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I immediately wondered about GFR and wondered how the band members were and if they were all still living. May the Lord Jesus bless them and give them peace and assurance. This is a beautiful song, it's longing and beautiful sadness. Genius is the ultimate source of music knowledge, created by scholars like you who share facts and insight about the songs and artists they love. The song has been a staple of Farner concert performances in the decades since its recording, with the younger generation of concert-goers still knowing all the words.
The Village VoiceBCloser to Home is the third studio album by American rock band Grand Funk Railroad. The album was released on June 15, 1970, by Capitol Records. Recorded at Cleveland Recording Company, the album was produced by Terry Knight.
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I am a professional musician today in part because of his influence. But these guys had a rawness that defines what rock should be, like Chuck Berry young,not too polished and dangerously fun. Decades later, "I'm Your Captain" remains a staple of many classic rock radio stations.
Authors have seen the song as an "epic of paranoia and disease" and as a tale of a man who had lost control of his life in a fashion strong enough to invoke childhood nightmares. It has been used as the subtitle for a chapter of a novel dealing with war and addictions. Comparisons have been made to Walt Whitman's poem "O Captain! My Captain!" in its use of the rank to mean Abraham Lincoln. Unusually for him, Farner wrote the lyric of the song first, with the words coming to him in the middle of the night after saying prayers for inspiration to write something meaningful.
Grand Funk Railroad Closer To Home I'm Your Captain Get It Together T Shirt
Weird how songs seem to have different meanings when you listen to them through the lens of different times... I haven't heard this song in many years but I ran into it today in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic.. And it captures the isolation and anxiety of those of us high risk individuals kind of trapped in our homes indefinitely are feeling.
Has anyone ever tried to suss out the conversation/lyrics beneath the final string section? I just heard it on headphones for the first time and heard it underneath the music. There was a "stop it, stop it" I could make out, it the rest is a mystery.
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It remains quite popular among Vietnam veterans and Farner has played it at several veterans' benefits. Farner visited and performed at The Wall in November 2007, on the 25th anniversary of the memorial's dedication. "I'm Your Captain " is a 1970 song written by American musician Mark Farner and recorded by Grand Funk Railroad as the closing track to their album Closer to Home. Ten minutes in duration, it is the band's longest studio recording. One of the group's best-known songs, it is composed as two distinct but closely related movements. Its title has been rendered in various ways across many different Grand Funk albums, including "I'm Your Captain", "I'm Your Captain/Closer to Home", "Closer to Home/I'm Your Captain", "Closer to Home (I'm Your Captain)", and "Closer to Home".
It's one of those extremely rare awesome songs that tell a bitchin' story any way you slice it. When this song was released in 1970, the Vietnam War was still going on but there seemed to be no path to victory for the American soldiers fighting there. "If you're in a foxhole in Vietnam, you're pinned down by so much fire coming in, you want to be Closer To Home," Mark Farner told Songfacts. "That song 'Closer To Home' just really registered with our Vietnam brothers and sisters." I got up and I wrote it, and as I'm writing it, I'm between the state of subconscious and conscious. I've got one foot in dreamland and my pen is writing these words down.
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"I'm your captain, I'm your captain" could be relating to Mark Farner considering himself the leader or "captain" of the band and so being felt that he should be able to do what he wants even if it was self destructrive. It makes me think of a ships captain in the 1600 or so, where they are lost. He has tried to get them to the new land, but he's lost from being sick for so long. He can't keep control of the ship any longer and the crew are taking over from despair and anger from sailing for months.
It received standing ovations when Farner played it as part of the third edition of Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band in 1995, and a similar reaction greeted it during the 1996 reunion tour of Grand Funk Railroad. When the Grand Funk variant without Farner tours, the singing on the song is taken by lead vocalist Max Carl. The song conveys the pleas of a captain on a troubled sea voyage and facing a mutiny from his crew. Its use of an orchestra during the long repeated refrains of the closing movement served to differentiate it from much of Grand Funk's work. Several interpretations of the song have been given; most revolve around the Vietnam War, and "I'm Your Captain" is popular among veterans of that conflict. As my friends listened to pop radio, I was banginging away lol...
He suggested they extend the ending so that his orchestral score would have space to develop in, so the band extended the jam on it. Producer Terry Knight brought in the Cleveland Orchestra to record it. The band members never heard the full version until Knight played it for them back in Flint. Farner nearly cried when he heard it, and Brewer has said of their reactions, "We were just like, 'Wow!'" and "Oh my God, it was magnificent." The song is composed in the compound binary form that was used for several well-known songs in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The first movement opens with an electric guitar riff from Farner, which aspiring young guitarists of the time learned to imitate.
Due to the last half of the song saying "I'm Getting Closer to My Home", people assumed that the song was "Closer to Home" and mistakedly called it by the albulm name, hence the confusion on the title. Some records (i.e. various song albulms)still list the song incorrectly due to the confusion. I do not know what Mark's original intentions were for the song but like a lot of great songs the words come out easily and the song gets written in a short period of time. I like Kitty from California's comment about this being a spiritual song. I started praying just now and this song started to play in my mind.
This soon changes into a strummed acoustic guitar paired with a distinctive lead bass line from Mel Schacher, set against a steady drumbeat from Don Brewer accompanied with occasional wah wah guitar flourishes. Meghan Trainor and her producer Kevin Kadish originally wrote "All About That Bass" for another artist to record. However, after Epic Records boss LA Reid heard Meghan play a demo of the song on a ukulele, he signed the young songwriter to his label and told her she should sing it. My dad told me one of the band members had a heroin addiction and this song was a metaphor relating to that. The lyric "are you really scheming, To take my ship away from me" is about the other band members trying to get him to quit. The lyric "Everybody, listen to me, And return me, my ship" sounds like a demand to leave him alone with his addiction.
I am so glad they didn't worry about making the song short for airtime. This song is right up there with Starship Trooper by Yes. It was later released in July 1970 on the 'Closer To Home' album, with the full orchestra version.
These guys are under rated as far as rock and roll history books go. I think it's because Brittish bands of the 60's and 70's had darker lyrics. But these guys had a rawness that defines what rock should be, youg,not too polished and dangerously fun. Mark Farner is a great singer and a great guitarist in his own right.
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