Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy

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And in his relationship to his audience, Elton not only gives of himself in terms of output and energy but he does it graciously and generously. He and Bernie wrote what the superstar pianist described as their most complex songs ever, for the Lestat musical, which opened at the Palace Theatre on Broadway in April 2006. It isn’t weighted down with the overarranging and overproduction that marred so much of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Artist Dave Christensen included in the backglass several depictions of people doing things that, at first, escaped notice by Bally management.

To finish the album, the deceptively light-hearted “Writing” segues into the achingly dispirited “We All Fall in Love Sometimes”. This sharply honed and impeccably catchy concept album casts Elton John as Captain Fantastic and lyricist Bernie Taupin as the Brown Dirt Cowboy in a semi-autobiographical version of the pair’s struggling early days.Both John and Taupin failed their auditions but were steered in the direction of each other by Ray Williams and Dick James, the latter of whom had found considerable success as the Beatles’ first publisher. Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy serves as a particularly appropriate companion to the 2019 musical fantasy biopic Rocketman, from its retrospective lyrical tone down to the vintage photographs that were part of its artwork.

When Elton simply wants to fool around and put out something that’s pure tapioca, Bernie still winds up handing him something labored, for example, “Crocodile Rock. Perhaps that conflict is at the root of what is good as well as what is bad about Elton’s work, but it must be dealt with just the same. The music begins at the exact point where “We All Fall in Love Sometimes” fades into something more expectant, rising and rising into an inexpressible crescendo.I never wanted to be a movie star, because in 50 years’ time if you mention an old film stars’ name they’ll just say ‘Who?

But the quiet track begins to evolve into something more majestic about halfway through, as the object of love comes into focus. Fifty-nine at the time of the album’s release, John co-produced it himself with the Atlanta-based Matt Still, who had engineered and mixed the previous set. It’s worth noting that similar contemporaneous bad patches from peers such as David Bowie, Neil Young and Bob Dylan did no such damage to their respective perceptions. Working together for the next year they mostly floundered, their efforts focused in the psychedelic folk genre as well as a more stately pop mode (as Taupin once said: “We were writing Englebert Humperdink-style ballads, and we hated them”).The album reached number 1 in its first week of release on the US Billboard 200, the first ever album to do so, reportedly selling 1. The game name, however, is the title of Elton John's 1975 autobiographical song and album where "Captain Fantastic" was Elton and "The Brown Dirt Cowboy" was his then-lyricist Bernie Taupin. But when they put their mind to making a record based on their ensuing global adventures, what came out was one of their best pieces of work since that album, The Captain And The Kid, released on September 18, 2006. But when it came to the concept of an autobiographical follow-up to Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy – famously, the first album ever to debut on the Billboard chart at No. Between them, they pulled from every major songwriting school of the 20th century, with a special emphasis on the music of America, from Woodie Guthrie to Elvis Presley.