's a song delivered at
a funeral, "eulogy" if it's an
address.)
"Candle
in the Wind" is a singularly dopey
choice. I suspect that Elton chose it
because: a) he didn't put much thought into
it, or else he did but an Elton ponder
doesn't go a long way; b) the song has had a
revival of sorts in the past few years, and
he's milking it dry; or c) the song's
funereal air gives it a good-for-all-goodbyes
status in his mind.
The lyrics are
going to need a lot more adjustment than
"Goodbye, England's rose" if they
are to be apt. "I would have liked to
have known you, but I was just a kid" is
way off the mark, because EJ did
know her (well, in fact) and because he was
at least fifteen years her senior. And what
in the world is he going to do with
"Marilyn was found in the nude"?
More
importantly, the chorus and central conceit
of the song--"And it seems to me you
lived your life like a candle in the
wind/Never knowing who to turn to when the
rain set in."--is a total miss. It fits
for the song's original subject, Marilyn
Monroe, because she was doomed by her
fragility and vulnerability to be unable to
cope with stardom without relying on a strong
outside bulwark (a husband, for example).
That's pretty much the opposite of Diana, who
found herself only after she stopped being
Prince Charles's bauble and discovered on her
own that she had a real purpose in life. As
the only member of the royal family to truly
grasp noblesse oblige (however late
in life) and as a woman who grew stronger and
more certain of herself the older she got,
Diana is a singularly ill fit for
"Candle in the Wind".
If EJ is
absolutely bent upon reworking an appropriate
song for the occasion, a better choice would
be "Johnny Angel", "Tell Laura
I Love Her", "Leader of the
Pack", "Last Kiss", or any one
of those other maudlin
teen-love-dies-in-traffic-accident songs of
the early sixties. Better to trivialize your
friend at her funeral than to misrepresent
her.
If Elton John
was a true friend, or a more thoughtful one,
he and his songwriting partner Bernie Taupin
would retire to their two respective rooms
this week and write a new song--or adapt
something that they're currently working on
for the occasion. The two are quite capable
of an original and personal statement.
Elton's tribute to John Lennon, "Empty
Garden (Hey Hey Johnny)" was by
kilometers the best of a bathetic batch of
Lennon farewells by rock stars (Beatles and
non-Beatles alike) that were mostly about as
memorable as the WIN! button. And coming up
with something in a week's time is hardly
farfetched; I mean, we're talking pop music
here, not the Manhattan Project. Many of the
greatest songs in pop history have been
composed in the time it takes the average
rock star to do his onstage makeup. I've
heard that the late Thin Lizzy frontman Phil
Lynott's solemn, ultracool tribute to Elvis
("King's Call") was written in a
London pub within hours of hearing about the
death of the Muttonchopped One.
If the ensuing
elegy turned out to fall short of top-shelf
John/Taupin work, who would complain? Under
the circumstances, no one with any ounce of
humanity. I mean, you're not gunning for the
Top Forty or trying to pad out your third
collection of greatest hits here; you're
saying farewell to a loved one in as sincere
a manner as you can possibly muster.
Maybe Elton is
currently hard at work on his musical tribute
to Versace, and just can't crank out two of
these at the same time. Or maybe Mr. Rain
Forest, Sting, has every British rock star
obsessed with the concept of recycling.
Either way, tweaking "Candle in the
Wind" for the occasion is a terrible way
to say goodbye to someone you considered a
friend.
E-Mail Captain Spaulding. Choice reader mail
will be published in Pandemonium
Online.
Previous Mountaintop
Experiences with Captain
Spaulding:
Hooray
For Me #1-- One
Margarita Too Many?
Hooray
For Me #2-- Spitting at
the Generations
Hooray
For Me #3-- The
One-Eyed Spokesmodel
Hooray
For Me #4--
Semisardonic Over Semisonic
Hooray
For Me #5-- Bury My
Brain at Wounded Knee
Hooray
For Me #6-- Tempest in a B-Cup
Hooray
For Me #7-- Princess Diana
