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"I'm Your Captain (Closer to Home)" 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".〔The last of these is legally the title that Farner's music publisher registers the song as. See (【引用サイトリンク】 title=Repertoire Search ) However the song is best known by the formulations that capture both movements.〕 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. The record was a modest hit single when first released, but achieved greater airplay on progressive rock radio stations. It has become a classic rock staple and has appeared on several audience-selected lists as one of the best rock songs of all time. ==Writing and recording== The song is composed in the compound binary form that was most popular, and 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.〔 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. The chord changes go from D to G to Cadd2.〔 At about the 00:55 mark you can hear someone say "alright stop" The story ostensibly deals with a ship's captain on a troubled voyage and facing a mutiny from his crew. Farner's vocal of the pleading lyric begins: :''Everybody, listen to me, and return me, my ship :''I'm your captain, I'm your captain, although I'm feeling, mighty sick. :''I've been lost now, days uncounted ... :''And it's months since, I've seen home. :''Can you hear me, can you hear me? Or am I ... all alone. The music has a bass break and then drops down to half time before resuming at its normal tempo. The protagonist's plight becomes worse, with the captain's pleas continuing while the unhappy crew members are approaching the point of murder. At the 4½-minute mark the song switches to the second movement, which begins with the sounds of waves and gulls. The captain's voice is tinged with a sense of hopeless longing, perhaps even indicating that it is his ghost now singing: :''I'm getting closer to my home ... :''I'm getting closer to my home ... Again the bass line carries the music, with now a flute line accompanying it. Soon the strings from the orchestra, make their entrance, featuring violins, violas, cellos, and basses. The second movement starts at a fairly slow tempo, before speeding up somewhat into its repeats.〔 The significant chord progression in this part is from C to B♭add9. The movement's single lyric repeats over and over as a mantra, in the style of Van Morrison. Around the 7-minute mark a full orchestra appears to accompany the band to the gradually fading conclusion. 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. The chord changes to "I'm Your Captain" came to him the following morning between sips of coffee, and the following day he took it to the band.〔 They immediately liked it, but after a while had no ending for the second movement. They came upon the idea of using an orchestra, and hired Tommy Baker, an arranger and trumpet player who was working on the Cleveland television series ''Upbeat''.〔 He suggested they extend the ending so that his orchestral score would have space to develop in,〔 and producer Terry Knight brought in the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra to record it.〔 The band members never heard the full version until Knight played it for them back in hometown Flint, Michigan.〔 Farner nearly cried when he heard it, and Brewer has said "We were just like, 'Wow!'"〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「I'm Your Captain (Closer to Home)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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