From Candle to Christmas No. 1 By Morley Askew Last Updated: 12:01am BST 07/10/2008 Have your sayRead comments Candle in the Wind: It is a little-known fact that Bernie Taupin originally conceived this, his most famous lyric, not as a tribute to a dead actress but as a protest song against summertime footwear.
When I interviewed him for my seminal work, Taupin: Legend - judged by Melody Maker “arguably among the greatest books we have on the early lyrics of Bernie Taupin”, he exclusively revealed to me that, one day in 1972, the buckle on one of his leisure-shoes had broken and, in a fit of fury, he had thrown them away. The resulting lyric “Sandal in the Bin” was a heartfelt condemnation of a world in which the leather sandal could no longer be manufactured to the highest standards.
advertisement Having recently taken delivery of a specially-made pair of diamant -encrusted sandals for a planned hiking trip along the Fosse Way, Elton John was dissatisfied with the lyric. For 10 days, the two men wrestled with alternatives, and had even begun recording Handle in the Wind, said to be an anguished litany of complaints against a loose door-handle, when Elton John himself came up with Candle in the Wind, a tribute to the tragic film star Marilyn Monroe.
In 2001, John re-recorded the song, this time as Mandy in the Wind, a heartfelt lament for the second resignation of New Labour leading-light Peter Mandelson, who can just be heard playing castanets in the background. Read more from Craig Brown Can’t: In his best-selling book, Can’t: The Making of the Rock Protest (Abacus, 1999), top psychologist Arthur Janov suggests that anger at the denial of infantile pleasures becomes the driving force in later life behind the vast majority of rock stars.