A Wild Man Still Chipping Away

You may not know Chip Taylor, but you know his song. “Wild Thing.” For forty years it’s been a raucous staple of every self-respecting bar band, guaranteed to make hearts -- and beer-soaked voices – sing.

That’s his song. This is his story, cobbled from recollection, musical discussions and magazine articles, most recently in Mojo.

Chip Taylor was a staff songwriter in the production-line pop music industry of the mid-‘60s when he wrote his biggest hit. Two and a half minutes of raw horn dog, mush mouth pleading atop the lumbering crash of three chords and a licentious beat.The seminal hit by The Troggs assured Taylor’s fame and fortune.

But he was no one-hit wonder. He had a string of successful pop and country songs, though none matched the success of “Wild Thing.”

A year or two later, Taylor heard a bar singer playing a slowed-down rendition of his song and had an inspiration. He took the same three chords, with minor alteration, and turned them into the bittersweet morning-after ballad, “Angel Of The Morning.” It was a huge hit in 1968 for Merrilee Rush and The Turnabouts. It was a huge hit again in the early ‘80s for Juice Newton. Reggae rapster Shaggy turned it around in 2001 as “Angel” and it scored again, worldwide.

It inspires me that the same guy who conceived the lyrics “Wild thing, I think I love you, but I wanna know for sure” also wrote “There’ll be no strings to bind your hands, not if my love can’t bind your heart” and in the process told flip sides of the same story.

But that’s only part of Taylor’s story.In the ‘70s, he lost his enthusiasm for the music business and dropped out to become a professional gambler. He was good at it, so he kept at it. For nearly two decades.

Until he realized gambling wasn’t satisfying his soul and he needed to return to music. In the early ’90s, Taylor started performing as an alt-country artist, and in 2001 he hooked up with 20something singer and violinist Carrie Rodriguez in Austin. A year later, they released “Let’s Leave This Town,” the first of several collaborations on Americana-style Taylor songs, tuneful, wryly whimsical and socially aware.

In July, he released a powerful new solo album, “New Songs Of Freedom,” that is getting positive reviews. Here are a couple of sample verses, from “Dance With A Hole In Your Shoe”:

“Now hate everybody that’s not like you

And the hate can come back, and they can hate you too

And everybody can hate somebody and berate somebody and negate somebody

And take somebody and shake somebody

And dance with a hole in your shoe. …

“… But if you learn from somebody that’s not like you

And they can come back and they can learn from you too

And everybody can learn from somebody and turn to somebody and say thank you, buddy

And, hey buddy, my sock’s all muddy

I been dancing with a hole in my shoe.”

Forty years after staking his claim to fame -- and with an extended pause to pursue a different muse -- Chip Taylor is back from/to the wild, still untamed, with stories to tell, thoughts to share, songs to sing. He’s worth listening to.

One other thing. Chip Taylor was born James Wesley Voight, brother of the actor Jon Voight of “Midnight Cowboy” fame. His niece is Angelina Jolie.A muse, if you ask me.

“Wild thing, I think you move me …”