One Track Mind: Billy Joel - Captain Jack (song review)

There’s always been something about Billy Joel’s music. They capture moods, they paint aural murals to be taken in, savored, and stored away for future enjoyment. Perhaps one of Joel’s finest aural murals is Captain Jack.

At over seven minutes long and chocked full of images it’s easily one of his “busiest” pieces. He sings of what we know, either from our own experiences or because we know or are at least peripherally familiar with the people of which he sings. The thing which makes the song so deeply personal is the level of detail Joel uses whether it’s the “tape deck in your brand new Chevrolet” or whether “they just found your father in the swimming pool” the details are so incredibly specific yet at the same time so universal that Joel is able to “connect” with all of his listeners. He hits that melancholy nerve of ennui that so many of us suffer from and he pulls it all together with the fictitious drug dealer, “Captain Jack.”

We all have our own “Captain Jack”—that someone or something that makes life enjoyable or bearable, that magical thing which gives us our escape from the madness of life. For some it’s drugs, others alcohol, but for many of us its nothing so glamorous or damaging. Simple companionship is the Captain Jack that so many of us long for. So, part of what makes Captain Jack such a well-painted aural mural is that it gives that sense of companionship. In many ways, the song itself is a “Captain Jack.” Because it captures that chord of melancholy and loneliness so well, Billy Joel, is essentially letting us all know that even in our darkest hours, those moments when life has landed you with the mother of all sucker punches… You aren’t alone. Captain Jack is just the reminder we all need from time to time that whenever life gets us down, when we’re at our worst and loneliest. We’re not alone in our experiences.

So now I’m left to ask, who or what is YOUR “Captain Jack?”

Billy Joel - The Stranger (1977)

If you were alive at the tail end of the seventies, chances are this album has been indelibly stamped on your psyche.

As much as Boston's debut or the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, this album was the soundtrack of the late seventies and managed to help catapault Joel from mere popularity to superstardom.

With all of Joel's music there's an emotional honesty there that most of us are able to relate to on some level or another. While Sir Elton was the big name across the pond-- Goodbye Yellow Brick Road his name-making smash hit, over on our side of the pond, Billy was our piano man and The Stranger was our Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

There's a familiarity to the characters he sings of-- whether it be Anthony from Movin' Out or Brenda & Eddie from Scenes From An Italian Restaurant, Joel sang of them with a familiarity that made them our friends as much as they were his. And with that familiarity comes the popularity of this album. Billy Joel seemingly effortlessly, wrote and performed an album that many of us could all relate to in our own special ways.

All of the songs on the album are written in such a way that each listener feels the songs are about him or her directly, or peripherally. We may not know of these experiences he sings of personally, but we know "those people." And in that relatability, Billy Joel created an album that is as timeless as it is beautiful.

So pop on your headphones and visit this old friend with a bottle of red, a bottle of white-- it all depends upon your appetite...

Related Links

Movin' Out





The Stranger


Just the Way You Are


Scenes From An Italian Restaurant


Only the Good Die Young

On being a fan of music

Last night I was thinking about my musical tastes and how much they echo my personality. I was recalling that even from an early age, I was a Billy Joel fan. I remember being about 3 years old, wandering into my sister, Laurie's bedroom and asking her 8 track of Billy Joel's The Stranger. At first it wasn't the music that appealed to me, it was the picture on the outside, Billy laying on a bed staring at a porcelain mask.

In hindsight, that was the first indication of my adolescent and early twentysomething personality. I've always leaned more towards Joel's earlier material and it's that material which has recurring themes of loneliness, solitude, keeping to one's self. That's who I was-- to an extent that's who I still am deep down inside. My musical tastes have changed over time, but much like the music of Chicago (which were, for a large chunk of their careers, known as being a "nameless" and "faceless" band-- they let the logo speak for itself).

I think the whole phenomenon of musical fandom has, at its core, a desire of people to be understood. Music speaks to everyone in different ways. And at it's core people tend to flock to other "fans" not just from a mutual appreciation of the music they're fans of-- but because deep down inside they feel that who better can understand them as a person than someone else who can also relate to that music-- someone else who doesn't just hear or listen to the same music they do-- but someone who actually feels the music on a deeper level?