Though he was a performer in his own right he is better known as a songwriter; perhaps best remembered for Wild Thing, a song The Troggs had a huge hit with and was then taken up by Jimi Hendrix. The Troggs later recorded Taylor’s very different Any Way That You Want Mebut in the meantime Taylor composed Angel of the Morning, brought to prominence by Merrilee Rush and later a hit in the UK for P P Arnold.
I must confess that until I read Taylor’s wiki page I hadn’t realised that he was a brother of actor Jon Voight (and therefore uncle to Angelina Jolie) nor that he had co-written I Can’t Let Go, a UK no. 2 for The Hollies in 1966.
The Hollies: I Can’t Let Go
James Wesley Voight (Chip Taylor): 21/3/1940 – 23/3/2026. So it goes.
The song was of course written by Cat Stevens who transmogrified from a writer/performer of pop in the 60s to an acoustic singer-songwriter when they were in vogue in the 70s, then gave up music for religion (Islam) before returning in the noughties as Yusuf Islam – and now just Yusuf.
I bought his albums Tea For The Tillerman and Teaser And The Firecat at the time.
Ever since his criticism of Salman Rushdie over The Satanic Verses, where he appeared to endorse the fatwa, I’ve never been able to listen to them. I couldn’t bear to.
Coincidences and confluences. P P Arnold, who was the backing singer on The Small Faces’ Tin Soldier which I featured recently, also had a great influence on The Nice whom I mentioned several months ago now. They were formed to be her backing band. However they quickly broke off to do their own thing.
Angel Of The Morning is the object of the most spectacular mishearing of a lyric I have ever encountered. Someone I was acquainted with once asked the good lady and myself why the singer (Angel has been covered by just about everybody – I think it was the Merrilee Rush version) was asking her lover to, “just brush my teeth before you leave me.”
Almax* recently featured this song on his blog – which for legal reasons (he’s a lawyer) is sadly restricted to only a few readers.
I was moved to comment that Tin Soldier surely has the single best musical intro to a pop song ever.
It deserves wider hearing. This version has the added benefit of P P Arnold on backing vocals, as did the recording.
As a result of his posting another of Alastair’s readers recommended this, Song Of A Baker, for which embedding is disabled. But you can follow the link.
*Almax’s The Defibrillator blog – on my sidebar – is open to all but he tends not to post new stuff there.
