Chip Taylor – As a man grows older
“I had lots of problems,” he admits. “And then this one label was interested in Vermont. Peter Gallway, one of the artists on that label, had seen me do a show and suggested I call this guy. I did and sent him my records, this Mitch Cantor at Gadfly Records. And Mitch liked my stuff very much, he said, ‘Yeah, I’ll put your stuff out.’ He did it with such a nice spirit that I didn’t even want to look anymore.”
Taylor toured some of the East Coast behind Hit Man, selling copies of The Living Room Tapes from the stage; it was finally released more formally in late March, complete with a party at Douglas Corner in Nashville. Guy Clark sang along for a few songs (including a reluctant “Wild Thing”); Lucinda Williams dropped by to say hello and ended up singing on Taylor’s next record.
Something changed within Chip Taylor during all those years at the track, and if he knows how it happened — or even what it was — he isn’t saying. But somehow, at fifty-something, he has at last come to believe in the worth of his work.
“I don’t know. It just started with my mom,” he says. “That spirit just spiraled. I don’t know why the hell Jon [his brother] is working so hard now, but maybe it was the same kind of spirit that I’ve had since mom passed away. I think he did six movies in the last 12 years, and now all the sudden he’s done seven in the last year, or something like that.
“I’m just loving what I’m doing, and I’m not afraid of it anymore,” he adds, and there is the innocence of a child gazing at the blue ocean in his voice. “I’m not afraid like I used to be, years ago, when somebody from the Rolling Stones camp called my then-publisher and said, I think we can hook something up with Chip and Mick.” He shakes his head and laughs softly.
“Right away it was like, ‘No way I can do that.’ I didn’t even think about it. I was embarrassed. I didn’t want to go over there and have them see how limited I was. Because I only played three or four chords, and I could lock myself in the studio and get out of me something that I wanted, but I thought I was doing it with mirrors.”
Funny thing is, as hard as Taylor tried for stardom in the ’70s, he never really toured. Sure, he played around New York (usually when he was hunting a new deal), and spent a month in Holland, where he had a No. 2 record one season. “I’ve done more touring since October than I did in my entire life. And I’m a singer-songwriter,” he laughs, and stumbles on something as if for the first time. “I mean, how do you expect to be successful if you don’t play for people? It’s pretty simple, isn’t it? You’d think I would know that.”
Italo Svevo, an Italian industrialist, was 46 years old in 1907 when he showed his second book to a young James Joyce, who was his English teacher. Joyce was quite taken with the novel and suggested its English title As A Man Grows Older. It is the story of an aging man’s fascination with a young woman. It may also be a metaphor for the difficulty of pursuing one’s art past the fire of youth, but I found the novel in my early twenties and never finished it.
Chip Taylor’s new songs are compelling because, like Svevo, the circumstances of his life do not compel him to fashion art out of economic desperation. Instead, his work is the product of rigorous self-examination, discipline, and an almost zen stripping away of ego. As simple as they are, they hide nothing. The Living Room Tapes includes songs to the four important women in Taylor’s life: His mother, his ex-wife who is also the mother of his two children (later, he asks that I turn the tape back on so he can tell me how wonderful his grown kids are), the woman he nearly married during the gambling years, and the woman he met recently, to whom he has written his next CD.
He’s still learning. One day he turned to Cody Melville, the singer-songwriter he has pressed into service as a manager. “I said, ‘Boy I love Chrissie Hynde’s version of “Angel of the Morning”.’ She sings with such passion, it’s one of the best versions I’ve heard of that song. He says, ‘What the hell are you telling me for? Tell her.’
“He sent a letter over to Chrissie, and within a couple of weeks got a response back from her manager of how excited Chrissie was to get my note, and then a couple weeks after that, another message, would I write a song for Chrissie? Which I did. I don’t know if it’ll ever be recorded, but she’s holding it, and I think it’s a real cool song, she just inspired me to do it. Garth Brooks is holding the same song.”
Taylor also has spent time writing with Randy Travis, who is now in search of a new record label. “I liked his earlier things more, probably, but I love him as an artist, and I was so shocked that he’s such a good songwriter. And we wrote great together.”
Mostly, though, Taylor is enjoying himself, and the possibilities his life has offered up. “Wherever it goes, as long as it keeps going, will be fine with me,” he says. “As long as I can continue to write my songs, make my records, record them with the spirit that I want to record them, and get them out for the public and still play for people…if I can break out even and make a little bit of money, then that’ll be fine.”
No Depression co-editor Grant Alden saw the Troggs play “Wild Thing” three times in one night during the early ’80s.