Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy Singles chart), is a semi-autobiographical story about John's disastrous engagement to Linda Woodrow, and his related 1968 suicide attempt. The "Someone" refers to Long John Baldry, who convinced him to break off the engagement rather than ruin his music career for an unhappy marriage. It was viewed by "Rolling Stone" writer Jon Landau as the best track on the album: "As long as Elton John can bring forth one performance per album on the order of 'Someone Saved My Life Tonight', the chance remains that he will become something more than the great entertainer he already is and go on
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