Behind the 1975 Autobiographical Album About Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s Musical Partnership

In 1975, Elton John released his ninth album, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, an album that became an instant hit before it was even released. It reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, staying there for seven weeks. For Elton John, it was a commercial success, but there wasn’t anything commercial about it. In reality, it had a deeply personal story woven through its concept.

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Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy is an autobiographical album telling the story of Elton John (Captain Fantastic) and his longtime lyricist Bernie Taupin (the Brown Dirt Cowboy). Listed in chronological order, it details the early years of their creative partnership, from 1967 to 1969. The two went through various artistic and personal struggles, most of them documented on the album.

For example, the only single released was “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” which tells the semi-autobiographical story of John’s engagement to Linda Woodrow. As Woodrow has told it, she and Elton John were happily engaged, although in 1968, Elton John allegedly attempted suicide in his unhappiness. John went out with Long John Baldry one night, and when he came home, he broke off the engagement, having been convinced to call it off rather than suffer in an unhappy marriage. For his part, Elton John has described it as “an odd relationship” in his 2019 autobiography.

[RELATED: Elton John Breaks Down Over New Song About Mortality: “How Much Time Have I Got Left?”]

Elton John and Bernie Taupin Labored Over Their 1975 Autobiographical Album, Writing Their Story in Sequence

Each song on Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy was written in the sequence that it appears on the track listing. Elton John and Bernie Taupin labored over the album, telling their story through music and lyrics, detailing the hardships leading up to John’s 1970 breakthrough.

In a 2006 interview, Elton John revealed that he considered Captain Fantastic one of his and Taupin’s best works. “I’ve always thought that Captain Fantastic was probably my finest album because it wasn’t commercial in any way,” he said. “We did have songs such as ‘Someone Saved My Life Tonight,’ which is one of the best songs that Bernie and I have ever written together, but whether a song like that could be a single these days, since it’s [more than] six minutes long, is questionable.”

He continued, “Captain Fantastic was written from start to finish in running order, as a kind of story about coming to terms with failure—or trying desperately not to be one. We lived that story.”

“We All Fall In Love Sometimes”: The Story of John & Taupin

The penultimate song on the album is important as well, because it speaks to Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s friendship in more intimate details. John has stated that he felt that Taupin was more like a platonic soulmate than a friend, and “We All Fall In Love Sometimes” chronicles his feelings of love toward his creative partner.

“We’d come so far, and we were still very naive,” John told Rolling Stone in 2013. “He was a person that, more than anything, I loved, and the relationship we had was so odd, because that is the most important relationship of my entire life and it was not tied at the hip.”

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