The one album Elton John said couldn’t have been better: “It’s so brilliant”
It was going to take a long time for Elton John to be accepted among his peers.
He was far from the same kind of showstopping star that Mick Jagger or David Bowie was, but once he found his footing as one of the more outrageous performers of his time, there was no doubt that he could turn anything to gold from the minute that he started playing. And for anyone who is working in that kind of framework, there’s normally a sweet spot where everything seems to mesh together perfectly.
But before he even got a chance to show his stuff, John always needed Bernie Taupin there in the mix. Although the melodies John came up with will live on in our hearts forever, Taupin’s lyrics have always been what dictated every single verse he wrote. His partner in crime could always set up little pictures in people’s minds every time he wrote, and it’s impossible not to think of those long hours on the road in ‘Tiny Dancer’ or life as a superstar on ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’.
Not all of them made the most sense, but by the time of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, there was no way that any of them could have gone wrong. Everything was lining up perfectly for them, and despite not liking the idea of making a double record of all new material, the songs were so good that there was no use arguing over what they should cut. I mean, even if a few songs were axed from the record, it’s hard to think of the album without ‘Roy Rogers’ or ‘Harmony’ on the back half of the album.
John had hit the threshold in many respects, but he felt that he hadn’t really said his piece until he landed on the next record. Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy may not have the same kind of grandiose feeling as its predecessor, but when listening to it from front to back, you can tell that the whole thing was a pure labour of love for John about what it took for him to make it to the top.
The whole album plays out like a loose concept record about him and Taupin making it to the top of the rock and roll world. It doesn’t spare any expense when it comes to the gory details of their ascent, but when looking back on the record, John felt that it was as close to perfect as any of his records ever got.
He was more than happy to talk about his previous albums, but whereas some of them may have been flawed, John could hardly find anything wrong with Captain Fantastic, saying, “I wouldn’t have done anything differently. As I have said before, I think it’s one of the finest albums we have ever made. It’s so brilliant because it’s an autobiography of what our lives were like leading into the creation of Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. From start to finish, it was an autobiography of who we were at the time. I wouldn’t change a thing.”
The album itself may have been great, but if there’s one thing that needed to be changed, it was the promotion of it. As much as John is one of the greatest tunesmiths of his generation, the thought of playing the entire album in full before anyone had ever heard it was bound to be a bit risky, which proved true when more than a few long faces were seen during the album’s inaugural release show.
Questionable release tactics aside, Captain Fantastic definitely deserves a spot next to his landmark albums for being one of the greatest autobiographies of the 1970s. Other artists had been brutally honest when discussing their past, but there was no way that John could be stopped when making tunes that were this emotionally honest.
