Throughout rock and roll history, lyrics have been somewhat of a lost art. While many people are interested in hearing a nuanced take on life from someone whenever they pick up a record, there’s also a good portion of the audience that only wants to hear a nice melody and not be bothered to care about whatever the person singing actually thinks about the greater problems with the world. But for Bernie Taupin, the written word has always been an art, and he made sure that he always gave Elton John the best lines he could whenever they wrote together.
Does that mean that everything worked out great? Hell no. There are many lyrics by Taupin that are meant to be a little bit psychedelic and don’t always make the most sense, but that’s partly why they are so great. They aren’t always the greatest plays on words that anyone has ever heard, but listening back to any song, it’s about whether it rolls off the tongue well rather than if every single line goes together.
Besides, where else were you going to hear songs that were as serious as ‘Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding’ and then on the same record go back to tracks like ‘Bennie and the Jets’? For Taupin and John, the fact that they didn’t always connect was half of the battle, but some lyrics are bound to need some tightening up if it’s for the right reasons.
Because as much as ‘Candle in the Wind’ had become one of the biggest songs that John ever had, it was going to need some tweaking when played at Princess Diana’s funeral. Everyone was bidding farewell to one of the biggest names in British culture at the time, and since John would be performing at her funeral, Taupin knew to make something that was incredibly tasteful. And while it’s not quite the national anthem by any stretch, ‘Candle in the Wind ‘97’ did have a lot more going for it than normal.
Looking at the people at work here, this should be one of the most iconic British singles ever released. It sold in droves when it came out, it had one of the most extraordinary composers of the modern age playing on it, and Beatles mastermind George Martin even managed to helm the production for one of his final times behind the board. But with all that going for it, Taupin couldn’t be bothered to remember the lyrics to his own tune.
Compared to the other classics, Taupin felt that this was the kind of work that didn’t need to be remembered on the same level as his classics, saying, “It’s interesting because I very much did that remake in about, literally in about five or 10 minutes. It took no time at all. And if you asked me to this day to recite the lyrics, I wouldn’t be able to remember a word of it. [I did it] as a favor to Elton, because he was very close with Diana. I didn’t know her. I wasn’t a particular, you know, I paid very little interest to her day-to-day life, like so many other people did.”
Even if he wasn’t into the nitty gritty of what Diana’s personal life was, that hardly mattered. Despite his memory, Taupin’s words are absolutely breathtaking in this final version, talking about laying ‘England’s Rose’ to rest and promising to see her footsteps among England’s greenest hills. It’s very formal compared to ‘Crocodile Rock’, but for an occasion like this, it’s not anyone was complaining.
Then again, you can’t really fault Taupin for not having the best memory regarding his greatest tunes. There’s a lot of sentimentality that comes with the greatest lyrics of all time, and sometimes it’s better to remember more heartfelt moments like writing ‘Roy Rogers’ than worrying about something that was put together in a few minutes.
