It's been a busy week, so this is the earliest opportunity I've had to pay tribute to singer and songwriter Chip Taylor who died towards the end of March. I write a lot of these eulogies lately, and every one of them affects me in some way or other (otherwise, I wouldn't write them), but even then... the news of Chip's death hit me hard. Because through the songs he wrote in the latter part of his career, I felt like I knew him. Whenever I listened to one of his new records, it began to feel like I was catching up with an old friend. I felt like we had a certain simpatico, even though he was thirty years older than me and lived half a world away. I knew where he was coming from.
I only really discovered Chip Taylor in 2019 when I heard the above song on the radio. But it turned out that I'd known his songs much, much longer.
Because back in 1965, Chip wrote this...
And then, a couple of years later, he wrote this, a song I became very familiar with as a child because the 1981 version by Juice Newton was a firm favourite of my old friend Tel...
Along the way, Chip also wrote many other fine records...
Chip released a number of solo albums in the 70s, and then apparently spent most of the 80s playing blackjack and betting on horse races, only curing himself of that particular addiction following the death of his mother in the mid-90s. After that, he returned to recording and released some wonderfully individual and idiosyncratic solo records, as well as a string of excellent collaborations.
But I always come back to this one in the end. Thank you, Chip. Rest easy, fella. Thank god you weren't one of the perfect people...
