Grand Funk Railroad – "I'm Your Captain (Closer to Home)" (1970)

I'm your captain, I'm your captain

Though I'm feeling mighty sick

NOTE:  In 1970, incoming Rice University freshmen – including yours truly – reported for orientation a week before classes started.  I associate two songs that were on the radio that week with my first days as a college student:  Free’s "All Right Now," and the last track of  Grand Funk's Closer to Home album, "I’m Your Captain (Closer to Home)."  

As it turns out, my memory is pretty good.  Both those songs first appeared on the "Hot 100" singles chart in the September 5, 1970 issue of Billboard magazine.  It would have shown up on newsstands about a week earlier, which is when I was getting oriented.  I forget important sh*t all the time, but you’d best believe I remember the exact week that I first heard "All Right Now" and "Closer to Home" on the radio – even though that was almost 50 years ago.  

Both those songs are being inducted into the 2 OR 3 LINES "GOLDEN DECADE" HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME this year.  I wrote about "All Right Now" in the previous 2 or 3 lines.  Today I’m presenting a somewhat shortened version of a post featuring "I’m Your Captain (Closer to Home)" that was originally published in 2010.  It was the eighth of eight posts featuring songs from the Closer to Home album, which I accidentally stole from my freshman suitemate.  (It’s a long story – like all of my stories.)

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Part Eight -- "I'm Your Captain" Is a Very Long Song (and Eight Posts on Grand Funk Railroad Songs Was Probably Four or Five Too Many)

We've finally reached the last song on side two of the Closer to Home album.  Believe me, I'm just as happy about that as you are.

Grand Funk Railroad performing live

But before I discuss this song, I need to fulfill a promise I made in the first post in this series (I am a man of my word, at least when I remember) and spend a few minutes discussing my favorite soap opera from the late 1960's and early 1970's – "Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing."

I spent a lot of time at my grandmother's house when I was growing up, and she was a soap opera fan.  (She watched "As The World Turns" religiously.) 

"Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing" – which I will abbreviate as "LIAMST" – aired on CBS for five-plus years while I was in high school and college.  I bring it up because we were speaking earlier of Richard Nixon and Watergate, and I have a vivid memory of watching Senate Watergate hearings and LIAMST on summer days when I wasn't working. 

Senator Sam Ervin

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The summer of 1973 – when the Watergate hearings took place – I was working two jobs.  One paid considerably better, but was much more irregular in terms of hours.  Eventually, I had to choose between the two, and chose the better-paying one – loading and unloading trucks at a freight dock in Baxter Springs, Kansas.

A lot of the shifts I got were at nights or on the weekend when the regular employees didn't want to work, so I spent quite a few weekdays at home in my pajamas, watching soap operas and game shows and enjoying Senator Sam Ervin grilling John Dean et al.

If we've learned anything from this blog, it's that my memory is never to be trusted.  The Watergate hearings began in May 1973, so I was certainly watching them in the summer of 1973 – the summer before my senior year of college, which was the summer I had the irregular work schedule.  So that part is correct.

But LIAMST went off the air in March 1973.  So I couldn't have been watching it that summer.  I must have watched it in previous summers -- maybe the summers before college.  (It first aired in September 1967, when I was a sophomore in high school.)



This is inexplicable.  I would have sworn on anything you asked me to swear on that I watched the Watergate hearings and LIAMST the same summer.  

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LIAMST had an implausible and convoluted plot line – like most soap operas of that era.

You had a character named Laura (originally played by Donna Mills, who went on to fame and fortune as a star of "Knots Landing") who had started out as a novice nun before falling in love and marrying the boyfriend of her sister Iris.  

Iris later became pregnant – the father was a married U.S. Senator, who later left his wife and married Iris – was seriously injured in a private plane crash, and gave up the baby to Laura because her injuries were surely going to kill her within a matter of months. 

But then Iris underwent experimental laser surgery, was cured, and demanded her baby back – which caused Laura to go insane and kidnap the child.  

Anyway, you get the picture.  (BTW, all that stuff happened in just one season.)

Donna Mills and Leslie Charleson

I remember two things about LIAMST.  One was the actress who played the sister named Iris – a Kansas City native named Leslie Charleson (who has been a member of the cast of General Hospital for the last 43 years).  I had a major crush on Iris.

Here's the second aspect of LIAMST I remember.  (It really intrigued me for some reason.)  Laura's husband (the one she left the convent for – Iris's former boyfriend) was named Mark.  Iris's husband was named Spence, and Spence's stepmother was named Jean.  

Mark (played by David Birney, who married Meredith Baxter after they co-starred in Bridget Loves Bernie) had an affair with Jean during the 1969 season of LIAMST.  In other words, Mark had an affair with his sister-in-law's (and former lover's) mother-in-law.  I couldn't quite get my mind around this.  

It may have been that the man in the relationship was one entire generation younger than the woman.  (We didn't have any Ashton Kutcher-Demi Moore couples back in 1969.) 

The original cougar, Demi Moore

Of course, because she was a stepmother, Jean might have been younger than her stepson Spence -- and younger than Mark as well.  (Laura and Iris and Mark and Spence all appeared to be about the same age.)  So there might have been no age difference – or at least not a significant one.  

The other thing that got my attention about the affair was its quasi-incestuous element.  I realize we're talking about in-laws and a stepmother -- so there are two degrees of separation between Mark and Jean.

But I had rather simple tastes when I was in high school.  (As far as I know, none of the parents of any of my high-school friends were divorced.)  

The people on LIAMST were much more advanced when it came to love and family.  They might as well have been French.

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I recently read a review of a new biography of Cleopatra of Egypt.  We know the European royal families of the 1800's were the products of a lot of cousin intermarriages – that's why many of the royal sons (including the would-be heir of Russian Emperor Nicholas II) were hemophiliacs.  

But the Egyptians – who were obviously not acquainted with the laws of genetics –  did them one better: their rulers usually married their siblings.  

For example, Cleopatra (who was born in 69 B.C.) was married to her younger brother Ptolemy XIII when she was 18 and he was 11.  When he was 14, Ptolemy – no doubt his regent Pothinus did the heavy lifting for him – attempted to depose Cleopatra, and a civil war ensued.  He drowned in the Nile a year or so later.

Cleopatra immediately married her next younger brother, Ptolemy XIV, when she was 22 and he was 13.  After Cleopatra's lover, Julius Caesar, was assassinated in 44 B.C., Cleopatra supposedly poisoned that Ptolemy.  

"The Death of Cleopatra"
(1892 painting by Arthur Reginald)

Cleopatra had given birth to a son three years earlier, who was called Caesarion – she insisted that Caesar was the father.  After Ptolemy XIV's death, she named the three-year-old king of Egypt.  (At least she didn't marry him.) 

So I shouldn't really make fun of LIAMST for having a too-fantastic plot.  Cleopatra's history certainly proves that truth is stranger than soap operas any day of the week.

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I was reminded of the Mark-Laura-Iris-Spence-Jean situation and the Ptolemaic dynasty years later when I heard the Oscar and Lorenzo hit from 1947, "I'm My Own Grandpa."  

That song tells the story of a man who marries a widow who has an adult daughter – who eventually marries the man's father – making the narrator his own grandfather – sort of.  

Both couples then have children.  (Oh, my!)

Here are the words to "I'm My Own Grandpa":

Now many, many years ago
When I was twenty-three

I was married to a widow
Who was pretty as can be

This widow had a grown-up daughter
Who had hair of red

My father fell in love with her
And soon they too were wed

Oh, I'm my own grandpa

I'm my own grandpa

It sounds funny I know,

But it really is so

Oh, I'm my own grandpa

(The plot soon thickened.)

This made my dad my son-in-law
And changed my very life

My daughter was my mother
'Cause she was my father's wife

To complicate the matter
Even though it brought me joy

I soon became the father
Of a bouncing baby boy

My little baby then became
A brother-in-law to Dad

And so became my uncle
Though it made me very sad

For if he was my uncle
Then that also made him brother

Of the widow's grown-up daughter
Who was also my stepmother

(Another baby means more complications.)

Father's wife then had a son
Who kept them on the run

And he became my grandchild
For he was my daughter's son

My wife is now my mother's mothe
And it makes me blue

Because although she is my wife
She's my grandmother too

(Think about it.)

Now if my wife is my grandmother
Then I'm her grandchild

And every time I think of it
It nearly drives me wild

For now I have become
The strangest case I ever saw

As husband of my grandmother
I am my own grandpa! 

If you ask me, this song is one of the great artistic achievements of the 20th century.

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A lot of people have tried to explain the song graphically.  Here's one example:

If you're confused, you can click here to watch a video of the inimitable Ray Stevens – my parents took my kids to see him perform in Branson many years ago – that will make everything perfectly clear.

Still confused?  Click here and the Muppets will straighten you out.

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I don't know if you realize this, but they didn't have to stop where they did.  They could have kept on and on until things got really complicated.  (The narrator could have eventually become his own great-great-grandfather.)  Thank heavens they stopped when they did.

This is REALLY good stuff – don't you agree?  With content like this, it's no wonder that I am hitting new highs in visits and page views almost every day!

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Let's wrap things up with a discussion of our featured song -- the 8th and final (yaaaay!) cut on the Closer To Home album. 

"I'm Your Captain" was not at all characteristic of Grand Funk Railroad songs, which were typically less sophisticated and more bombastic. 

For one thing, it’s a compound binary song -- really two songs joined into one (like "Hey Jude," "Layla," and "Can't You Hear Me Knocking").

The first half of the song is rather plaintive.  It is ostensibly sung by a ship captain -- seemingly incapacitated by illness -- who is facing a mutiny.

Things go from bad to worse, and by the end of the first segment of the song, the captain is in extremis:

I can feel the hand of a stranger

And it's tightening around my throat

Heaven help me, heaven help me

Take this stranger from my boat

I'm not sure how an actual stranger would make it on to a ship that is presumably out of the middle of an ocean.  Maybe the stranger isn’t a real stranger, but the grim reaper – or maybe the captain is too delirious to recognize that it’s a crew member who is about to murder him.

In the second half of the song, the captain sings one phrase – "I'm getting closer to my home" – over and over again.  Presumably the captain is singing posthumously, or knows he is dying, or is simply hallucinating.  

There are a lot of different interpretations of this song.  Some people think it has to do with drugs – not a bad theory for just about any song from 1970 that you can't make heads or tails of.  

But most people think it has something to do with the Vietnam War – that the captain who is lost at sea represents the United States, which was lost in Vietnam.

Here's a link to a discussion of the song on Songfacts.  Songfacts is a website with a zillion facts about thousands of songs.  Carl Wiser, a Hartford DJ, created Songfacts in 1997 as a database for other DJs, and took it online in 1999.  (Carl has graciously agreed to write about a particularly interesting song for 2 or 3 lines, so look for his guest post later this month.)

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Whenever "I'm Your Captain" came on the radio, I'd always try to count how many times the "I'm getting closer to my home" phrase was repeated before the song finally faded out, but I'd always get distracted and lose track of where I was in the count.  (The same thing used to happen with "Hey Jude.")

But 2 or 3 lines is all about getting to the truth – not to mention spending inordinate amounts of time on things that any normal person would find trivial – so I've just listened to the song very carefully, taking detailed notes.  Here's what I learned.

The second part of the song begins at about the 4:30 mark.  The singer sings "I'm getting closer to my home" four times.  Then there's an instrumental break that lasts about a minute. 

The singer then sings "I'm getting closer to my home" exactly 24 times – the song starts fading about 30 seconds before it ends, and fades out entirely just as he finishes repeating the line for the 24th time. 

So 28 times altogether – four times, then a break then 24 times.

That's the album version.  On the single version, the singer sings "I'm getting closer to my home" four times.  Then there's the instrumental break.  And then the singer sings "I'm getting closer to my home" exactly 12 times before the song fades away and ends. 

By the way, Wikipedia says the orchestral part was played by the world-renowned Cleveland Symphony Orchestra.  I've been unable to verify that, and I doubt that it is true.

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Now it's time to bid a fond farewell to Grand Funk Railroad.  You may feel that eight posts about one album was too much of a good thing – or just too much, period.  I beg to differ.

And if reading those eight posts have exhausted you, imagine how I feel after writing it.  My desk is covered with my blood, sweat, and tears.  (Actually, I don’t think that’s blood -- I think I spilled a little red wine.)

Click here to listen to "I'm Your Captain":

Click here to watch a fabulous short film of Grand Funk performing the song at Shea Stadium in New York City in 1971 – the band sold out Shea in 72 hours, which was faster than even the Beatles had.

Click here to read an interview with Mark Farner, Grand Funk’s frontman, about that Shea Stadium concert.

(It seems that the single version "I'm Your Captain" isn't for sale.  Sorry about that!)