Captain Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy at 50: Song by Song

“The relationship is the most important relationship in my entire life. In a way, years later, I ended up being Captain Fantastic and [Bernie] ended up the Brown Dirt Cowboy: Here, I’m living my fabulous lifestyle, collecting paintings, and Bernie is interested in horses and bull riding and shit like that. We became those characters. Who was to know?” - Elton John, 2013

Mythology is usually something that is injected into an artist as they grow, the stepping stones of their life are often painted with images exaggerated by their larger than life tales of excess and ecstasy. It was an interesting choice for Elton John and Bernie Taupin, the titans of rock music, to fuel the myths around them so early. Most artists would wait decades to reveal their battle scars from their early days on the scene, but there was nothing to wait for. There was nothing hiding, in most senses. Elton truly was a character that thrived on a false sense of normalcy, that could command any room in seconds with just a flash on a mischievous, gapped smile, and Bernie truly was a simple country boy who used his pen as his lasso, bringing his childhood ideals to the forefront with ease while critiquing the world he was in now. In theory, Captain Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy was a co-sign by them, that what was given was closer to the truth than not. 

From the moment they started their climb to infamy, Elton and Bernie were some of the most interesting, divisive, and mysterious characters in rock and roll. In just five years, they had become bigger than The Beatles - the first artist to hold that title - and had reason to publish a biography of sorts. Of course, the album is still wrapped up in the perfectly elusive writing and show-stopping musical spectacles the duo is known for, but you see the uphill battle rock’s biggest stars had to go through in a shockingly honest way. It was taboo to be so early in your career and describe the horrors that paved the way, it broke this facade of what people except for fame and those it rewards. Bernie Taupin had been questioning fame since the early days, songs like Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is an open and direct warning against being bought and sold by those who don’t care about you. Captain Fantastic speaks directly to the listener about these issues, but that isnt the point of the album. More than anything, the album is a thank you to each of them for the frienship they had maintained through the most turbulant situations two pople could bear.

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The story of making Captain Fantastic starts in 1974, on a boat of all places. Elton was traveling as a chaperone of sorts for John Lennon’s son Julian, and had his stack of lyrics from Bernie with him. Because of his abnormal location, he had only about an hour of piano use a day to write the bulk of the songs. The ship's pianist, there for entertainment of guests, took issue with Elton's use of her piano for the short time he needed it, Elton said in his autobiography: “When I turned up, she [the ships pianist] would leave with a great display of weary altruism, then head to a room directly above it and immediately strike up again. [..] So I spent two hours trying to drown them out. That's how Captain Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy was written. I'd write a song - sometimes two - every day during lunch break, to the accompaniment of an aggrieved pianist hammering away through the ceiling. And I'd have to remember them. I didn't have a tape recorder with me." How quickly the album was written wasn’t a shock though - Elton and Bernie had been averaging at least two albums a year since 1970, with each usually featuring an accompanying tour and press junket. There was never really a moment of rest for the duo once the success of Your Song hit in 1970. To the outside world, they were living the dream. 

Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy breaks down that myth rather solemnly.

Taking us from their lonely childhoods, to the lives they lead before meeting, to every rejection and stupid song they had to write before succeeding. Bernie’s lyrics speak, as they always do, through reference and metaphor.  He obscures the listener's vision of his story even when he’s handing you the truth. The window to their world is opened, but it’s tinted. He tells without really telling, offering stories of their lives up to the present that feel like they're being relayed through a very inebriated narrator: no story really starts or ends at designated spots, and much of it seems too outlandish to be an unblemished truth. The point of Captain Fantastic is not for their story to be written in perfect detail, it’s to explain their come up in the world they now sat comfortable at the top of. Back in 1973, Bernie used The Wizard of Oz to warn about nostalgia. The familiarity of the story helped aid his discussion into why these trappings are so easy to get looped into, and how the yellow brick road leads only aids in personal understanding, not in actual self discovery. Captain Fantastic came at such a high point in their career, they didn’t even have to reference anything real to get a similar point across, instead using fictional leads. Captain Fantastic is our stand in for Elton. On the first song he’s self-described as hardly a hero. Through the album we see him fill into his role as the Captain, how his confidence grows song by song, coming to terms with the things that made him originally so timid. The Brown Dirt Cowboy [who I’ll be calling The Kid from now on], is introduced as someone who feels out of time and place, Are there chances in life for little dirt cowboys? The Kid starts to grow as the story progress, his cowboy boots finally filled out. You see how they fit so well along by the end, both grasping to lives they felt out of place in. 

The gatefold photos of Captain Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy: The Captain, Elton John, The Elton John Band [clockwise: guitarist Davey Johnstone, bassist Dee Murray, Elton John, drummer Nigel Olsson, percussionist Ray Cooper], and The Kid, Bernie Taupin

Elton John is an incredibly fascinating character to have become rock’s main man. What was en vogue at the time was the Jagger archetypes. Everyone was a skinny guitarist with tousled dark hair and a mean streak. Along came Elton, a pudgy, glasses-wearing, shy twenty something. He stood out, he created a new idea for the rock star. He was playing a character - everyone in rock and roll does - but he was one no one ever really touched on before. Most people, to be a “rockstar” meant being the coolest version of yourself, becoming a sex object who barely had to try once they got their foot in the door of every nightclub. To Elton John it meant being the man who he was never permitted to be as a child. Never allowed to wear hush puppies, he was suddenly going to the grocery store in platform boots with his initials stitched into the side. He was never outwardly rude, he didn’t disrespect interviewers, he was barely controversial. He would describe himself as the boy next door who freaked out, whereas Creem magazine would describe his brand of rock and roll as so safe your mom could listen to it. By his own doing, and the conformity of rock music at the time, he stuck out like a sore thumb. Even Bernie Taupin himself was an anomaly, his work as a lyricist was so important he was credited with the band on every record sleeve. Lyricists never got the kind of attention, praise,and publicity that Bernie was given. His name was spoken about in tandem and never as an afterthought. They had the personas and style of a Bowie-type figure, the catchy hooks and pop hits of The Beatles, and the thought provoking and poetic lyrics of a Dylan. There was no way to understand them - except throught their music.

SONGS

Elton John, 1969

Captain Fantastic, raised and regimented, hardly a

hero, just someone his mother might know. The album opens with the slight patter of what feels like a western opening, someone plucking away at a guitar as they doctor a story of their past to their captive listener. Bernie introduces us to Elton by making him a character who is distinctly smaller than life. He pokes towards Elton's contentious relationship with his mother, without ever letting on that much. Introducing himself Bernie writes. For it's hay make and "Hey mom, do the papers say anything good / Are there chances in life for little dirt cowboys? / Should I make my way out of my home in the woods?" Writer Wayne Robbins questioned the idea of casting them at their lowest, wondering why two people at the height of their powers, more famous than anyone else on Earth, would sit there and think of their pasts. Bernie casts him and Elton exactly as they were, two lame kids whose lives were bound for mundanity and uphappiness had they not been cast together by fate. The chorus echoes this slightly, Brown Dirt Cowboy, still green and growing, City Slick Captain / Fantastic the feedback, the honey the hive could be holding. Young and inexperienced, they realized that maybe together they could accomplish more than either think they're destined for. They went through their beginning stages as kids together, For there's weak winged young sparrows that starve in the winter / Broken young children on the wheels of the winners. I love what Bernie does here, comparing them to

Bernie Taupin, 1969

birds who don't push themselves out of the nest and can't survive the winter. It speaks of their trial and error without boring one with detail, how they wrote shitty songs to be performed by LuLu and were stuck making shitty demos attempting to make it big - that it wasn't overnight. They were being used for their talents, the broken young children on the wheel of winners, because they were willing to do anything not to starve. They were willing to live in horrible places, write bad songs, and work dead-end jobs if it meant strengthening their catalog to what they knew it could be. The sixty-eight summer festival wallflowers are thinning. In the late 60s there were about ten-bajillion singer-songwriters cropping up, cashing in on the music of their generation with the new invigoration given to them. Each year more people would release what they thought would be the most impressive album of the decade before fading into obscurity, at some point only leaving the people who were willing to keep failing before their big break left. All this talk of Jesus coming back to see us, couldn't fool us / For we were spinning out our lines, walking on the wire / Hand in hand went to the music and the rhyme, The Captain and the Kid stepping in the ring / From here on it's a long and lonley climb. This starts the segway to the next song rather seamlessly, it starts their journey for the rest of the album. They found each other and damn the rest of the world, Captain Fantasic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, from the end of the world to your town.

The first stop on that journey is unfortunately becoming part of the music machine. Being that we are talking about Bernie here, it was never going to be described as just the music industry, it was the Tower of Babel. Tower of Babel is a reference to the Old Testament, a story about a tower humans built to be closer to heaven but was struck down by God. In the opening verse Bernie writes Someone called us Babylon, those hungry hunters tracking down the hours. The line fits in with the biblical lens the song must be viewed through, with Babyloins being seen by God as the deadly sin of pride. Babylon is our stand in for the music industry, how everyone builds themselves up thinking they’re more than just humans, that they can’t suffer like everyone else. The context it holds for the story of The Captain and The Kid is how this machine treats those at the bottom, the newcomers who weren’t privy to the moral and societal corruption that was about to take them over. I love the repeating line Bernie uses in each verse, Where were all your shoulders when we cried? It highlights this nativity and youth that marked so many of these early ventures, but also comes from the much older, jaded people that helm the album. No one cared until they could make them money, an unfortunate but evergreen statement. The chorus showcases this seedy underbelly of it all: It’t party time for the guys in the tower of babel / Sodom beat Gomorrah, Cain beat Abel / See the leeches crawl, with the call girls under the table / Watch them dig their graves, cause Jesus don’t save the guys in the tower of babel. Saying that party goes on no matter what happens to any of the attendees, bringing a bible stories where there is destruction due to a lack of righteous people, another where two brothers are torn apart by vanity and death. More so, both stories feature God pulling the strings tightly, making these tragedies happen with little to no acknowledgment of the effect it will have on humans. There’s also the reference to leeches - industry executives, managers - who partake in everything with a certain veil of anonymity (the girls under the table as opposed to openly on their arms like so many rockstars had). The chorus ends with that acceptance that to join this world, you are never going to be saved. Is it worth the risk? That’s a different question.  It's this distinction that makes Captain Fantastic so interesting - the warning sign about what it takes to get where Elton and Bernie found themselves. Bernie really prods at this idea, what they would be risking as they sold themselves off to this world, Were the doctors in attendance saying how they felt so sick inside / Or was it just the scalpel blade that lied?  

Victims of the music machine Bernie predicted, used, abused, made a cautionary tale: Britney Spears [Where were all your shoulders when we cried?], The Gallagher brothers [Cain beat Abel], and Kurt Cobain [Jesus don't save the guys in the Tower of Babel].

Bernie is a student of his nostalgia. He often discounts how instrumental references were to the early work, but Bitter Fingers is a perfect example of just how good he was at making them without being annoying. Criticisms of his work were often that he was trapped in his glass house of nostalgia, relying too heavily on other peoples songs, characters, stories, and lessons. I think it's what makes his work stand out so much, personally. How he takes others ideas and twists them into a grim lesson that hides behind the mask of something you are familiar with. Bitter Fingers is about working as songwriters-for-pay. How the music meant nothing, how to ever write anything of merit they had to write a whole lot of bubblegum-pop. The song starts by placing you with Elton as he was a touring musician in his first band Bluesology. He's being preached to on how to write a good song for these pub shows - Sentimental, Tear inducing, with a happy end. Pop music during this time, the mid-to-late 1960s, [especially in Britain] was in a time of change. While pop stars were writing about

Elton [second to left] in Bluesology

fantastical concepts and testing the limits of song structure and instrumentation, the older generations still clung to their Sinatra. The cheesy, romantic sing-along songs that appealed to everyone and challenged nothing. Bernie coins writing these as bitter fingers.  It's hard to write a song with bitter fingers - so much to prove, so few to tell you why. One of my all time favorite lyrics from Bernie is Those old die-hards in Denmark street start laughing at the keyboard player's haunted, hollow eyes. It calls back to one of my all time favorite Rolling Stones songs, 1968's Jigsaw Puzzle, whose bridge lists how each member of the band is a shell to the public's consumption. The drummer is shattered, bass player nervous, singer angry, guitar players damaged, each playing the roles set up by the powers that be. Bernie takes this idea and paints Elton in a similar word-scape. There's a shell of him being viewed with joy, playing a role that some imaginary audience has deemed he must play. It seems to me a change is really, really needed / I'm sick of tra-la-las and la-de-das. The song has a certain set inner-monologue from Elton, as he does what has to be done while hating every moment of it. Also the idea of la-la-las being such a sour subject for them and Crocodile Rock becoming a major hit is so fun to me - almost like they break the fourth wall to say the song was nothing more than a forced pop song. Bitter Fingers never swung from stars is also just such a beautiful way to describe the ambitions of Elton - how he knew if he kept writing how expected he would never get far - he would just become another wallflower. Also describing the fleeting nature of these songs as Another hit and run from the Tin Pan Alley twins? Some of Bernie’s all time best writing is here, and it doesn’t even break the top five best on the album. And there's a chance that one day you might write a standard lads / So churn them out quick and fast and we'll still pat your backs / 'Cause we need what we can get to launch another dozen acts - it alludes to what is about to become of Elton's songwriting. He started a bit of session work around London after leaving Bluesology, beginning to record demos, ones to be shipped to other artists in an attempt to grow their careers. 

We bounce from Elton's point of view as a struggling touring musician to Bernie finally leaving the country to attempt his dreams of writing. The songs back to back show the urgency of both, yet the difference in how that manifested for each of them. Bitter Fingers is a fast and rollicking rock and roll number, sounding just like one would assume those songs Elton was being forced to write would sound. Bernie is introduced through a Philly-sounding, smooth R&B track. If Bitter Fingers is Elton's anxiety about being trapped in the rat race, Tell Me When the Whistle Blows is Bernie's hope in finally stepping up to the big leagues. It starts with the image of an old man face down in a gutter, presumably succumbing to the alcohol of the bottle that rolls down the street as the narrator passes. His reaction? Me - I'm so young and I'm so wild, I can’t be footloose forever. Bernie presents himself as how we see so many rock stars portrayed in retrospectives of their life, someone with nothing to lose but everything to prove, whose youth is the ultimate weapon to wield. Long, lost and lonely boy / Just a black sheep going home. Bernie talks so much of himself and Elton as these misfits in the grand-scheme of the world they were entering. So many stories they tell we see them as these two little kids being ushered in by the big guns, take Elton's story of meeting The Band or Bernie's about Bob Dylan saying he liked the songs. They are painted into this corner - the wallflowers - of this world. Most others rode the wave of success, becoming the socialites of the world they looked at from the outside, but Elton and Bernie remained tied together through this change. I love how in the title track we are introduced to the versions of them that were foreign to the public at the time, and as the album goes on we are opened up to them more. Obviously the album was created with the purpose of telling their story, but it does so much in terms of humanizing these larger than life characters. They go from photos on the record sleeve to these fully formed people with fears and dreams that no one had ever been privy to. If you knew nothing about them, you'd learn in this song alone the kinship Bernie feels to his home that fights with his want for success. He is shown as cocksure and resilient, but with a nagging voice in the back of his head: Will the street kids remember? Can I still shoot a fast cue? Has this country kid still got his soul? Bernie doesn't say he isn't happy with his money or success - one could argue he got off a lot easier than Elton with being so successful with not as many peering eyes - but that he still thinks of how he is going to be perceived by those he knows, how it will affect the person he has always been.

Captain Fantastic was the first album to ever debut at number one on the Billboard charts. It was the signifier of a success no one had ever seen before, and the album had not one hit. If there is any song people know from it, it's this one. Someone Saved My Life Tonight follows the story of Elton's first ill-fated engagement, failed suicide attempt, and the turning point in his then-failing music career. The song is atmospheric, setting you right into the hippie-house on the muggy night this fight broke out in a few simple notes. Elton has the piano lead in like a sort of opera, you can feel the building tension but you have no idea why you're meant to feel this way for the first few minutes of the song. It's recounted to us like a drunken memory, When I think of those east end lights, muggy nights, curtains drawn in the little room downstairs. We feel the story, but like I said, the details are being obscured by those same lights that start the story. Sitting like a princess perched in her electric chair, just one more beer and I can't hear you anymore. The fiancée is never really described to us, just as the princess in the electric chair. It tells us enough about her - she's beautiful, yet erratic, one wrong move and you're strapped into an argument you can't leave the same from. We've all gone crazy lately, my friends out there, rolling round the basement floor brings Bernie into the story, as he hides away from the dysfunction like the scared, young kid he was. As we get to the chorus, the song speeds up, Almost had your hooks in me, didn't you, dear? / You nearly had me roped and tied, alter bound, hypnotized / Sweet freedom whispered in my ear: You're a butterfly, and butterflies are free to fly. I love the way Elton structured the progression of the song, able to make the first half as biting and cathartic as possible, before letting the lines about freedom flow over a softer piano line. The wording of Altar-bound, hypnotized helps aid the listener in understanding that the situation was much more than just a man being unhappy in a relationship before the cusp of fame. The full story, which we would hear much later from Elton, starts with this relationship only coming about for convenience. This lady had a house, had a crush, and Elton and Bernie didn't want to live in their childhood homes anymore. The relationship was largely Elton being dragged along as an unwilling participant, letting it get to the point of proposal until finally getting some sense knocked into him. His former boss, Long John Baldry [who is the Sugarbear here] told Elton he was gay, and that he has no reason to be marrying a woman. At the time, Elton was still unsure about his sexuality, but he did know that he didn't want to be with this woman. To end the relationship, Elton took it upon himself to attempt suicide, by sticking his head in a gas stove and leaving all the windows open. The song plays up the attempt a lot more than how silly it really was. Never realized the passing hours of evening showers / Slip noose hanging in my darkest dreams. One of the most fascinating parts of the song is how they are able to describe and replicate the suffocating nature of that time, complete with the emotional payoff as the duo leave that situation. Some of my favorite lines are here as well: Just a pawn outplayed by a dominating queen is such a great call back to her starting as the princess perched in the electric chair, how the power imbalance flew that far. One of the best moments on the album comes at the end of this verse, with Elton's anger suddenly boiling over into the expert delivery of It's four o'clock in the morning, Damn it, listen to me good /I'm sleeping with myself tonight, saved in time, ending with such a phenomenal line that follows Elton's whole life: Thank God my music is still alive. To me, this line helps the song feel so connected to other themes that Bernie weaves throughout the album. While yes this experience is important to their story, it also stands in for every horrible place they stayed or shitty song they wrote in service of their dreams, their love of music was carrying through each and every issue they were suffering through. The last verse of the song feels like the breath of fresh air, you feel the relief of leaving and can almost hear the hum of the engine when Elton sings Coming in the morning with a truck to take me home, someone saved my life tonight. I like to imagine each time the title is repeated, it is directed at someone slightly different. John Baldry, Bernie himself, music. My favorite line is the last one before the title is repeated to infinity, So save your strength and run the field you play alone. Calling back to the queen from chess, it's just such a great line. 

Elton performing Someone Saved My Life Tonight in 1976

Bringing the energy back up - almost gaining the strife back after that last bump in the road - (Gotta Get A) Meal Ticket is back to the young, hungry artists that have been taking a back seat. Sip your brandy from a crystal shoe in the corner / While the others climb reaching dizzy heights throws you right into the break-neck speeds the industry works in. The reference to them being at the bottom of the ladder, sipping from a crystal shoe, references Cinderella - the lowly maid to a princess in a few short hours. The world's in front of me in black and white is another great line, highlighting both how important their voices were going to be the landscape of rock and roll and referencingThe Wizard of Oz - a story that became important to the public's consciousness of their work. The term 'meal ticket' is used here to describe finally getting out of the slums of unemployment. In the chorus Elton sings, When the line's been signed, you're someone else / Do yourself a favor, a meal ticket does the rest. Once more, there is a critique of how performers are treated. Bernie has tackled this idea more than a few times, how at the end of the day they are playing roles. Trust in us and we will love you anyway / Don't leave us stranded in the jungle also brings up the very predatory nature of the industry, how they look for young starlets to pounce and coarse them into loyalty as they get bigger and bigger in the world. Feel no pain, no regret, just do yourself a favor / Let the meal ticket do the rest. 

If Meal Ticket is accepting yourself into the cutthroat music world, Better Off Dead is the dancing on the grave of every doubter that got there. It's deeply unserious in every form, a tongue and cheek lyric being paired with a bar-room piano. The wind blows away all of yesterday's news could be yet another Stones reference this time to the 1966 song Yesterday's Papers, in which Mick Jagger snidely remarks that no one wants a "used" girl [Who wants Yesterday's Papers? No one in the world], but remarking that once something is no longer the shiny, new thing, they become forgotten. After the come up of finally getting a record deal, Elton and Bernie had to be cautiously optimistic, understanding that at any point they could become the front page of those papers flying away from a bar on a hazy night. As we follow the pair into this seedy diner, we see them joined by all these other misfit characters. The hookers and drunks, the chain smokers who eat bad food, the criminals being taken away from the establishment. It goes back to the title track, From the end of the world to your town: they went from taking company with these people so looked down upon by society to the songwriters of their generation. Bernie introduces these people as facts of life, people who go unnoticed by the people at the top because they have no need to think of those on the edge of the world. If you ask how I am, I'll just say inspired gives this impression that even if they were living this less than idealistic life, it wasn't without it's learning curves. If the thorn in the rose is the thorn in your side / Then you're better off dead if you haven't yet died. It's so pointed, that if you complain about your life that got you where you are, maybe you don't deserve the life you enjoy now. That every good thing is lined and protected by these bad , it's just your choice how you view the severity of those thorns. 

As much as I adore this album front to back, I can admit that Writing is quite boring, yet that

it almost proves it's point by being so. After so many

heavy subjects, it's Elton and Bernie just writing their songs. I can't help but smile at all the little nods made through the song to their early stories, the opening line mentioning steak and eggs as the original lyrics of Your Song have an egg stain on them from Bernie writing over breakfast, or the line about the dull razor blade probably alluding to Elton's awful 1968 mustache - My razor blade could use a better edge / It's enough to make you laugh. It's such a sweet song about their early friendship, lines like I know you and you know me / It's always half and half and innocent fears about their career: Will the things we wrote today sound as good tomorrow? It's not filler by any means, it's just a simple song about the art that brought them together, not attaching to the bigger themes of their lives. At one point, this was their lives, writing over and over again till they got something out of it they deemed good enough. 

"[We All Fall In Love Sometimes] made me well up because it was true. I wasn't in love with Bernie physically, but I loved him like a brother; he was the best friend I'd ever had." - Elton John, Me, 2019

I would be lying if I said I didn't have a favorite song on the album. In fact, I'd say I think that We All Fall in Love Sometimes may just be my favorite Elton John song outside Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (my all time favorite song). It's a spiritual companion to Someone Saved My Life Tonight and the sister song of the closer Curtains, compiling each word said up to this point into a finale of sorts, where they finally realize how important this friendship

they've developed is. For one, it describes this love they have for one another without flinching. Most times, you see this sort of mask over how men will talk about their friendships to other men, they never say they love one another, they never acknowledge how important their relationships are to each other because that would be showing vulnerability, and sensitivity is viewed as weakness. Bernie always speaks of his relationship with Elton as true love - how he felt fiercely protective over him and how he didn't care how anyone viewed that about them. Wise men say it looks like rain today / It crackled on the speakers and trickled down the sleepy subway trains call upon the infamous Elvis Presley tune Can't Help Falling in Love, with Bernie swapping fools rush in for a line about the rainy suburbs of London. The crackle of the speaker playing their Elvis records as the train soundtracked this mysterious and gloomy weather. Bernie describes the first time one

Bernie and Elton photographed for a local paper in 1968

of their songs worked after countless failures in this

romantic wording. The full moon's bright and starlight filled the evening, Elton's next line: We wrote it and I played it, something happened / It's so strange, this feeling. Bernie writes these lines for Elton in a way that has a dual meaning: one being how the euphoric feeling of them meshing musically for the first time, and another of Elton being unsure of how he loves Bernie at this moment. Bernie says in his book that he knew Elton was struggling to know how he felt towards him, how he wasn't sure if this overwhelming feeling of love was that of brotherly or romantic, as he was stranger to both. I love how Bernie acknowledges this aspect of their relationship within the album without shaming Elton in any way - understanding and accepting him even when Elton could not do those things for himself. Naive notions that were childish, simple tunes that tried to hide it / But when it comes, we all fall in love sometimes is most likely a reference to their first songs together, ones about the boiler plate topics of love, friendship, and harmony. Your Song springs to mind - the beauty in the simplicity of the work, how the childish desire to tell someone you love them comes from the most unexpected places and times. Did we, didn't we, should we, couldn't we? / I'm not sure 'cause sometimes we are so blind, struggling through the day / When even your best friend says 'Don't you find we all fall in love sometimes?' Obviously the album, from the jump, is about friendship and brotherhood, but I like how after so many confusing feelings we come back to that idea of platonic love so unflinchingly. Also showcase the mutual aspect of this - Bernie was a decidedly shadowy figure when it came to actually speaking in public for a while, yet as the rest of the song is written from Elton's

perspective, he writes himself in just to say he loves him. Only passing time could kill the boredom we acquired / Running with the losers for a while takes us back to all these places from the album, the hard, tedious work on Writing and Bitter Fingers and the characters from Better off Dead and Meal Ticket play the losers. But our empty sky was filled with laughter is one of the most beautiful lines in their whole discography. Referencing their debut album, one they both look at with a grimace of doubt, as something that while not fruitful, exciting. Just before the flood, painting worried faces with a smile is another line I just love, the imagery of the laughter being counteracted with the smiles being slowly but surely aided by each other. Before they had anything in terms of success, they had each other, and it was just as important to them. The first verse repeats again, coming back full circle to their first moments together. 

"I was the imaginary brother who became a reality, and I can only imagine that [Elton] realized, and was relieved, that what he had wished for was a real friend rather than a temporary lover."- Bernie Taupin, Scattershot, 2023

Curtains starts right where We All Fall In Love Sometimes ends, it reads more like a poem than any other song on the album. Elton builds the song up into this grand finale of the record, bringing us right into the golden age of their career. In chronology, the album takes us to right before the Elton John album comes out - the one that started them to the astronomical success they still hold today. The first verse seems to reference one of their earliest compositions, Scarecrow, and the second to A Dandelion Dies in the Wind, both songs having been shelved along with their original debut album Regimental Sgt. Zippo. I think the real meat and potatoes comes from the final verse: 

Cultivate the freshest flower this garden ever grew

Beneath these branches I once wrote such childish words for you 

But that's okay, there's treasure children always seek to find 

And just like us you have had a once upon a time.

I take the first line to be Bernie speaking to Elton, calling upon him being the star he was always certain he could be. The second Bernie speaks about himself to Elton, going back to their earliest songs about one another. He takes himself down, calling them childish even if they were both growing up at the same time. Third line is just such a heart-tugger - talking about how when you grow up, you always hope to find a friend that understands you, and that that is something children will always want to find. I really like how he writes to the audience at the final bit, saying that anyone listening that hasn't made it can see proof that they can now.

Elton performing We All Fall In Love Sometimes and Curtains in 2005

There’s something so unique about how the album feels like such a love letter to each listener as much as it is to one another. Bernie writes of Elton in a way that mythologizes him at the same time it humanizes. We see the Elton that Bernie had known all those years, the one who hid himself under fake smiles and feathered glasses, who he knew was a broken person no matter what he displayed to everyone else. Elton’s character is often painted as this person in search of validation and friendship, who aims for success yet is anxious about the skeletons that line the road there. By the time we get to the album's emotional climaxes, you start seeing Elton for the person he is as opposed to the character he had been playing for nearly five years. Bernie himself was this lingering figure on the sidelines, the only time you got his words they were delivered through someone else. The album shows us this kid, someone with more ambition and talent than most, as he discovers a life he could've never dreamed about way back in the country. Someone unafraid of loyalty and love, allowing that to become the driving force behind his ambition - monetary gain only an added benefit.

On Take In Easy to Eagles sing, We may lose, and we many win, though we will never be here again. Elton and Bernie were always aware of how fleeting their success was going to be. Since the moment their success started, they were waiting for the other shoe to drop - for the next shiny new things to roll into town and take their crowns. By the time Captain Fantastic came out, there was cracks showing in the Elton John machine. Overworked, bound to be hung as a public enemy the second people decided they were tired of him, private heartbreaks, a rampent drug issue. There was never going to be a time to release Captain Fantastic where they hadn't already succumb to their own childhood fears, so why not while they were too big to fail? The title track as the opener allows us to interpret the rest of the story as Bernie wants us to, as an imaginative look at The Captain and The Kid. It’s an important distinction. In Scattershot, Bernie asserts multiple times how protective he is over Elton. Early on, he writes that he didn’t mind if people thought he was gay and in a relationship with Elton as if that was how they understood Elton was his, and when they became superstars he said he was a polar bear, hunting for people trying to hurt Elton by attaching to him at his lowest and most volatile. Captain Fantastic feels like an extension of this sort of protection, how he knows their story must be told but divulging the details would allow Elton to be under an even bigger magnifying glass, one that would be impossible for him to control. It’s seen in the way Elton talks of Bernie too - constantly mentioning and praising him, teasing him like a brother, but shutting it down when someone tries to pivot from Bernie too much. They went in this circle of protecting one another from what the rest of the world could do, whether known to them or not.

We see them as the they were never supposed to be seen, how they see each other: Elton was Captain Fantastic with nothing to show for it. He’s shy, insulated, stuck under knowing what he could be and what he is. A major difference from the man gracing every magainze, television, and radio station in 1975. Bernie as the Brown Dirt Cowboy, someone whose first introduction is a contraction of itself: called ‘The Kid’ yet already planning eulogizing his oppurtunities in life. You know, a boy too young to be singing the blues. They were each fish out of water, people who understood the set of circumstances that lends to feeling so completely desolate while still so young. The album explains this story, reading as them looking back over everything they’ve conquered, realizing the fruits of their success and the demons along the way weren't for nothing. But the most important thing they gained was each other, a person who could understand everything about the other without ever having to try too hard. At the core, the album is the autobiography of two kids who never felt they belonged finding one another, and being about to survive by the string of fate that ties them together. After all, we are told fairly early on The Captain and the Kid, from the end of the world to your town. 

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Elton John is my favorite artist of all time, my bias will always show for him. Captain Fantastic often fights for the position of my favorite album of all time. There's something achingly honest about it - a pair of friends getting everything they ever wanted and what they're most proud of is keeping each other during the ups and downs of it all. It's deeply personal but never feels too heavy, a reflection of a career in it's infancy that doesn't sugarcoat the hardships.

By the time most artists reached the level of success Elton John was enjoying in 1975, there's usually a panning of the people and stories that helped them get there. No one ever wants to talk about the failures, and no one wants to admit how deeply they love the people around them. To be atht the height of your powers, and turn to look at the pain left on the road there, only to turn back forward with a smile as you recount those memories? That's rare. There's so much love felt through the songs - it's just a perfect album. Every instrument is played perfectly, every lyric holds meaning or stands as one of Bernie's best, there isn't a single song that feels unnecessary or out of place. For all the pain that went into living the stories, it comes out being a positive piece of art. I guess that's become the whole point of Elton and Bernie's existance in some ways - to be these beacons of hope in a world that can only get more and more destructive the longer you explore it. Truly the saviors of music, then, now, and forever. The music and the rhyme. The Captain and The Kid.