"Oh what a circus! Oh what a show!Argentina has gone to town
Over the death of an actress called Eva
Peron"
Not a lyric from any version of 'Candle In The Wind' but the opening lines to 'Oh What A Circus' from Lloyd Webber's 'Evita' (sung in the musical by Che Guevara no less). And circus is right - on August 31 of this year, a car carrying Diana, Princess of Wales crashed in a Parisian road tunnel, claiming the life of both her and her boyfriend. For anyone so young to lose their lives in such a way is a sad event, but the crash itself was small beer compared to the media feeding frenzy that exploded the next day - Mr Guevara again:
"We've all gone crazy
Mourning all day and mourning all night
Falling over ourselves to get all of the misery right"
As one who was there I can report that this was bang on the money. Crazy? Oh yes - in the days that followed it became a virtual act of treason to be spotted in public without red eyes and your face not buried in a soaking hankie. The tsunami of grief that poured out over the death of the 'people's princess' bordered on mass hysteria amongst a large section of the populace who had never so much as breathed the same air as the one time Lady Di, egged on by a media high on the euphoria of misery and keen to document every single second of it.
Age was no factor, both the very young, very old and those at all stages in-between were caught up in a web of personal anguish that left normally rational people almost totally incapacitated. There they were on the news bulletins every night, gathered outside places of Diana significance clutching armfuls of flowers and cuddly toys and standing in either silent prayer or wailing like the damned. Had Che made his comments above within earshot then like as not he'd have been strung from the nearest beam stout enough to bear his weight. A strange few days, I can truly say that I've never experienced anything like it before in my life and hope never to again.
Of course, a commerative song was inevitable, but whist my money at the time was on an all star ensemble, long time Diana friend Elton John stepped up to the plate with a re-working of his own 'Candle In The Wind'.* It's easy enough to see why; John's "And it seems to me you lived your life like a candle in the wind" is a strong metaphor and one that could be utilised to equal effect on the Princess as it did on its original recipient Marilyn Monroe (there's also a certain neat symmetry between the two in that both were glamorous icons dead at thirty six after a troubled life lived mostly in public under the glare of a spotlight they weren't equipped to deal with). What couldn't be recycled though were the Monroe specific words from fanboy lyricist Bernie Taupin ("I would've liked to know you, but I was just a kid") who duly re-wrote them to be context specific. And it's where the whole enterprise becomes unstuck. But let Che have his say first:
"But who is this Santa Evita?
Why all this howling hysterical sorrow?
What kind of goddess has lived among us?
How will we ever get by without her?"
Tim Rice's lyric is sarcastic, sardonic and Guevara is taking the piss. Unfortunately, Elton isn't, and this 'Candle In The Wind' provides the answers to Che's hypothetical questions -"Goodbye England's rose. May you ever grow in our hearts, you were the grace that placed itself where lives were torn apart. You called out to our country, and you whispered to those in pain. Now you belong to heaven, and the stars spell out your name"
Which isn't exactly the image I had of Diana whilst she was alive, but he goes on: "Loveliness we've lost. These empty days without your smile, this torch we'll always carry for our nation's golden child". And it's this myth making image, block boarded in greetings card platitudes of a soft focus Diana romping through the fields of Albion's green and pleasant land as a Christ-like figure amongst her followers that grates in its slack jawed solemn sincerity. Manna to the believers of course, but it's why this 'Candle In The Wind' isn't a 'pop single' per se any more than the 'Dunblane' single was. What it is is little more than a funeral souvenir for the emotionally deluded to buy and line up alongside the commerative plate, the tea towel, the mug etc as a solid, artefact of vicarious grief that grants them an access point to a nominally closed off world and lets them objectify their misery (or, as Che sang, "So share my glory, so share my coffin") so that, for a few days at least, they can confirm the fact that they're still alive.
Elton sings it from the heart as any friend would, but I'm afraid the "From a country lost without your soul who'll miss the wings of your compassion" never spoke for me and had no business even pretending it did, and the whole cult of personality reverence left me with the same bemusement that Che felt about Eva Peron's passing (in the song natch). A curious thing too is that for all its ten million plus sales, I have never met anybody who actually owned up to buying this. Neither can I say that I'd ever care to, but I'll leave the last word on this to Mr Guevara :
"Oh what an exit! That's how to go!
When they're ringing your curtain down
Demand to be buried like Eva Peron
It's quite a sunset
And good for the country in a roundabout way
We've made the front page of all the world's papers today"
Ah but that's not the end of the story here - 'Candle In The Wind' was a double A sided disc of death with Elton's 'Something About The Way You Look Tonight', a song dedicated to Gianni Verscae who was murdered earlier that year. Being only dedicated and not person specific, 'Something' is all the more palatable but this was still Elton John by numbers, a piano led ballad that could have been culled from any point in his post 1975-ish career that relies on John's trademark solemn sincerity to breath some emotion into Taupin's clunky lyric ("I need to tell you how you light up every second of the day. But in the moonlight you just shine like a beacon on the bay"). But this would only ever have been a PS for British fans who had more than enough grief to be going on with on the other side.
* Elton of course had previous in this field and I think someone missed a trick here - if he'd released this as an EP with his earlier 'Funeral For A Friend', 'Song For Guy' (written in memory of Elton's dead motorbike courier Guy Burchett) and 'Kiss The Bride' then he could have marketed it as 'The Four Funerals And A Wedding EP'. But I'm being flippant now *slaps wrist*.
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