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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Hit Decorum Elton John Tries Hard To Allow Diana Tribute Song To Prosper Independent Of His Own Endeavors

Jon Pareles New York Times

Will Elton John be the only media figure not to profit from the death of Diana, Princess of Wales? With “Candle in the Wind 1997,” the song he sang at the funeral seen around the world, he is about to have an international hit, and he’s trying hard to do all the right things.

There are millions of advance orders for the single, a studio version of the song, recorded the day of the funeral, produced by the Beatles’ mentor, George Martin. It was released on Saturday in Britain and will be in stores in the United States next Tuesday. Radio stations have already been playing the song, either in the live-at-the-funeral version or a mysteriously leaked, satellite-transmitted copy of the studio recording.

The song itself, which set people crying inside and outside Westminster Abbey, makes cunning use of pop’s collective memory. When Bernie Taupin wrote the lyrics that John set to music on the 1973 album “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” the song was about Marilyn Monroe, who, like Diana, died while she was still young and glamorous. The original “Candle in the Wind” was simultaneously affectionate and bitter. It sympathizes with the star’s loneliness; at the same time, it blames Hollywood star making, the people who “crawled out of the woodwork” and the press for Monroe’s pain.

In the new version, the bile has disappeared. Taupin’s revised lyrics are purely respectful, even reverent; the song links Diana’s memory to the beloved English countryside and equates her with Britain’s soul. As an exercise in verse, the new lyrics hold onto the old song’s title and some of its word sounds while changing nearly everything else. “Never knowing who to cling to” has been replaced by “never fading with the sunset”; “loneliness” has turned into “loveliness.”

Yet people have been hearing the original “Candle in the Wind” for 24 years; it’s ingrained in anyone who regularly tunes in pop radio stations. And as with all rewritten songs, from comedy-troupe spoofs to hip-hop voice-overs, the new lyrics ricochet off memories of the old ones. Taupin and John have achieved the pop equivalent of a two-cushion billiards shot.

They maintain their decorum, yet listeners understand that the new song links the princess and the movie actress. It implies that Diana will become an icon like Monroe, and without a word, it suggests that both women were destroyed by their stardom.

For John, the quandary is how not to appear as one more parasite. In the star system, death at an early age is a sadly potent marketing tool; from Johnny Ace to Otis Redding to Janis Joplin to Jim Croce to Kurt Cobain, fans have expressed their sorrow through buying songs as keepsakes. John, very much alive, stands to become the inadvertent recipient of pop’s death benefit.

The remade “Candle in the Wind” can’t help but draw attention to John’s new album, “The Big Picture,” which had long been in the works for release next Tuesday. He was revving up the standard publicity blitz for the album; the new “Candle” will share a disk with the album’s first single, “Something About the Way You Look Tonight,” a hymnlike love song that doesn’t sound inappropriate to its new context.

In the United States, the promotion centers on the cable channel VH-1, where John is September’s Artist of the Month (with his old video clips replayed continually) and the star of a live club performance (to be recorded this week in New Orleans and telecast on Friday). Now, he is in the odd position of trying not to capitalize on his best media exposure in at least a decade.

His is not the last tribute. Other British pop stars, including Paul McCartney, Sting and Peter Gabriel, are to record songs for an album to benefit the Diana, Princess of Wales, Memorial Fund, which is also where John’s profits are going. With the cooperation of the major labels and under the direction of Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin and V2 Records, the album is to be released by its own recording company.

From early reports, it is shaping up as a concept album about grief and death, to include Seal’s “Prayer for the Dying,” Phil Collins’s “Since I Lost You” and Annie Lennox’s “Angel.” The Westminster Abbey choir, and probably an orchestra, are also participating.

For his part, John seems to be doing all he can to separate his own career from what may turn out to be his most popular song. As with the tribute album, he has earmarked all the proceeds from “Candle in the Wind 1997” - not just his own royalties, as with most benefit singles, but the recording company’s profits as well - to charity.

He has asked television stations to stop broadcasting the video of him performing the song at the funeral. Instead, he will release a video clip without his image in it.

In a further gesture of renunciation, he has stated that he does not intend to play the song again live “at this time.” There will be no self-congratulatory arena sing-alongs, no separating the song from its occasion. Even if the song continues to be inescapable, John refuses to compound the hype.