Taxi (song)

"Taxi"
Single by Harry Chapin
from the album Heads and Tales
Released	1972
Format	45
Recorded	1972
Genre	Folk rock
Length	6:44
Writer(s)	Harry Chapin

"Taxi" is a song written and performed by Harry Chapin from his 1972 album Heads and Tales. Chapin debuted the song on NBC's The Tonight Show in 1972 which was followed by many calls and telegrams sent from viewers to NBC demanding that Chapin return to the show. It was the first time in the show's history that host Johnny Carson brought a performer back the very next night for an encore performance.^{[citation needed]} Taxi thus front-lined his defining work. The single helped establish Chapin's musical style and fame, and as a result many Chapin items feature taxi-related imagery. Legendary WMEX-Boston Radio Personality Jim Connors is credited with a Gold record for discovering Chapin and pushing his single "Taxi" to #24 on the Billboard charts, where it would last 16 weeks on the Hot 100, in the United States.

Content

The song tells the story of Harry, a cab driver, on a rainy night in San Francisco. He picks up a woman, his last fare for the night, and she asks to be taken to her home at 16 Parkside Lane. Harry finds the woman familiar at first, but she doesn't seem to recognize him until after she looks at him in the rear-view mirror and at his license. It is then revealed that she is Sue, Harry's old lover.

In flashback, Harry remembers how he "used to take her home in [his] car" and also how they "learned about love in the back of a Dodge". Sue had wanted to be an actress, while Harry was going to learn to fly (hinting at Chapin's earlier real-life experience at the United States Air Force Academy). Their relationship ended when Sue "took off to find the footlights" and Harry "took off to find the sky".

The middle section of the song features the bass player, John Wallace, in falsetto, singing the following lines:

Baby's so high, that she's skying

Yes she's flying, afraid to fall

I'll tell you why baby's crying

Cause she's dying, aren't we all...

"Skying" is an obscure slang reference to what would later become "streaking". Skying was the act of walking around naked in 'less than private' settings. Hence, "Baby's so high that she's walking around naked."

Harry arrives at Sue's home where she offers to get together with him sometime, with Harry knowing "it'd never be arranged". Sue pays him a $20 bill for "a $2.50 fare" and says, "Harry, keep the change" to which he "stashed the bill in [his] shirt". As Sue walks into her "handsome home", Harry finally realizes that "[they'd] both gotten what [they'd] asked for such a long, long time ago": Sue is now "acting happy" in a loveless marriage, while he is "flying" by taking drugs ("I go flying so high when I'm stoned").

Sequel

In 1980, Chapin wrote a successor to the song, titled "Sequel" (on the album of the same name). Written in the same style as "Taxi", it continues the story of Harry and Sue with them meeting again ten years later. Released as a single, "Sequel" reached #23 on the Billboard chart, ironically one position higher than "Taxi" reached.

In the song, Harry, now a successful musician, decides to take a taxi to Sue's 16 Parkside Lane address only to discover that she no longer lives there. He later finds her at a rundown apartment where she once again recognizes him:

And she said, “How are you Harry?

Haven't we played this scene before?”

I said, “It's so good to see you, Sue

Had to play it out just once more.

Sue has nothing, but is happy with herself. Harry is cryptic about their reunion, saying "If I answered at all I'd lie". The song ends with:

I guess it's a sequel to our story

From the journey 'tween heaven and hell

With half the time thinking of what might have been

and half thinkin' just as well.

I guess only time will tell.

Origins

According to the liner notes in The Essentials: Harry Chapin, Chapin was inspired to write the song when he happened upon an old lover, as the cabbie in the song does. Chapin was merely on his way to a taxi license examination in New York City, not San Francisco. Chapin also stated that "Taxi" is only "about sixty-percent true".

However, according to Chapin's biography Taxi: The Harry Chapin Story, by Peter M. Coan, this song was based on a relationship that Chapin had with a Bennett Junior College student named Clare MacIntyre, the inspiration for Sue. They met when they were both camp counselors at neighboring summer camps during their college years.

Covers

• The song was covered by William Shatner in a performance on Dinah!.
• During Chapin's later concerts, Big John would sing the song's first verse in the form of a disco-style as the third alternate ending to 30,000 Pounds of Bananas.
• The song was covered by Mandy Patinkin on his Experiment album.
• After "Sequel", Chapin once joked that if he wrote a third act to the song, that it would be called "Hearse" so he could just kill off the characters.^{[citation needed]}
• The song was covered by Lee Hazlewood on his I'll be Your Baby Tonight album.