“Captain Jack” by Billy Joel

"Captain Jack" closes Billy Joel's 1973 album Piano Man, and it's a sour, sneering little epic from a songwriter who found his subject right outside his window. Joel wrote it in late 1971 in his apartment in Oyster Bay, Long Island, looking on as suburban teenagers cross the street to a housing project to score heroin from a dealer who went by the name Captain Jack. He called it an anti-drug song, and it bites like one.

It also opened doors. Joel played it on April 15, 1972, at a live radio concert at Sigma Studios broadcast on WMMR in Philadelphia, and the airplay that performance got caught the ear of major labels, Columbia among them; he signed there in 1973. On the record, Michael Stewart produced, Michael Omartian arranged and Rhys Clark drums. A live version later landed on Songs in the Attic in 1981.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.