The Captain & the Kid


The Captain & the Kid is the twenty-eighth studio album by British singer-songwriter Elton John, released in 2006. It is his second autobiographical album with lyricist Bernie Taupin, picking up where Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy left off. The Captain & the Kid chronicles the events in their lives over the intervening three decades.
The Captain & the Kid reached No. 6 in the UK, a considerable improvement over the performance of John's preceding Peachtree Road in 2004, which peaked at No. 21. Captain reached No. 18 in the US, before quickly falling off the charts. At concerts in early 2007, John made clear his dissatisfaction with Interscope Records' promotion of the album, having threatened to terminate his contract with the label.

Background

Interscope Records announced that there would be no physical single released from this album as the emphasis is on presenting the album as a body of work. However, a radio single would be released in "The Bridge". The album's booklet has photos of John and Taupin all throughout their career, and in the lyrics section, two songs are included, "Across the River Thames" and "12", which do not appear on the album. "Across the River Thames" was available as a free download to anyone who played the CD on a computer. This is the first album created by John and Taupin to show them together on the cover. It was also the last studio album to feature Guy Babylon on keyboards; he died in 2009. This was also Bob Birch's last appearance on any of John's solo studio albums before his own death in August 2012.

Track listing

All songs written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin.

Side one

  1. "Postcards from Richard Nixon" – 5:15
  2. "Just Like Noah's Ark" – 5:33
  3. "Wouldn't Have You Any Other Way " – 4:38
  4. "Tinderbox" – 4:25
  5. "And the House Fell Down" – 4:48

    Side two

  6. "Blues Never Fade Away" – 4:45
  7. "The Bridge" – 3:38
  8. "I Must Have Lost It on the Wind" – 3:53
  9. "Old '67" – 4:01
  10. "The Captain and the Kid" – 5:03

    Bonus track

  11. "Across the River Thames" – 4:31

    Bonus tracks

Personnel

Producer Matt Still noted during an interview that in "Just Like Noah's Ark", Elton's black and white spaniel dog Arthur "barked in the middle of , because John Mahon was playing a cowbell, and the cowbell freaked him out. So he ran over to John and started barking at him right in the middle of a take. It's funny, just randomly he happened to hit the beats and he barked in time. So I recorded it and we actually kept him in there."
The sampled "woof-bells" can be heard in place of the cowbell on the track.

Production

Weekly charts

Certifications

Sales