Chip Taylor is gone. The songwriter who gave the world “Wild Thing” and “Angel of the Morning” died on Monday, March 23, at 86. No cause was disclosed, but his record label Train Wreck confirmed the news.
It’s strange how certain songs become so woven into the fabric of popular culture that you forget there was actually a person who sat down and wrote them. Taylor was that person. Born James Wesley Voight, he was the brother of actor Jon Voight and uncle to Angelina Jolie, but his real legacy wasn’t built on family connections. It was built on melodies that refused to die.
The Kid Who Started at Twelve
Taylor wrote his first song at just twelve years old. By sixteen, he was leading Wes Voight and the Town Three. He eventually dropped the family name, became Chip Taylor, and started recording with Warner Bros. Records. His first chart single hit in 1962 with “Here I Am,” but that was just the warmup.
“Wild Thing” arrived in 1965, recorded initially by Jordan Christopher and the Wild Ones. Nobody knew it would become a rock and roll institution. But then the Troggs recorded it in 1966, and something clicked. The song exploded. Then came Jimi Hendrix’s legendary performance at Monterey Pop in 1967, where he set his guitar on fire while playing it, and suddenly “Wild Thing” wasn’t just a song anymore. It was mythology.
Taylor himself was amazed by what the song represented. “A lot of people don’t realize what a beautiful thing space is in a song,” he told The Guardian in 2023. “Wild Thing still gives me the chills; when I strike the chords and you know the spirit of it. It’s a nice feeling.”
A Song That Meant Everything
“Angel of the Morning” was different. It had depth. Sands recorded it first in 1967, but it was Merrilee Rush and the Turnabouts who pushed it up the charts in 1968, landing at Number Seven. Juice Newton took another crack at it thirteen years later and sold over a million copies, bringing it to Number Four. Then Shaggy sampled it in 2001 for “Angel,” which hit Number One across twelve countries.
But here’s what matters: Taylor knew what he was doing when he wrote it. He wasn’t just crafting a catchy pop song. “I think it was inspired by a war movie that I’d seen on television the night before, where two lovers on different sides of the war were spending any time they could together,” he explained. “People thought it was just a roll in the hay but I didn’t mean it like that at all. This was the most powerful love of two people who may never see each other again.”
That’s a songwriter thinking beyond the three-minute single.
A Catalogue That Kept Growing
Over his career, Taylor worked with everyone. Willie Nelson recorded “He Sits at Your Table.” The Hollies took “I Can’t Let Go” (which he co-wrote with Al Gorgoni) to new heights in 1966, and Linda Ronstadt revisited it in 1980. “Any Way That You Want Me” became another Troggs favorite, spreading across decades of cover versions.
When Taylor talked about his creative process, he was refreshingly honest about it. “I just try to let my spirit go some place, and then I try to catch up to it,” he said during a Speaking Freely interview. “I just wanted to write stuff that made me feel something.” That’s the whole thing right there. Not calculated hits. Not chart strategy. Just authenticity chasing itself around a room until it landed on tape.
Taylor’s induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame wasn’t a surprise to anyone paying attention. His fingerprints are all over rock and roll history. From the Runaways to the Muppets to X, artists kept returning to his songs because they had staying power.
In the end, what’s remarkable about Chip Taylor isn’t just that he wrote two immortal songs. It’s that he understood something fundamental about music that most people never grasp: the power of space, the importance of emotion, and the way a simple chord progression can outlive the person who created it by decades, maybe centuries.
The songs remain. That’s what matters now.
