Author Hank Bordowitz called 'Captain Jack' 'as bleak a portrait of growing up in the affluent suburbs as anything before L.A. 'As with so many rock stars, one of his most important early influences was Bob Dylan–in fact, 'Piano Man' and 'Captain Jack,' two of his more ambitious early tunes, as well as the more recent and better ' She's Always a Woman,' are practically keyboard parodies of Dylan critiques,' Holden says. Ira Mayer called it Joel's 'signature piece,' and Stephen Holden said the song, a 'centerpiece' of the album, 'compelled attention for despairing portraits of urban fringe life, despite underlying shallowness.' Holden also believed that the song had a Bob Dylan feel to it. Jack Breschard of Rolling Stone called it one of Joel's 'best efforts'. Reception for the song was mostly positive. This, along with ' Piano Man', ' The Entertainer', and ' New York State of Mind', were the songs that Joel was best known for before the release of The Stranger in 1977. It quickly became a staple of FM rock stations after the album's release in November 1973. 'Captain Jack' was one of the 10 songs recorded in Los Angeles for Joel's Columbia debut, Piano Man. After turning down a record deal from Atlantic Records, Joel signed with Columbia in the spring of 1973. Columbia Records did their best to track Joel down. Though Columbia Records' then-president, Clive Davis, first noticed Joel at the Mar y Sol festival in Puerto Rico on Easter Sunday, April 2, 1972, the constant airplay of Joel's unreleased song kept the label's attention. The song was such a big hit in Philadelphia that several New York radio stations got their own tape copies and began to play it as well. Listeners called in, wanting to know where they could find the song and on what album it appeared.

For the next year and a half, the station kept its live version of the song in regular rotation. 'Captain Jack' was immediately embraced by WMMR's audience. Some of the songs were later recorded for the Piano Man LP, including ' The Ballad of Billy the Kid', ' Travelin' Prayer', and 'Captain Jack'. Joel and his touring band from 1971 to 1972 ( Larry Russell on bass guitar, Al Hertzberg on lead guitar, Rhys Clark on drums) performed 12 songs, seven from Cold Spring Harbor and five songs he had not yet recorded. On Saturday night, April 15, 1972, Joel performed an hour-long concert in front of these contest winners at Sigma Sound Studios in Philadelphia.

He arranged to have Joel perform a concert for radio-station listeners who won tickets. One of the people who noticed and liked the LP was the music director of Philadelphia radio station WMMR-FM, Dennis Wilen. To promote his debut album, Cold Spring Harbor, Joel undertook a tour that lasted through most of the spring and into the early summer of 1972. The miracle of modern chemistry killed them if Vietnam didn't.' Pre-release This guy is a loser.' In writing about the song in the liner notes of his Songs in the Attic album, Joel once again emphasized the point: '.so many friends shoveled under the Long Island dirt. I've been accused of, 'Oh, this song promotes drug use and masturbation.' No, no, no. He says, 'What's so horrible about an affluent young white teenager's life that he's got to shoot heroin? It's really a song about what I consider to be a pathetic loser kind of lifestyle. The song, according to Joel, is an anti-drug song. The song is sort of brutal, but sometimes it is good to be brutal and offend people-it keeps them on their toes.' 'But in my travels I have seen a lot of the same suburb all over the country. 'It's about coming out of the New York suburbs,' Joel told John Kalodner in 1974. Across the street was a housing project, and he observed suburban teenagers going into the project and obtaining heroin from a dealer known as 'Captain Jack'. Joel wrote 'Captain Jack' in late 1971, while sitting in his apartment in Oyster Bay, Long Island, looking out the window, trying to find inspiration for a song.

Captin jack