"I'm Your Captain (Closer To Home)" is the 10+ minute closing track of Grand Funk Railroad's third studio album, Closer To Home, released in June 1970 via Capitol Records.
Goldmine spoke with Mark Farner about his new album, Closer To My Home, produced by Mark Slaughter, which opens with a new 55th anniversary version of “I’m Your Captain (Closer To Home),” very true to the original.
For this Veterans Day article, Farner spoke about the songwriting process and the importance of “Closer To Home” to veterans.
Goldmine's Warren Kurtz: "Welcome back to Goldmine. When my wife Donna and I saw you here in Daytona Beach in 2014, as part of the Happy Together Tour, we were so entertained and impressed with your energy. Let’s start with a song you played that night, the first Grand Funk Railroad song we heard growing up in Cleveland, 'I’m Your Captain (Closer to Home)'. You open the new album with a nine-minute, 55th anniversary recording of the song, very true to the original, and you kept in the wah-wah, just like we saw you play on stage.
Mark Farner: "Absolutely, brother. That song is spiritual to me. I prayed for that song. I said my, “Now I lay me down to sleep” prayers, like I do every night, like my mother, God rest her soul, taught all six of us kids. I always said to bless all the cousins, all the aunts, uncles, grandmas, grandpas, and I put a p.s. on the end of it, “God, please give me a song that will touch and reach the hearts of those you want to get to.” I wasn’t sure that “Closer to Home” would be a song when I wrote it. I am always writing things. I have a steno pad next to my bed on the nightstand, along with a pen, and in the middle of the night, I will write stuff. Most of it is not songs, just getting thoughts out. So, it was not unusual for me to wake up and start writing, but what was unusual was, the writing process was different from what I had normally done, which is writing a verse, then looking back at the top, re-reading it, and moving onto the second verse. That night, I instinctively knew that if looked back, I would lose the flow, and I was not completely awake. I was somewhere between heaven and earth in my mind and these words started coming. When I finished it, I was completely exhausted. I put it back on the nightstand, rolled back under the sheets, and finished my night’s sleep. I got up in the morning, went to the kitchen, and grabbed my George Washburn acoustic guitar, a nice American made guitar. I started playing the notes that would become the instruction to the song, then I hit a chord that had extra resilience. I looked at it oddly because I had never played that inversion of a C chord before. Then I wondered if the words that I had written overnight would fit to make this a song. I went back to the bedroom and grabbed the steno pad. I put the words on the table next to my coffee, hit the button on a cassette recorder, and I started playing and singing, and that was it! “Closer to Home” became an anthem for our Vietnam soldiers because they wanted to be home. The Vietnam Veterans of America had me come and play “Closer to Home” at the 25th anniversary of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in 2007, in Washington, D.C. There were more than just American veterans. There were also Canadian veterans. I was overjoyed to be there and told them that rather than just playing a song, I am going to play a full set for you. I’ll bring my band on our tour bus. We’ll do a show, and it won’t cost you guys a nickel. We’ll do it because we love you, and we want you to know it. When we got to that song, their eyes were so wide. There were soldiers hugging who never knew each other before but fought in the same war. It was a wonderful experience and that’s what I think of when I think about “Closer to Home.” The song never had a video, so there was never any visual definition, and that is good. Songs like this are a stimulation for our imagination, which is God given. It is part of who we are, and it needs to be exercised."
Read more at Goldmine.
