At The Rose Theater, New York, September 6, 2006. A fan report by J. Phillips.

I live in New York now, so I had a very good excuse to go to the premier of “The Captain And The Kid.” In fact, it was only a $5 cab ride and took all of 10 minutes, by far the shortest commute I’ve ever made to see Elton. Last year at this time, I flew from California to go to Madison Square Garden to hear Elton perform “Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy,” which was the very first record album I ever bought 31 years ago. I had to go tonight because I knew that if I didn’t, I’d regret not being able to say, “I was there.”

The Rose Theater is the jazz theater of Lincoln Center, located in the brand new Time Warner building overlooking Columbus Circle. The building is a masterpiece and was the home of the Elton John exhibit around the time of the Lestat opening. There I saw many of Elton’s costumes, but more impressively, a number of Bernie’s paintings.

The concert started at 8:12 pm to a number of empty seats that quickly filled during the opening notes. I was taken aback by the trademark sound of wind for "Funeral For A Friend". The sparse stage led me to believe that this was going to be a very short concert of his new material only. I was wrong. I had no idea I was in for a 2 ½ hour full-on concert. The theater is small and accommodates only 1,231 people. Was he really going to blow this jazz house down?

It was basically full-throttle Elton in this house of jazz. I noticed that many of the people in the audience were corporate-types, and I overheard one ask another if he was a fan. “Well,” he said, “yeah, but not really.” Huh, I thought. I was concerned the audience was not going to receive this very well. But Elton played it safe. The next song was “Bennie and the Jets” and he turned the ending into a jazz fusion number which seemed to befit the setting. It wasn’t hard for me to predict the next song as Nigel counted down the beats to "Philadelphia Freedom". By now I was wondering if this was going to be an hour’s show or a full 90 minutes.

But it just kept going and going. It wasn’t until Elton started to talk about “Captain Fantastic” that I thought we were getting close to the good part. He played “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” which was a safe song to play. I love the song, but I would have rather heard “Captain Fantastic.” But by the time “Someone” was finished, I was ready to hear what I came for.

You see, despite the fact that eltonjohn.com has been offering up previews, I did listen to “The Bridge” but then decided that I wasn’t going to listen to anymore songs until I could hear the album end-to-end the way it was intended to be listened to. So, tonight was going to be a special night for me.

The moment arrived and Elton admitted that we had reached “the scary part, at least for us, maybe for you as well.” This really was the first time that most of the songs had ever been performed live.

Elton explained that “Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy” was about the years 1967-1970 when they had to deal with failure. The new album, he said, was the idea of his manager Merck Mercuriadis who acknowledged that Elton always said that Bernie now really was the Brown Dirt Cowboy living on a ranch in Santa Ynez (he couldn’t pronounce the name of the town) and talked about how he works with horses and cows, adding that he knows nothing about cows… “I’ve known some cows,” he said to great applause. And he added that Merck mentioned how he “swanned around in private jets” and really was “Captain Fantastic.” But more importantly, Elton said that the new album about the years 1970-2006 was about how they dealt with success - in other words, the opposite of the original album.

Elton mentioned that the album was recorded “live” on a stage in Atlanta. I thought for a moment about how “soft” the original “Captain” album was, and contrasted this to the idea of Elton “on stage” recording his new album with all of his new piano-playing tricks. But then it hit me: that’s right - if the album is up-to-date as of 2006, then recording “live” on a stage in Atlanta of all places makes perfect sense. It’s who he is today, not trying to emulate a sound from long ago.

He mentioned that the opening track “Postcards From Richard Nixon” was about how they arrived in LA in “September 1970,“ - we know it was August, of course. The audience liked this one, and it did sound like a good old-fashioned Elton song.

He then introduced “Just Like Noah’s Ark” by mentioning how Elton and Bernie were like two kids from England who had arrived in the states, and everyone was offering them contracts to be their manager, etc.

“Wouldn’t Have You Any Other Way” he said was a “love song” for New York, a city he says he loves, which offers the “best gig in town, Madison Square Garden.”

Elton said that “Tinderbox” was about the time when Elton and Bernie felt they were spending too much time together and maybe getting on each others nerves.

Elton then talked about how unfair it is that some people’s life are cut short and how other people get to live long lives. He said that “you never know when it’s your time to go” and then introduced “Blues Never Fade Away.”

“The Bridge” is the only song I’ve heard, and only once on eltonjohn.com. I remember the track being sparse and so I was surprised by the very beautiful chorus harmony during the bridge of the song, no pun intended. This was for me by far the best song of the evening.

When introducing “I Must Have Lost It On The Wind,” Elton remarked that the song was about their love life and that they had to compress it to a very short amount of time. Elton said that after years of drugs and alcohol and so forth, nobody could tell him anything. He loved Bernie’s lyric, “You couldn't tell me I was wrong, you couldn't tell me anything, and if you did then I guess I must have lost it on the wind.”

Elton introduced “Old 67” by saying that Bernie came to visit him for 5 days at his house in the South of France before they made “Songs From The West Coast.” He added that it was rare that they get to spend that much time together. He said that they agreed that they needed to “draw a line in the sand,” and recognize that their days in the sun, so to speak, were over, that they would no longer be having hit singles and that they should concentrate on making really great albums that they like. I take it that “67” refers to the year that their partnership started.

And then we reached the finale of “The Captain And The Kid” interlude, only skipping the song “And The House Fell Down.” Why it was dropped, I don’t know. Elton explained that the song incorporates the “riff” of the “Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy” melody in order to “complete the cycle,” in other words, the first song of the original album has the same melody as the last song of the sequel album. Did it work? Yes and no. It was nice to hear the old melody to tie the two together, but I’m not sure after one listen in concert whether it was a good idea of not. If the two songs end up being played back-to-back in concert, you know, it might be interesting.

I watched closely for the audience reaction during the new songs. I would have to say that most of the people attending were probably not real fans, so their interest level probably dropped considerably. I noticed that Elton made continual trips to his “Diet Coke” canister to elongate the applause, but it was fairly clear to me that some songs reached the audience and others didn’t. For the first time, I could sense in Elton’s presence a feeling of trepidation about audience reaction. He’s probably not used to these kind of settings where his music isn’t instantly recognizable. I’m sure some in the audience were wondering, “When is he going to play ‘Crocodile Rock.’”

And so, for what to me was going to be probably a 45-60 minute concert ended up being 2 ½ hours. After the “Captain” songs he returned to old favorites like “Tiny Dancer” and ultimately ended his concert with showstoppers like “The Bitch Is Back” which brought all of the audience out of their seats for the first time. Elton returned to play “Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting)” and closed the show not with the predictable “Your Song,” but with a song he said he hadn’t planned to do. He said that he loves New York and played “Mona Lisas And Mad Hatters” - a song I hadn’t anticipated.

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