In the 2020s, Elton John started offering 50th anniversary deluxe editions of classic albums in his catalogue that hadn't been expanded to multi-disc sets yet. After Madman Across the Water and Honky Château, expansions of Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player and Caribou were only made available as vinyl expansions for Record Store Day activations. That changes with a new general retail expansion of Captain Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy arriving this fall with a bonus disc of unreleased material.

Due October 24 on CD and purple/white swirl vinyl, the album (remastered in 2016) will be paired with a second disc featuring unreleased session demo versions of five songs from the original LP (including two takes on the title track) as well as a near-full album performance of the album in Atlanta, GA in 2005, featuring additional vocals from the Voice of Atlanta Choir. The 2LP set will truncate the live performance, and the 2CD package will add to the album a quartet of single-only tracks, including a cover of The Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and the smash hit "Philadelphia Freedom." However, the vinyl packaging is expanded from what's in the the CD, offering not only the liner notes and photo scrapbook but also including never-before-seen excerpts of Elton's own diary entries from the period. (UMR will also release a D2C-exclusive purple vinyl edition of a full-album performance just after its original release at Wembley Stadium in the summer of 1975, which was included as a bonus disc of a previous deluxe edition in 2005.)

Even in a career that had already seen the piano-playing Briton conquer each side of the Atlantic with his prolific popcraft, Elton John's ninth album was a landmark release for him in more ways than one. For the first time, he and lyricist Bernie Taupin had prepared every song before Elton and his live band headed into the studio; working again with longtime producer Gus Dudgeon at Colorado's Caribou Ranch, the songs - which conceptually told, from Taupin's perspective, a lyrical autobiography of his and Elton's personal and professional friendship in the '60s and early '70s - were ones all labored on with an atypical deliberateness, taking nearly a month to finish instead of the usual practice of banging out an album in a few weeks or even days. The results were creatively stellar: Dudgeon later said, "There's not one song on it that falls below incredible," and Elton would tell Cameron Crowe it "was probably my finest album because it wasn't commercial in any way."

Yet despite the artistic risks taken - most songs hover around the four-minute mark, the opening title track and closer "Curtains" hover on either side of five, and sole single "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" nears seven - Elton-mania could not be abated. (His first greatest-hits record would spend 10 weeks at No. 1 in 1974 and 1975, becoming the latter year's bestselling album.) Captain Fantastic, with its striking Bosch-inspired sleeve art by Alan Aldrige, was both the first album to ship with a gold record status from the Recording Industry Association of America, and, incredibly, began a six-week run at the top of the Billboard charts after its first week of sales. In the days before computerized calculation - when Billboard would poll record shops nationwide and conjecture their findings into an all-genre chart - most albums would have a parabolic chart-run, starting good, reaching a peak and then tapering off. No artist had ever debuted at No. 1 before; Elton would do it five months later with Rock of the Westies, the first and second LPs to ever do so. (The album did cap a particular era for Elton, who'd relieve members of his classic band before they reunited in the early '80s.)

You can pre-order either format of the Captain Fantastic reissue (or the vinyl of the Midsummer Music set) below. As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases. The track lists are below.

Captain Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy (50th Anniversary Edition) (Rocket/EMI/UMR, 2025)

2CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
2LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada

CD/LP 1: Original album (plus bonus tracks on CD) (released as DJM Records DJLPX 1 (U.K.)/MCA Records 2142 (U.S.), 1975)

1. Captain Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy
2. Tower of Babel
3. Bitter Fingers
4. Tell Me When the Whistle Blows
5. Someone Saved My Life Tonight
6. (Gotta Get a) Meal Ticket
7. Better Off Dead
8. Writing
9. We All Fall In Love Sometimes
10. Curtains
11. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (single A-side - DJM Records DJS 340 (U.K.)/MCA Records 40344 (U.S.), 1974)
12. One Day At a Time (single B-side - DJM Records DJS 340 (U.K.)/MCA Records 40344 (U.S.), 1974)
13. Philadelphia Freedom (single A-side - DJM Records DJS 354 (U.K.)/MCA Records 40364 (U.S.), 1975)
14. House of Cards (B-side to "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" - DJM Records DJS 385 (U.K.)/MCA Records 40421 (U.S.), 1975)

CD/LP 2: Bonus material (previously unreleased; * exclusive to CD)

1. Tell Me When the Whistle Blows (Session Demo)
2. Captain Fantastic (Take 1 - Session Demo)
3. Writing (Session Demo)
4. We All Fall in Love Sometimes (Session Demo)
5. Captain Fantastic (Take 2 - Session Demo)
6. Bitter Fingers (Session Demo)
7. Captain Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy (Live at Philips Arena, Atlanta, GA - 10/1/2005) *
8. Bitter Fingers (Live at Philips Arena, Atlanta, GA - 10/1/2005) *
9. Tell Me When the Whistle Blows (Live at Philips Arena, Atlanta, GA - 10/1/2005) *
10. Someone Saved My Life Tonight (Live at Philips Arena, Atlanta, GA - 10/1/2005)
11. (Gotta Get a) Meal Ticket (Live at Philips Arena, Atlanta, GA - 10/1/2005)
12. Better Off Dead (Live at Philips Arena, Atlanta, GA - 10/1/2005)
13. We All Fall in Love Sometimes/Curtains (Live at Philips Arena, Atlanta, GA - 10/1/2005)

Captain Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy - Live at Midsummer Music, Wembley Stadium 1975 (Rocket/EMI/UMR, 2025)

Same tracklist as original album. All tracks recorded live at Wembley Stadium, London, England on 6/21/1975. Previously released as bonus disc in Rocket/Mercury 0602498317242 (U.K.)/Rocket/Island B0005357-02 (U.S.), 2005