Taxi (song)


"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. In Canada, the song reached #5.

Content

The song tells the story of Harry, a cab driver, on a rainy night in San Francisco. He picks up a woman wearing an expensive gown, his last fare for the night, and she asks to be taken to her home at 16 Parkside Lane, an address in an affluent section of town. 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 taxi 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 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. 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:
The above lyrics were spoken by Harry over John's falsetto vocal on an early mix of the song released only to radio stations.
The taxi arrives at Sue's lavish home. As she prepares to exit the cab, she vaguely 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, coldly: "Harry, keep the change."
Harry has mixed feelings:
As Sue walks into her "handsome home," Harry finally realizes that " both gotten what asked for, such a long, long time ago": Sue is now "acting" happy in a loveless marriage and sterile artificial affluence, while Harry's "flying" by driving a taxi and "getting stoned."
Chapin said, "there's not a single line that tells how the guy or the girl felt. It's a very cinematic technique. But it's also a very uneconomical technique. That's why my songs are so long. I literally put you in that cab and let you experience. It's a more involving form of music than sitting and hearing somebody sing 'I'm lonely'."

Chart performance

Weekly singles charts

Year-end charts

"Sequel"

In 1980, after nearly a decade listening to fans ask about what he imagined happening to Harry and Sue later in their lives, Chapin wrote and composed "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 fewer, 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, now a successful musician, returns to San Francisco to play a concert, and has "eight hours to kill before the show," and thinks of his old lover. He decides to visit the upper-crust address of "16 Parkside Lane" where he last saw Sue a decade before.
After considering options of " a limousine, or at least a fancy car," to impress Sue, he takes a taxi to the reunion, this time sitting in the back as the paying customer. The taxi turns into the driveway "past the gate and the fine-trimmed lawn." Harry is informed by a butler answering the door that Sue no longer lives there. The butler gives Harry a forwarding address. Harry tells his cabbie, "I got one more fare for you."
The address proves to be that of a modest brownstone urban apartment.
At the door:
Far from an affluent suburban trophy wife, Sue is now a working class woman -- but is happy with her life, no longer the cold and cloistered socialite, she is now warmer and wiser. She tells Harry of hearing him on the radio; he shrugs off the hype of stardom, and invites her to see his show that night. She declines, saying only, "I work at night."
Harry provides few other details on the reunion, urging listeners not to dig deeper: "If I answered at all, I'd lie." This time, it's Harry who offers money as they depart; he doesn't answer whether she accepts.
The song ends with:

Chart performance

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.
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