Philadelphia Freedom (song) Page, including flutes, horns, and strings. The song made its album debut on 1977's "Elton John's Greatest Hits Volume II". The unedited version (without an early fade out) appears on the box set "To Be Continued..." and the 40th anniversary edition of the "Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy" album. Recorded in the summer of 1974, during breaks between sessions for "Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy", the song was at the time the only song Elton John and Bernie Taupin had ever consciously written as a single, as John told journalist Paul Gambaccini. John was looking to
Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy to make a lasting contribution to rock." In a 2006 interview with Cameron Crowe, John said, "I've always thought that "Captain Fantastic" was probably my finest album because it wasn't commercial in any way. We did have songs such as "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," which is one of the best songs that Bernie and I have ever written together, but whether a song like that could be a single these days, since it's [more than] six minutes long, is questionable. "Captain Fantastic" was written from start to finish in running order, as a kind of story about coming to