Written, according to lyricist
Bernie Taupin, in chronological order,
Captain Fantastic is a
concept album that gives the reader an autobiographical glimpse of the struggles John (Captain Fantastic) and Taupin (the Brown Dirt Cowboy) had in the early years of their musical careers in
London (from 1967 to 1969), leading up to John's eventual breakthrough in 1970. The lyrics and accompanying photo booklet are infused with a sense of specific place and time that would otherwise be rare in John's music. John composed the music on a ship voyage from the UK to New York. The 8 track tape was the first to have the songs in the same order as the LP. This resulted in a fade-out/fade-in in the middle of several songs. "
Someone Saved My Life Tonight", the only single released from the album (and a number 4 hit on the
US Pop Singles chart), is a semi-autobiographical song based on John's disastrous engagement to Linda Woodrow, and his related 1968 suicide attempt. The "Someone" refers to
Long John Baldry, who persuaded him to break off the engagement rather than ruin his music career for an unhappy marriage. It was viewed by
Rolling Stone writer
Jon Landau as the best track on the album: "As long as Elton John can bring forth one performance per album on the order of 'Someone Saved My Life Tonight', the chance remains that he will become something more than the great entertainer he already is and go on to make a lasting contribution to rock." John, Taupin and the
Elton John Band perhaps laboured longer and harder on the album than they had on any record they had made to that point. In contrast with the fairly rapid and almost factory-like manner of working to which the band was accustomed, in which an album might be recorded in a matter of a few days or at most a couple of weeks (as with
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road), in August 1974 the team spent the better part of a month off the road at
Caribou Ranch Studios working on the recordings. Producer
Gus Dudgeon was apparently also very satisfied with the results. The album's producer was quoted in Elizabeth Rosenthal's
His Song, an exhaustive detailed accounting of nearly all John's recorded work, as saying he thought
Captain Fantastic was the best the band and John had ever played, lauded their vocal work, and soundly praised John and Taupin's songwriting. "There's not one song on it that falls below incredible," Dudgeon said. The album contains an "Easter egg" in the form of lyrics to an unperformed song, "Dogs In The Kitchen," which was included in the Lyrics booklet accompanying the album. According to John's official website, in addition to the album tracks and singles, and the lyric for "Dogs in the Kitchen," the following songs were written but not recorded during the sessions: "You Know Me—Jealousy" (for which Elton and Bernie wrote both music and lyrics), and the instrumentals "Golden Boy" and "Passing Phase." == Content ==