The disturbing song Billy Joel admits “didn’t age well”
Over the course of his career, Billy Joel has produced countless timeless tracks which resonate with different generations and across eras. While it can be tempting to follow trends for short-term gains, perfecting a classic sound that will never be outdated is always a better approach in the long term. That being said, even Joel’s hit rate, by his own admission, isn’t 100 per cent, and some creations are better left buried in the past.
For the most part, Joel is content with the back catalogue he amassed all those years ago. While he returned with the one-off single, ‘Turn the Lights Back On’, in 2024, the singer-songwriter has no desire to record another album. Rather than search within his soul to produce the next perfect record, he’s comfortable admitting his best work is behind him, and a new body of work could deplete his immaculate legacy.
Nevertheless, Joel is not naive enough to believe he has a faultless back catalogue to his name. People constantly change each year, and the same goes for artists. When they write a song, it represents a snapshot of time, and it’s impossible to say whether they’ll still connect with the creation as their life progresses.
No longer connecting to one of their songs and wincing about certain lyrics is nothing exclusive to the ‘Piano Man’. In 2021, The Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger re-assessed their controversial song ‘Brown Sugar’, and decided to remove it from their setlist. While it once may have been acceptable, the singer believes those days are now long gone. In Joel’s case, the track he’d like to leave behind is ‘Captain Jack’, which appeared on his seminal 1973 album Piano Man and has been performed in concert by Joel on nearly 200 occasions. While it used to be a staple of his shows, it hasn’t been a regular fixture since 2010, and he hasn’t performed it more than once in a calendar year since 2015.
Controversially, the song features the set of lyrics, “So you go to the village in your tie-dye jeans, And you stare at the junkies and the closet queens, It’s like some pornographic magazine,” which could be perceived as insensitive as well as homophobic. However, Joel finds the wider narrative of the song disturbing rather than the specific words. During an interview with the Los Angeles Times, he described it as “this dreary story of some suburban kid jerking off at home. My mind starts to wander during the song, so I don’t do it even though people want to hear it.”
Meanwhile, in a 2019 interview to mark his 70th birthday with Rolling Stone, Joel explained in more detail why he rarely plays the song anymore: “He didn’t age well. Captain Jack’s been demoted to Private Jack. In the verses, there’s only two chords, and it goes on and on, and it’s kind of a dreary song if you think of the lyrics. The kid is sitting home jerkin’ off. His father’s dead in the swimming pool. He lives this dull suburban existence until he gets high”.
While for decades, Joel felt comfortable with the creation and didn’t have a strong opinion on its message, this all changed one night as the words spluttered out of his mouth, recalling, “One of the last times I was singing the song, I said, ‘This is really depressing.’ The only relief you get is when the chorus kicks in. When I’m doing the song, I feel kinda dreary and I don’t like doing the song anymore, although we’ll probably do it again.”
As Joel suspected, ‘Captain Jack’ eventually sprang back into his setlist but only as a one-off. He’s no longer the same person who penned that track, and despite the song’s popularity, it’s ultimately his decision whether to play it. Due to the vast number of beloved songs in his arsenal, he also has the luxury of ensuring everyone goes home happy from Madison Square Garden, whether he plays ‘Captain Jack’ or not.
