Taxi (song)

"Taxi"
Single by Harry Chapin
from the album Heads & Tales
B-side	"Empty"
Released	March 1972
Format	45
Recorded	1972
Genre	Folk rock
Length	6:44
Label	Elektra
Songwriter(s)	Harry Chapin
Producer(s)	Jac Holtzman
Harry Chapin singles chronology
"Taxi" (1972) "Could You Put Your Light On, Please" (1972)
"Taxi" (1972) "Could You Put Your Light On, Please" (1972)

"Taxi" is a song written and performed by Harry Chapin from his 1972 album Heads & Tales. Chapin debuted the song on NBC's The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson 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. "Taxi" thus front-lined his defining work. The single helped establish Chapin's musical style and fame, and as a result, many Chapin items featured taxi-related imagery. WMEX DJ Jim Connors is credited with discovering Chapin and pushing "Taxi" to #24 on the Billboard charts, where it would last 16 weeks on the Hot 100, in the United States. Billboard ranked it as the #85 song for 1972.^[1] In Canada, the song reached #3.^[2]

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 seems not to recognize him until after she looks at him in the rear-view mirror and glances at his hack license. It is then revealed that she is Sue, an old flame from Harry's youth.

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," adding, "The lesson hadn't gone too far." 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...

The above lyrics were spoken by Harry over John's falsetto vocal on an early mix of the song released only to radio stations.

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." Harry has mixed feelings about this gesture, but "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 driving a taxi and "getting stoned."

Chart performance

"Sequel"

In 1980, Chapin wrote and composed a follow-up to the song, titled "Sequel," which he released 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" peaked one position higher, but lasted two weeks less, on the Hot 100 than "Taxi". Chapin joked that, if he wrote a third act to the song, it would be called "Hearse" so he could kill off the characters. Chapin died seven months after "Sequel" peaked.

In the song, Harry, who has now become a successful musician, has returned to San Francisco for a concert there, and has "eight hours to kill before the show." He decides to take a taxi (after rejecting options of "taking a limousine / Or at least a fancy car") to Sue's 16 Parkside Lane address only to discover, from the butler who answers the door, that she no longer lives there. The butler gives Harry the address to which Sue's letters are being forwarded, which Harry gives to the cab driver along with money for another fare. The address proves to be that of a rundown brownstone apartment, where Sue once again recognizes Harry:

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...

“Play it out just once more.”

Sue proves to have nothing, but she is now happy with herself. Invited to Harry's concert, she rejects the invitation by admitting that she works at night. Harry is otherwise cryptic about their reunion, urging listeners not to ask for details by 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. Clare MacIntryre-Ross died in March 2016.^[9]

On the contrary, when asked by John Denver about the song, Chapin stated that he read a newspaper article about his ex-girlfriend who had married a rich man, the same week that his taxi license was supposed to go through. He said that he had a dream that he would be driving the cab in a big city and he'd stop and pick up a lady, and they would look at each other and know that they both sold out their dreams. According to Chapin, he wrote the song then. However, the week the license was supposed to come through, he got a big film job and didn't have to drive the cab.

Covers

• William Shatner performed "Sequel" on the daytime TV variety talk show Dinah!.
• During Chapin's later concerts, Big John Wallace 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 is covered by Mandy Patinkin on his album, Experiment.
• The song is covered by Lee Hazlewood on his album, I'll be Your Baby Tonight.

References