FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
Making people's hearts sing
Risk-taking Chip Taylor gambles on the music industry once more
By Aubrey McInnisCHIP TAYLOR
Thursday, November 20
Engineered Air Theatre (The Arts Centre)Before I trudged off to elementary school every weekday morning I would eat cereal and listen to the radio in the kitchen. Between snowfall advisories and bites of Fruit Loops I remember sliding across the linoleum floor in knee socks dancing to top 40 songs, many of which I've just found out that Chip Taylor wrote.
Since Chip started touring and singing his own songs this year, most folks are just now discovering that he wrote a lot of Number One hits sung by other musicians. Who really thought that a bunch of goofy hooligans filmed in a subway were capable of writing "Wild Thing," anyway? Not only did Chip give The Troggs the ammo to shoot them to the top, but he provided the sultry lyrics for Merilee Rush, Juice Newton and Chrissie Hynde to seduce America with in "Angel of the Morning." Chip Taylor has had countless other hits spanning a panorama of genres such as rock, country, and rhythm & blues.
Over a crackly phone in London, Chip Taylor explains why his individual recording career didn't initially take off - the politics of record companies and his addiction to gambling, which was eventually overpowered by a stronger addiction to songwriting.
"I don't know," Chip replies when asked why his first stab at a recording career flopped. "You see, even though I wrote all the rock hits, my first love was country. Even though I was from Yonkers, I had a country band as a kid growing up. My first successes in the business were country successes out of Nashville where Chet Atkins started - he started cutting a lot of my songs and kept me in the business.
"When I went back to my recording career, I went back to that kind of style because that's what I loved most and I did country folk records. The companies I was signed with had a Nashville division, they wanted me to go to Nashville to record. I refused, I wanted to do it my own way. So I was kinda shooting myself in the foot.
"I was kind of a renegade, an outsider. I had a couple of country hits, but it (was) almost like they didn't want me to have one. The Nashville divisions didn't want me to happen," he says poignantly. "They really didn't treat me like one of their own. And I can't blame them, really, that's just the way it was."
Chip breathes deeply before explaining the bureaucratic frustration which drove him to give up music. He says that his recording of "One Night Out With the Boys" was the hottest album in three or four market places. Every place he called they said, 'Chip, ya got one here. This is our number one request record.' But Capitol Records' country division was not supportive.
"I was so excited I had this record," admits Chip. "When my record started to break, the head of the country promotion sent a memo to all the staff to get the radio stations to stop playing my record. His reasoning was he didn't want my record to be in front of some of the other records he was trying to break.
"It was a total backstabbing thing," he remembers. "That left me out in the cold, and when that happened I quit."
He dropped music, turned to gambling and succeeded in making a lucrative career out of horse races and blackjack for 16 years. He was going to make gambling a life-long pursuit until his mother became seriously ill. The pleasure Chip gleaned from seeing the light in his mom's eyes when he sang to her spurred him to drop gambling and return to music full-time. Out came this year's comeback, The Living Room Tapes.
After a long disappearance, do you think his dream has remained the same? Absolutely.
"I started back to make music for whoever would care to listen to it. Coming back now, I've been playing for, like, family, people who are a part of me. And my dream is still just to do that. Just to keep doin' it.
"It's not so urgent for me to be a star or anything like that. I feel great with what I'm doing. I feel very much aligned when I do my show - the people and me are together in this thing. Wherever that take us, that's where we're gonna go. And I'm loving that I'm writing so much now that I've given up the gambling. I love to write; I'm loving being an artist again."
My final question to this songwriting legend pertains to gambling which he compares to music because both demand putting oneself on the line. I jokingly ask for tips at the racetrack, which he jovially fields like every other question during our conversation.
"You shouldn't go for a year, Aubrey," Chip warmly chuckles, "because by that time my book will be out on how to do it."
Touché, sir.
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