Elton John: Captain Fantastic - Deluxe Edition : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

From the breakout success of his first hit single, "Your Song," in 1970, through the release of Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy in May 1975, Elton John could do very little wrong. This loosely autobiographical disc is esteemed by many as the last of John's start-to-finish great albums, the kind of record ambitious indie troubadours of today like Sufjan Stevens would make if they'd somehow found themselves making millions. Its sole single was the melodic melodrama of "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," a song dealing with Bernie Taupin pulling John back from the brink of suicide before an aborted wedding to pickled-onion heiress Linda Woodrow. But the entire album flows through boogie rock, breezy pop, ersatz Philly soul, Queen-like prog and rhinestone country flashes with masterful tunes, restless arrangements and Taupin's typically oblique but image-rich lyrics.

The major selling point of this double-disc edition is a gutsy seventy-one-minute live set recorded at Wembley Stadium just a month after Captain Fantastic's release. Although he'd score several dozen additional hits, John's craft and commercial savvy would never again attain this poptastic synergy.