Elton John followup album to Captain Fantastic album

[madison]

This article appeared in the Sept. 16 edition of Music Week.

It talks about Elton John's latest album - which is a follow-up to Elton's classic Captain Fantastic album from 1975. Apparently, the follow-up album was Merck's idea, which I thought some of you might find interesting.

Here's the article:

Bernie Taupin: `The pressure was on me'

16 September 2006

Music Week

© Copyright 2006. CMP Information Limited. All rights reserved.

Sir Elton John and lyricist Bernie Taupin are back with a new album, the belated follow-up to 1975's autobiographical ground-breaker Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy. Taupin talks to MW about the challenges he faced charting the pair's past 35 years and shares his thoughts on The Captain & The Kid

By Paul Williams

When it was first suggested that Elton John and Bernie Taupin follow up their landmark 1975 autobiographical album Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy, the lyricist was not exactly bowled over.

In fact, Taupin - the original Brown Dirt Cowboy - almost recoiled with horror at the idea of trying to create a successor to a work that stands as one of the creative highpoints of the pair's near 40-year professional relationship. "It certainly wasn't my idea!" chuckles Taupin.

Instead, he points the finger at Sanctuary Group CEO Merck Mercuriadis, whose company acquired Elton's management operation 21st Artists a year and a half ago. "When he first came up with the idea, I was less than enthusiastic, I guess for several reasons," Taupin recalls. "I didn't know how people would react to it, how it would be accepted, but I think more than that I felt the weight of the foundation of it was going to rest on me."

It is, perhaps, an understandable reservation. The Rocket/Mercury release next Monday (September 18) of The Captain And The Kid comes 31 years after its predecessor, the original Captain Fantastic, which became the first album in US chart history to enter at number one. That album covered the relatively short period in the lives of Elton (Captain Fantastic) and Taupin (Brown Dirt Cowboy), from when the pair first wrote together in 1967 to just before their first American trip in 1970.

In contrast, the ambitious follow-up covers the intervening 35-plus years. And, inevitably, as lyricist, Taupin knew he would play the key role in chronicling that period.

"How do you encapsulate 30 years?", he asks. "Actually, it's more than 30 years. When you consider the fall of next year is going to be our 40th anniversary, that alone takes your breath away.

"I knew the pressure was on me - how do you encapsulate that much time into one small little round disc? At first I was kind of hesitant and I let that be known.

"I said `You have to give me some time, you have to let me chew on it to see if it is do-able'. I realised I couldn't really attempt it in the same way as we did the original, where each song seemed to be very much about an individual event or a certain subject matter. "I knew if we did this again I had to be more general to make the songs very large, meaningful situations that have affected everybody in their lives. I wanted people outside of what we were going through to relate to it, in the sense that I wanted the songs to talk about things everybody goes through in their lives, possibly to a greater or lesser magnitude than we'd experienced; things that everybody on their run through life collides into or comes into contact with. Those things are basically the general things: they're love, death, success, failure, retribution, you know, redemption."

The autobiographical nature of the project placed new demands on Taupin and John's famous "two rooms" approach to songwriting - the pair famously never physically write together, with Taupin supplying John with a bundle of lyrics to add music to. In a break with usual practice, the duo spent a couple of days in Atlanta talking through the album and discussing the ideas which would rest at its heart. "We talked about it a lot before," recalls Taupin. "We didn't go in blind with this record at all. We did work it out, but Elton seemed very happy with the points I touched upon. He thought I'd encapsulated it very well and he was very complimentary.

"He was very determined to go and do it in the same way that we had structured the first one - in chronological order (as it was written) and I think that's paid off."

Despite his initial hesitation, Taupin says coming up with the first line of the first track of the album was what "really got the ball rolling". That line was: "We heard Richard Nixon say, `Welcome to the USA'". The resulting track provides a perfect scene-setter for the album, recalling the duo's first visits to the US in 1970, which proved to be the turning point in their career, leading to the worldwide breakthrough hit Your Song the following year.

"It just came to me one day, but that kind of happens with me," says Taupin. "That's how I'll write - I'll suddenly get a flash of inspiration and everything falls on the page from there. Once I got that, I was pretty excited about the line, because I thought, `OK in one line I've set the time and place.' "Richard Nixon is synonymous with the early Seventies. He is synonymous with upheaval and great change in the US. Also, he was in power when we first came to the US and his aura was around everything. There was this great turmoil, but at the same time there was this great sense of excitement and change, so, basically, I used him as a metaphor for the times."

The importance of America to the pair's careers is heavily reflected in the album, notably in the opening track and their salute to the Big Apple, Wouldn't Have You Any Other Way (NYC).

"I was raised on a staple diet of Americana and it was my ambition to get here," recalls Taupin. "I tried to encompass all of that in one song. I used the references to Steve McQueen, Brian Wilson and Disney because they were so synonymous with Los Angeles, not just California, but Los Angeles, Hollywood, in particular. I wanted to capture the moment that was on the streets, what was in the air, the people. "It was so invigorating for us and at the same time I wanted to talk about what it was like being on the road, the characters you met, encompass those first couple of years which I tried to do in Noah's Ark. And then I wanted to talk about New York. In a way, New York was, and still is, comparable with California and Los Angeles; those two, the East and West Coasts of [the US] really are responsible for making us what we are today."

The new album also deals with topics such as love and loss (I Must Have Lost It On The Wind), falling into vice (And The House Fell Down), pressure and success (Tinderbox) and the battle to survive (download- only lead-off single The Bridge), concluding with the reflective Old 67, through which Taupin and John look back on their adventures.

On the new project, Taupin says he argued strongly with John that the new album should be kept simple. Openly honest, Taupin admits the pair "lost our way for a long time", making "a series of albums that weren't really up to our potential". Even though he believes they found the plot again with 2001's return-to-form Songs From The West Coast, he candidly contends that the follow-up, Peachtree Road, was "overly produced".

"I remember sitting there saying `If we make this overblown, people are going to jump all over us'," he recalls. "They're going to say it's self-indulgent. If it's not honest, people are not going to buy it. I don't mean financially buy it, but in the sense of listen to it. I have to say [Elton] came through and some of his vocals are the finest he's ever done."

One important element in creating the album's very specific sound is the decision not to make the album in a recording studio. "[Elton] recorded it in an old theatre in an open room e la The Big Pink and I think that really paid off, because it gave it a much warmer, less clinical technical feel about it," says Taupin.

For a man so unsure about the project in the first place, Taupin is now remarkably at ease with the new record. "It's the only album we've ever made that I actually play because I like it. Usually, if I make an album I kind of listen to it, play it and then that's it, put it away, next. But this one, I actually put it on as if it's someone else's record. I just like the album; I like listening to it. I like the simplicity of it, I like the playing, I like the songs. There's a lightness of touch in the music that I don't feel we've had for a long time."

And, for the first time in their 39-year career, Taupin is pictured on the front cover of an Elton John album again.

"It was a pleasant surprise - after 40 years I deserve it!" jokes Taupin, who throughout the Seventies had been responsible for designing the cover art of a number of Elton John albums, including the original Captain Fantastic.

Given the original album came out in '75 and its successor this year, at this rate a third autobiographical album should be on its way sometime around 2037. But not if Taupin has anything to do with it. "Oh no, I'm not doing another sequel," he laughs. "And I don't want to turn it into a stage play or a movie. I want to do something else. This is it. I'm not doing another one."

The Captain & The kid tracklisting

1. Postcards From Richard Nixon

2. Just Like Noah's Ark

3. Wouldn't Have You Any Other Way (NYC)

4. Tinderbox

5. And The House Fell Down

6. Blues Never Fade Away

7. The Bridge

8. I Must Have Lost It On The Wind

9. Old 67

10. The Captain And The Kid

[Zint]

interesting...thanks for sharing that

Sanctuary handles Axl AND Elton John??...good god...gluttons for punishment lol

Captain Fantastic was the album where I first thought Elton wasn't on top of his game (Rock of the Westies clinched that hunch).

I haven't heard anything from the follow up yet...but I'm intrigued.

[madison]

I liked Captain Fantastic - especially "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," "Better Off Dead," and "We All Fall In Love Sometimes." But I agree with you Zint - that he was on his way out with "Rock of the Westies" - It seemed to be a hastily-put-together album just to capitalize on his popularity at the time.

I still think Elton's best work was the "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" album. So many great tracks on that album - classics.

I'll be curious to hear this follow-up album though.

[Zint]

I liked Captain Fantastic...some great songs,but it was no Yellow Brick Road.

It just gave me a sense that things were changing,not necessarily for the better (kinda like when I heard Alice Cooper Goes To Hell).

I agree Yellow Brick Road was an amazing,brilliant album....definitely his best.

I never got to see Elton back in the day,did you?...(or anybody else here?)

[tbaugerud]

Elton John is great. Goodbye yellow brick road is a great album, but I think much of his work is brilliant.

How about this for a top 10:

1. Your song

2. Daniel

3. Someone saved my life tonight

4. The one

5. Can you feel the love tonight

6. Crocodile rock

7. I guess that's why they call it the blues (One of my all time favorites)

8. Goodbye yellow brick road

9. I'm still standing

10. Rocket man (Brilliant song)

[f**k_your_enemy]

Elton John is great. Goodbye yellow brick road is a great album, but I think much of his work is brilliant.

How about this for a top 10:

1. Your song

2. Daniel

3. Someone saved my life tonight

4. The one

5. Can you feel the love tonight

6. Crocodile rock

7. I guess that's why they call it the blues (One of my all time favorites)

8. Goodbye yellow brick road

9. I'm still standing

10. Rocket man (Brilliant song)

I'm named after that song...