Video Classics: 'Captain Jack'

To honor WNEW's legendary Firecracker 500, every day we are highlighting the music that populated the 1991 and 1996 lists, with classic videos, live performances and little-known facts about the songs and how they came to be...

Those who value Billy Joel's contribution to American music over the last few decades can, perhaps, thank Captain Jack, a song Joel wrote about middle-class suburban kids getting their fix from an eponymous heroin dealer who lived across the street from him in 1971. It is the closing track of his second album, 1973's Piano Man, and comes in at #82 on the 1991 Firecracker 500 (#137 on the 1996 list). But more than that, it is the song that got Joel noticed and sent him up to play in the music industry's big leagues.

In 1972, Billy Joel was a small-time musician touring radio stations to promote his debut album, Cold Spring Harbor. The record was going largely unnoticed, and Joel might have become just another act to give it his best shot, cut an album, and then disappear forever into obscurity. The music caught the ear of a Philadelphia program director, however, who came up with the promotional idea of having Joel give an hour-long private concert to radio station contest winners. Joel agreed, the concert happened, and one of the songs played was the previously-unrecorded Captain Jack.

The song became a hit with the station's listeners, was often requested, and had fans clamoring to know where they could get it for themselves. It became so popular that several New York stations picked it up, and it received regular airplay for almost a year-and-a-half without ever having been released. It was this attention that ultimately attracted both Atlantic Records and Columbia Records to Joel, and he signed with Columbia in the Spring of 1973. Piano Man was recorded as his first LP for Columbia, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Because no promotional video for the song was cut, and because Joel rarely plays the song in his concert rotation any more, videos for the song are few and far between, and so we offer up the song simply in its original LP form for your enjoyment. Though it has almost disappeared from concerts, Joel does make certain to play Captain Jack whenever he returns to Philadelphia, because of the role the city and song played in his early career. He has written of the song ...

"Captain Jack plays with much more power and conviction when a roaring Philadelphia audience sets off a kind of internal explosion and the adrenaline screams through our veins ... When we play Captain Jack, we are actually committing an act of pure brutality."

Have memories of this song or the Firecracker 500? Add your thoughts to the comments below or take a look at Video Classics past...