Aug 202008
- Taylor’s real name is James Wesley Voight; he’s the brother of actor Jon Voight.
- Taylor gave up his music career in the mid-70s to focus on a career as a professional gambler. (Prior to launching his music career, he’d tried making a living as a professional golfer.)
- Taylor appeared in Melvin and Howard, a movie I was just talking with a friend about at a baseball game the other night.
- In 1993, he returned to music with Carrie Rodriguez, who happened to be playing a club in Portland, ME the night after I attended a show there just a few weeks ago. At the time I had none of these rock nerd nuggets in mind and ready to throw about to impress my concertgoing mates.
I’ll leave you with this cool slice of 45 RPM-grade psychedelia, a song Taylor wrote for The American Breed...
And this performance from his present incarnation with Carrie Rodriguez. Don’t blink or you may miss Taylor’s next, unexpected, under-the-radar career move! Just do it, Chip!
There was a New Yorker profile on Taylor in the last month or two with all of this info. The writer must have researched it on wikipedia as well.
One other fact that I seem to recall is that he wrote “Wild Thing” while a student here in central Connnecticut at the University of Hartford.
Thanks for pointing out my incredibly shoddy research, Al. I think that’s important to note and key to just this sort of fact-finding mission.
Yeah, I got my copy of next month’s Mojo in the mail today, too. Gonna write about the White Album next?
Don’t overlook the analysis I provided, Great One.
My friend Bob’s brother actually played drums on one of his albums.
Diskojoe wrote:
See how this works? Yet another thing to keep in mind next time you’re at a cool party or record store and Taylor’s name comes up. Now you’re equipped with a “friend of a friend’s brother” story!