A Conversation with Chip Taylor & Carrie Rodriguez
(continued)

PM: So I spent my first ten years in Yonkers. Chip, how long did you hang around?

CT: I was born and raised there, and lived there until I was 23 or 24, something like that. You know Yonkers?

PM: Yeah. My first ten years I lived there. I was born there.

CT: I was born and raised just off of Lockwood Avenue, which is a street that runs under the Sawmill River Parkway.

PM: Uh-huh.

CT: And we lived on the road right off of that, kind of a poor section of Yonkers. See, the upper parts were kind of nice once you got up a ways, once you got more towards Bronxville it got to be nicer. But we were down in there just above the carpet factory, whatever.

PM: Yeah, yeah. We didn't live in the nice section. I was down on Lawrence Street, across from the Six and a Half Club, where my folks used to hang out with Gene Krupa, because he went to school with them and--

CR: No way!

PM: He was the bad kid that the nuns would talk about.

CR: [laughs]

PM: "Don't end up like the Krupa kid."

[laughter]

CR: Wow, that's great.

PM: In our review of The Trouble with Humans, I refer to the CBS Sunday Morning profile of you, Chip, that aired some time ago.

CT: Right.

PM: Which I thought was really, really good, and hilarious, and I never forgot it. I thought it was funnier than hell what your brother Jon said. Basically the interviewer was saying something like, "Well, isn't it a crying shame that a great songwriter like your brother threw away so much of his life gambling?" And after a dramatic pause, Jon said, "Well, I don't know if you've ever seen him gamble. He's really good."

CR: [laughs]

PM: "Sometimes I think it's a shame all the years that he threw away on songwriting..."

CT: Yeah.

PM: Do you remember that?

CT: Yeah, I remember. That's just Jon having some fun. Actually, my brother Barry would be more likely to say that to him, because Jon is always trying to get me away from that.

PM: Are you guys tight, the brothers?

CT: Yes, very.

PM: It's nice to know that you guys have stayed tight well into the latter part of life.

CT: They've been wonderfully encouraging all the time, and are both big fans of the Chip and Carrie stuff.

PM: Barry is a scientist, right?

CT: Barry is a scientist. Yeah, he's the guy who invented the formula that predicts when volcanoes will erupt, back in the late 70s. He's the Senior Scientist at Montserrat. And they call him all over the place to decide when to evacuate people and stuff like that.

PM: I mean, that's kind of unbelievable, such a high-powered trio of brothers. How did that happen? What kind of a gene pool is that?

CR: [laughs]

CT: Well, you got me.

PM: Were the folks like some real brainiacs, or--

CT: Ah, they were a couple of real wonderful characters who always just encouraged us to be ourselves and to challenge ourselves to try new things, and never got mad when we stepped over the edge, and always kept a good sense of humor.

Dad was a frustrated singer. He was a golf professional, but he would sing around the house. And he loved to be out front, and kind of mimic different people. And we used to go to the movies all the time when we were kids, just all the time. On Mondays it was Dad's day off, because he was a golf professional. And a golf professional back in those days was not like it is now. It was really just a servant's kind of job to the members. But at least it was a job, so Dad was able to get out of the poor community kind of thing, and finally make a few bucks, enough to support a family.

But Mondays were his days off, and he used to always like to take us to the movies on Mondays. We'd often go to see double features. And he would use some kind of ruse to get us out of school early. He'd tell them it was a Czechoslovakian holy day, I remember him telling them that.

PM: [laughs]

CT: So we would get out. If there was a particular movie he wanted us to see, we'd be out at 12 o'clock and go to three double features or something like that.

PM: Oh, my.

CT: So that stuff was always fun around the house. And Jon was wonderful with dialects. He was funny. He had a real comedic sense when he was a little kid, so he could make us laugh every night just by doing routines. And Barry was up in the woods in the afternoon looking at rocks, and I had my ear glued to the radio to see what sounds I could find.

PM: It's amazing how our childhoods are telling the tale to come.

CT: Yeah, yeah. Well, we're fortunate we all ended up doing what we wanted, we all had that drive in us. A lot of times you can't do that. But if I hadn't been able to, I don't know what I would have done. I guess I would have been a golf professional. I turned golf professional for a little while.

PM: Right.

CT: And so I probably would have stayed with that, maybe, or--

PM: When you left that, wasn't there a wrist injury or something?

CT: Yeah. I hurt my wrist at one point when I was playing some tour things and also working with my dad. And I told my dad, I said, "This is my one shot to take a chance. I can't play in tournaments now. I don't really feel like just giving lessons." I said, "I'm going to really give it one major shot to go to the city and sell my songs." And then, within a few months, it worked, so...   continue

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