Captain Jack
Song: Captain Jack
Album: Piano Man (1973)
Here we are at “Captain Jack,” the last song on the Piano Man album.
This song has loomed large in my head since I began A Year Of Billy Joel, in part because I have been told that I should listen to it by a number of people. The following is a rough approximation of how these conversations went:
Billy Joel Fan: So your from Long Island and you don’t like Billy Joel?
Me: That is correct. By the way Billy Joel fandom requirement was waived if you had a mullet, which I had in 1989-1990.
Billy Joel Fan: What kind of mullet are we talking here?
Me: David Cassidy up front, Wayne Gretzky in back, which I guess is actually just The Wayne Gretzky. Clearly his greatness did not extend to hairstyles.
Billy Joel Fan: You have no right to question people’s taste in music when you obviously have poor judgement.
Me: That doesn’t change my opinion about Billy Joel.
Billy Joel Fan: Maybe you just haven’t heard the right songs, have you heard Captain Jack?
Yeah I had heard “Captain Jack” before, in fact it’s one of a small number of Billy Joel songs that I clearly recall hearing for the first time. It was during a holiday rock block weekend on a local classic rock station when I was 13 years old. Even at that age I was in the habit of tuning out Billy Joel songs but my mother advised me to pay attention because, as she said: “This one is good.” She was generally right about these sort of things so I listened closely and was both interested in and uncomfortable with what I was hearing.
“Captain Jack” is a lot of song for a 13 year old and I didn’t really understand it. I just knew that someone was fucked up, their dad was dead and I was uncomfortable about the entire song.
My mother’s reasons for making me listen were twofold: She thought it was funny that there was talk of nose picking and she wanted to get a message across. That message was that I shouldn’t do drugs but there was no explanation as to how the I was supposed to learn that lesson from that song. She didn’t offer any explanation but I promised to not use drugs and I made a mental note to never pick my nose if my mother was around. Then I went 24 years without hearing Captain Jack.
That long break has ended but before I listened to the song I did some research. I discovered, much to my surprise, that “Captain Jack” is the song that gave Billy Joel’s career it’s first big boost in the early 70’s. Seriously it’s true, “Captain Jack” deserves credit (or blame depending on your point of view) for introducing Billy Joel’s music to a broad audience.
Followingthe release of Cold Spring Harbor, Billy Joel and his band toured extensively and developed a (justified based on the few live recordings I’ve heard) reputation as a very good live act. This led to wider exposure and one of the people who took notice was the program director of a Philadelphia radio station who invited Billy Joel to perform a concert for the station in April of 1972. This concert went well. Billy and his band performed seven songs from Cold Spring Harbor and five yet to be released songs* that would wind up on the Piano Man album including “Captain Jack.”
*This performance is referred to as “Live At Sigma Sound Studios” and it’s included in it’s entirety on the 2011 re-issue of Piano Man.
This performance was very well received by listeners especially the song “Captain Jack” and that is where the story gets dicey. According to legend the song was embraced by the stations audience who frequently called in to ask where they could buy the song. Of course, they couldn’t but the station kept the live version in regular rotation based on this listener interest. Copies of this live recording eventually made their way to other stations and the airplay convinced Columbia Records to sign Billy Joel.
It’s a nice story but I’m fairly sure that it’s a whitewash of the actual story because unless you’re living in a Barry Dworkin penned Gas Station Dogs song, things like this don’t happen so innocently. I don’t like being cynical but I know enough about the radio business in the early 70’s to at least wonder if the listener support is a nice way of saying that someone gave the DJ’s money and/or cocaine to play the record. I guess I have an easier time believing in bribery than I do believing that the rock fans of Philadelphia went crazy for a 7 minute downer of a song by a little known artist or that the song went on a little engine that could journey to success.
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a knock on Billy Joel who by all accounts I’ve read, worked his ass off to promote himself and put on great shows. I’m just saying that I’ve been around enough musicians and radio people in my life to say that the accepted story of Captain Jack leading to Billy’s break feels a little too good to be true. I hope that I am wrong on this one.
Legends aside, what do I think of the song?
Well, it’s certainly interesting but listening to it a dozen times only further convinces me that it’s success in Philly was a result of some cheese-steak hoagie and narcotic payola. The song still makes me uncomfortable but not for the same reasons.
Captain Jack is really dark, even darker more than I remembered. This is not the cynical biting Billy Joel I was told I would enjoy (and have enjoyed). This is a venomous song that has often been described as anti drug but I don’t think that goes far enough. Captain Jack is an anti human song or at least a specific type of human, in this case an upper class drug user.
Billy Joel has stated that this song was inspired by seeing people buying drugs at a housing project near his home. He was once quoted as saying,in reference to the song:
“What’s so horrible about an affluent young white teenager’s life that he’s got to shoot heroin? It’s really a song about what I consider to be a pathetic loser kind of lifestyle.”**
What a lousy thing to say. Look I’m not advocating drug use, far from it but I always advocate empathy. Even fictional characters in songs should be afforded a little bit of understanding. Yeah this kid may be throwing it all away but pain is relative and we all have our reasons for feeling the way we do.
The guy in this song has a reason to be down, his father just died. What is he supposed to do, throw himself back into dating like his sister? Incidentally I hope his sister knocked before coming back into the house after that weird post funeral date she was on because..well you’ve heard the song, you know why.
The song “Captain Jack” tells me more about Billy Joel than it does about the person he’s singing about. It tells me that there is more than just a cynical side underneath the pop veneer of Billy Joel’s music; there’s a deeper darkness that I’m not sure I can get on board with.
Of course, I have to admit the chorus is pretty catchy but if I go another 24 years without hearing “Captain Jack” I’ll be okay with that.
**This quote appears in Mark Bego’s 2007 book Billy Joel: The Biography.
