Initally
The first time I heard Elton John’s “Captain Fansastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy” I thought it was just going to be another of my mom’s boring CDs, like her 25 Neil Diamond CDs. I was surprised by how interesting and catchy the songs were.
Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy is the first song on the album and as I listened to the lyrics I was wondering what they were talking about in the chorus
For cheap easy meals and hardly a home on the range
Too hot for the band with a desperate desire for change
We’ve thrown in the towel too many times
Out for the count and when we’re down
Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy
From the end of the world to your town
I didn’t know what it meant to “throw in the towel” so I asked my mom and she told me that it had something to do with quitting in a boxing match. I literally thought the song was talking about boxing, which led me to ask my mom if Elton John was a boxer. He’s not. The lyrics were meant in a completely different way. My recent research tells me that in this album Elton John is the Captain and his song writer, Bernie Taupin, is the Cowboy. Now that I’m older, I appreciate the meaning behind the words.
Tower of Babel is about drugs and the harsh reality of the world. Elton sings about lies that young beauties tell you before you die, and he calls out asking But where were all your shoulders when we cried? He sings that Jesus won’t save them from their graves.
It’s party time for the guys in the tower of Babel
Sodom meet Gomorrah,
Cain meet Abel.
Have a ball ya’ll
See the letches crawl
With the call girls under the table.
Watch ‘em dig their graves,
‘Cause Jesus don’t save the guys
In the tower of Babel.
I knew about Babel and Cain and Abel from the Bible and stories I’d heard, but when I first heard this song I had no idea what it meant. I was a little too Naive to understand what it meant to have “call girls” and “dealers”. But now being older and having more experience in life, I am surprised at how self-important and hateful the lyrics are to this song. The way Elton John sings it, it just sounds like another melodramatic song.
Bitter Fingers. I don’t really understand this song all that much, what I get out of it is that maybe Elton is having some regrets and issues with the singing scene. Or maybe since Taupin wrote this song, maybe he’s having some bitter feelings toward Elton…
It’s hard to write a song with bitter fingers
So much to prove, so few to tell you why
Those old die-hards in Denmark Street start laughing
At the keyboard player’s hollow haunted eyes
Taupin writing the songs and Elton being the keyboard player.
Tell me when the whistle blows is a fairly straight forward song, Elton sings about homesickness and being young and wild. He compares “himself” to an old man laying in the gutter drunk and passed out, saying
Me I’m young and I’m so wild
And I still feel the need
Of your apron strings once in a while
It reminds the listeners how young Taupin and Elton were when they were writing and recording this LP. They were only 17 and 19, and they often slept on the floor of the studio. I can relate to this song a good deal, because when I moved from Mount Clemens to Sterling Heights I was having fun and enjoyed the “new” feel, but all I wanted was to go back “home”.
Someone Saved My Life Tonight is a critical finger pointer from Elton. He pins the blame on the critics and even the people demanding his music
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
He also references getting caught up in the social scene stating that he’s just a pawn being played to further someone else’s needs. Elton feels used and this song is like the aftermath of him giving it all up. roped and tied and he even dreams about A slip noose hanging and mentions the electric chair. He says They’re coming in the morning with a truck to take me home. This made me think that perhaps Elton feels he’s going crazy. But in the end some one saves him from it all and he’s able to move on. Elton is remembering the
East End lights, muggy nights
The curtains drawn in the little room downstairs
Prima Donna lord you really should have been there
“From Londinium to the glittering towers of Canary Wharf, the story of the East End of London is that of immigration, innovation, enterprise, revolution and hope. But most of all it is the story of individuals who – for good or bad – imposed their personality and dreams on the ever-changing East End.” (Eastlondonhistory.com) Just a little connection there to where the “east end” is.
(Gotta Get A) Meal Ticket. When I heard this song I thought that Elton was singing about being poor and needing a meal ticket to get food. But I realize now that he’s really refering to something quite different.
I’d have a cardiac if I had such luck
Lucky losers, lucky losers landing on skid row
Landing on skid row
While the Diamond Jims
And the Kings road pimps
Breath heavy in their brand new clothes
I’m on the bottom line, I’m on the bottom line
“The American term skid row or skid road is used to refer to the rundown area of a city where alcoholics and vagrants congregate. There is a formally identified Skid Row in Seattle and Los Angeles as well as informally identified districts in almost every major American city, such as The Bowery in New York City. The term was memorialized in the song Skid Row from the musical Little Shop of Horrors.” (wikipedia.org). Elton definately isn’t singing about being poor here, he’s refering to drugs, sex, and violence.
Better off Dead almost reads like a poem. It’s kind of sad really. Elton is singing about getting away from authority and watching the rest get carried away. He talks about sitting in an all night cafe and parents locking up their daughters, Elton is playing the “badboy” here.
There was a face on a hoarding that someone had drawn on
And just enough time for the night to pass by without warning
Away in the distance there’s a blue flashing light
Someone’s in trouble somewhere tonight
As the flickering neon stands ready to fuse
The wind blows away all of yesterday’s news
Well they’ve locked up their daughters and they battened the hatches
They always could find us but they never could catch us
Through the grease streaked windows of an all night cafe
We watched the arrested get taken away
And that cigarette haze has ecology beat
As the whores and the drunks filed in from the street
‘Cause the steams in the boiler the coals in the fire
If you ask how I am then I’ll just say inspired
If the thorn of a rose is the thorn in your side
Then you’re better off dead if you haven’t yet died
Writing is an upbeat song compared to the songs in the middle of this album. This song is about Elton and Bernie writing together, their future being layed out in the lines they are writing. The line “we will be writing in the approaching years” looks out to Elton’s future as a song writer, you have to remember he’s only 19. His future came true, Elton and Bernie are still writing together.
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
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
We All Fall In Love Sometimes. Elton had to have at least one love song on here. At least a happy one. This album is layed out like a story of Elton and Taupin’s lives, they were young boys, I’m sure they fell in love.
For heavy eyes could hardly hold us
Aching legs that often told us
It’s all worth it
We all fall in love sometimes
The full moon’s bright
And starlight filled the evening
We wrote it and I played it
Something happened it’s so strange this feeling
Naive notions that were childish
Simple tunes that tried to hide it
But when it comes
We all fall in love sometimes
Curtains is the last song on the album, and I think that even if you didn’t know that you’d get that feeling just from the title. The end of the story, curtain call, we all go home. It ends with what the beginning would be “once upon a time”.
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
Initally I thought I wouldn’t like this Album, but now I’ve come to relate to and understand exactly what Elton and Taupin were getting at… it’s hard being a teenager growing up and making a life of your own. Curtains closed.
