Свеча на ветру: Оригинальная песня о Мэрилин Монро

the original tribute to Marilyn Monroe

"Candle in the Wind" is a threnody written by English musician Elton John and songwriter Bernie Taupin, and performed by John. It was originally written in 1973, in honour of Marilyn Monroe, who had died 11 years earlier. In 1997, John performed a rewritten version of the song, "Candle in the Wind 1997", as a tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales. In 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine listed the original version of the song at No. 347 of its 500 greatest songs of all time.

The original version, which is in the key of E major appeared on John's 1973 album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and was released as a single in 1974. The lyrics of the song are a sympathetic portrayal of the life of Marilyn Monroe. The song's opening line "Goodbye, Norma Jean" refers to Monroe's real name, Norma Jeane (more commonly spelled Jean) Baker. Taupin was inspired to write the lyrics after hearing the phrase "candle in the wind" used by Clive Davis in tribute to Janis Joplin: "I just kept hearing this term [and] I thought, what a great way of describing someone’s life". Taupin has noted that the theory about him being a "rabid Marilyn Monroe fanatic" has been a common misconception: "It's not that I didn't have respect for her. It's just that the song could just as easily have been about James Dean or Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf. I mean, basically, anybody, any writer, actor, actress, or musician who died young and sort of became this iconic picture of Dorian Gray, that thing where they simply stopped aging. It's a beauty frozen in time." In an interview with Rolling Stone in 2014, Taupin disputed the implication that he was a Monroe fan: "She is absolutely not someone I admired a lot as a kid or anything. She was just a metaphor for fame and dying young, and people sort of overdoing the indulgence, and those that do die young". On the song itself, he stated: "I think it's one of the best marriages of lyric and melody that Elton and I have ever put together. But it doesn't change the fact that I wasn't particularly enamored by Marilyn Monroe." The single release of the original song reached No. 11 in the UK charts in 1974. At the time, it was not released as a single in the United States as "Bennie and the Jets" was chosen instead.

From its release until in 1984, John heavily performed this song with his band. From 1985 onwards, John played it solo mostly at the encore of his concerts and he rarely played this song with the band since then.