Curtains

Captain Fantastic's closing track doesn't exactly conform to the unwritten rule of concept records, that of a grand statement to provide contrast and clarification, not to mention closure, to the other songs in the album.

It's a slow-building track, which seems to be constantly working up to the Grand Statement about Their Career to that Point one expects, but Taupin undermines this by instead providing a backward-looking rumination on his childhood and his first songwriting efforts, culminating in this verse:

But that's okay
There's treasure children always seek to find
And just like us
You must have had
A once upon a time

...and if there's supposed to be some sort of summation or observation about where they stood in 1969, on the cusp of stardom, I'll be darned if I can see it.

Elton seems to be striving for a "Hey Jude" approach, with each verse accompanied by instrumentation that's similar in nature to their "Lucy in the Sky" cover, and eventually punctuated by chorus "whoa-oh-ohs" following directly after the verses are done. Then, in what surely seems to be a move to get lighters and hands swaying to the concert audiences to come, the chorus singers take over as Olsson's staccato drum fills and Johnstone's guitar/Elton's piano riffs play, Elton sings a line over and over again in a falsetto voice (which defies my best efforts to make out exactly what he's saying- sounds like "love to love again" or something like that), all building to...not much, really. The song plods on to its extanded fade conclusion, and Captain Fantastic is done. The lyrics are vague, the message is therefore muddled, and the music builds up to a cathartic moment that never really comes.

It's a lovely melody, but I don't think it achieves what it sets out to do. Others, I'm sure, will disagree.

Someone Saved My Life Tonight

Inspired by a real life late Sixties pre-fame incident in which Elton, despondent over his impending marriage to the girl he was living with at the time, and of course the attendant sexual identity issues, tried to kill himself via a gas oven (he was "rescued" by Bernie, who noted with some amusement that John had placed the appliance on its lowest setting, and had placed a pillow inside for comfort) and was later persuaded to call the whole thing off by his mentor Long John Baldry, the chorus' "sugar bear".

Keeping with the Captain Fantastic theme, Bernie writes the lyrics as a reminisce, as the singer thinks back to the time and expresses his gratitude to the person who saved him from what apparently would have been a fate worse than death. He's not particularly even-handed as he does so, either, as the chorus:

And someone saved my life tonight sugar bear
You almost had your hooks in me didn't you dear
You nearly had me roped and tied
Altar-bound, hypnotized
Sweet freedom whispered in my ear
You're a butterfly
And butterflies are free to fly
Fly away, high away, bye bye

and several points in the verse:

I'm strangled by your haunted social scene
Just a pawn out-played by a dominating queen

Prima Donna lord you really should have been there
Sitting like a princess perched in her electric chair

And I would have walked head on into the deep end of the river
Clinging to your stocks and bonds
Paying your H.P. demands forever

bear out.

A cursory Google search turned up little for Linda Woodrow except in the context of this song; it's always been my experience that there are two sides to every story and usually the truth is somewhere in between. I don't know if Woodrow deserved such a misogynistic smackdown, but it would have been nice to have known her side. After I originally wrote this, someone went to the trouble of doing just that, and you can read it here.

Musically, it's Elton in big-piano-ballad mode, with the Classic Band and Ray Cooper providing solid accompaniment. The band harmonies are prominent, and are as outstanding as always.

This is another of Elton's biggest hits and one of his signature songs, although looking at the chart numbers (#22 UK, #4 US, #36 US A/C) it wasn't as big a hit as it seemed to be at the time, when it was ubiquitous on the airwaves. For me personally, it's never been a favorite- it's just too big and overblown, the melody sounds received, and the fey "sugar bear" tag in the chorus is grating. Obviously, I am in the minority.

Writing

As if to demonstrate that it wasn't all gloom and doom in their early days, we get this blithely efficient pop song about the good feelings that our heroes get while in the act of plying their trade, and some convenient backwards-glancing with somewhat jaded lines such as

And we were oh oh, so you know
Not the kind to dawdle
Will the things we wrote today
Sound as good tomorrow
We will still be writing
In approaching years
Stifling yawns on Sundays
As the weekends disappear

Just the kind of observation that occurs to a songwriter who's been at it as long as Taupin had been by that point- seven years, more or less. Still, there's enough perceived joy to inspire verses such as these:

We could stretch our legs if we'd half a mind
But don't disturb us if you hear us trying
To instigate the structure of another line or two
Cause writing's lighting up
And I like life enough to see it through

Davey Johnstone's sprightly six-note guitar riff is the main defining point, and Elton sings it with a smile straight through. It's a nice, snappy tune that serves the function of setting us up for the profundities of "Curtains" and "We All Fall in Love Sometimes", which follow.

Gotta Get a Meal Ticket

Of course, it was vital for Bernie & Elton to find someone to purchase and publish their songs in their early days, and this track details that desire, and the lengths they would go to to obtain it.

It's the hardest-rocking song on the soundtrack; while it's produced to within an inch of its life, with every rough edge sanded off, it still does work up an admirable head of steam. Johnstone's six-note riff is memorable, and his guitar work throughout is top notch.

I don't think it's exactly one of Elton's best, nor do I think it's a particularly memorable cut in regards to the John catalogue- but it does rock out agreeably, accomplishes what it sets out to do, and on the rare occasions when I give it a listen, I do find myself nodding along with it.

Tower of Babel

In keeping with the "Elton/Bernie: The Early Years" concept, here we have Bernie indignantly (and self-righteously) firing bromides at the music biz types, most likely those at Dick James Music that lived high on the hog while they were scuffling, writing mindless pop hits for them, summed up in the infamous chorus:

It's party time for the guys in the tower of Babel
Sodom meet Gomorrah, Cain meet Abel
Have a ball y'all
See the letches 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

This was making both of them unhappy and frustrated, which he sums up in lyrics like these:

Junk, angel, this closet's always stacked
The dealers in the basement
Filling your prescription
For a brand new heart attack

But where were all your shoulders when we cried
Were the doctors in attendance
Saying how they felt so sick inside
Or was it just the scalpel blade that lied

The metaphors are not exactly as sharp as one would like, but they get the point across- it's plain that they were stifling under the system they were laboring in.

The Biblical connotation of the "Tower of Babel" reference makes him seem like a dour preacher on Sunday morning, railing disapprovingly at any and all sinners...but then again, I haven't walked in his shoes so who am I to judge?

The song itself is set by Elton in alternating styles; verses are cast in a slowish, resigned feel with minimal accompaniment save piano and rhythm section. The tempo accelerates slightly in the last two lines of each verse, until a fat Johnstone lick before the "Party time at..." line ushers in the jaunty, R&B style chorus.

If you don't listen too closely, this is a fine, catchy track. However, to me Bernie's bile lessens the experience when attention is paid to it.

A thousand thanks to Jim Akin for clearing up my fuzzy thought processes (see comments).

Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy

In 1975, an entire album devoted to the early days of a songwriting team was, if not unprecedented, was at least a novel idea- and it was incumbent upon the pair to craft an opening tune which not only set the stage for what was to follow, but to grab the listener's attention and show that they weren't screwing around. What they came up with was certainly one of the most ambitious tunes in the Elton repertoire, and arguably one of the most exciting.

Unsurprisingly, the narrative of the song is split into a stanza for each principal, which at first points out their differences:

City-boy Elton:
Captain Fantastic raised and regimented, hardly a hero
Just someone his mother might know
Very clearly a case for corn flakes and classics
"Two teas both with sugar please"
In the back of an alley

Rural-kid Bernie:
While little Dirt Cowboys turned brown in their saddles
Sweet chocolate biscuits and red rosy apples in summer
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"

These verses are set in a gentle, loping, folky style with hi-hat, mandolins and acoustic guitars tinkling away in the background. The tempo picks up slightly with the next lines, as congas start in and the song describes the pair growing up and realize how they want to try to live their lives.

Then, abruptly, with this line:

For cheap easy meals and hardly a home on the range

the guitars become harsh, the tempo accelerates, the band crashes in full-bore and absolutely soars, spurred on by Ray Cooper's whirring percussion effects in the chorus. It's an absolutely thrilling moment, perhaps intended to simulate the heady rush of realizing that one can make a living playing music for people, and having people reciprocate, and remains for me one of the most exciting moments on any Elton album.

Then, after the thunder dies down, it's back to the more relaxed tempo of the introduction- the beat hasn't gone away but it's more subdued, and the lyric content more reflective. Finally, the chorus returns, and the mood seems to be defiant and confident, learning from the past and looking ahead to the future.

I don't see how they could have opened any album, let alone this one, any better and this stacks up as one of the best arrangements of Elton's career, with his classic band at the height of their powers.

Unfortunately, this track arguably sets a high point that the rest of the Fantastic album fails to match. And decades later, Elton and Bernie went to the retrospective bank once more on 2006's Captain and the Kid (which I purchased recently), to diminishing returns.

Bitter Fingers

Continuing the autobio theme of the Captain Fantastic album, this is an account of the relatively brief amount of time that Bernie and Elton spent as songwriters-for-hire for Dick James, and also while Elton was performing with Bluesology. Apparently, this got old pretty fast and the lyrics reflect the discontent they shared while doing so, as expressed by some amusing lines such as

Those old die-hards in Denmark Street start laughing
At the keyboard player's hollow haunted eyes

and

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
Are you working?

Elton casts the verses in another Gilbert & Sullivan (or yes, Queen)-type setting, with cascading piano triplets accompanying his clipped diction. More relaxed than "Better Off Dead", but close. Johnstone mimics the keys on that buzzy, pinched guitar sound he was fond of using in this period, and Ray Cooper chimes in occasionally on percussion. But when the chorus kicks in with the ascending melody line on "It's hard to write a song with bitter fingers" the band, rhythm section and all, speeds up to nearly twice the tempo then slows back down for the verse again, as if they're trying to goose the song along.

If it's trying to infer that the process flowed smoother when they were writing for themselves, the "bitter fingers" lyric doesn't make that apparent. As is, the tempo shift just seems arbitrary, as if someone just thought it would be a good idea and nothing else. Still, even with this minor flaw it's an entertaining track.

Tell Me When the Whistle Blows

In a nutshell, Bernie's homesick. Honky Cat's not liking the city and misses his redneck ways, and wonders if his friends back home will think he's changed for the worse.

But he expresses it very well, with some of his strongest lyrics in this set. Also, Elton and orchestral arranger Gene Page frame his musings with a gorgeous Philly Soul-style arrangement, making this one of the strongest tracks on the entire album.

We All Fall in Love Sometimes

Captain Fantastic's penultimate track seems less like a standard boy/girl (or the gender of your choice) love song than one which seems to describe falling in love with making music together, i.e. the John/Taupin partnership- hence the reference in the last verse to Empty Sky, the point in history at which this autobiographical concept album ends.

Musically, it's another piano-driven slow-tempo ballad, punctuated with Mellotron and Arp synthesizer and heavy in tone- and to be perfectly honest, it mostly plods along pleasantly enough until the last minute or so when it builds up to some really nice Beach Boys-style harmony vocals at the end. It then abruptly segues into the final track "Curtains", which I'll get to eventually. They're so close together, and sound so similar, that on my first few listens I thought it was all one song.

Better Off Dead

The CD liner notes for the Captain Fantastic album describe this track as sounding like Queen- and that's somewhat valid- but the charging, staccato piano riffs and crashing, bashing drums, along with John's clipped singing, reminds me of nothing less than something conceived for an operetta by Gilbert & Sullivan.

Of course, Captain Fantastic is a concept album, said concept being vignettes-in-song dealing with the early days of the John/Taupin songwriting team up to the 1968 release of Empty Sky. This particular track seems to describe witnessing some sort of violent event, and being moved to write about it, certainly something which Taupin (and many other songwriters) would have done.

Altogether, an effective, if overlooked track. Well done, but Olsson's percussion becomes overbearing after a while.