Taxi (song)

The narrator Harry is a cab driver in San Francisco whose last passenger on a rainy night is a woman in an expensive gown who asks to be taken to her home in an affluent section of town. Harry finds her familiar, but she seems not to recognize him until after she glances at his taxi license. She then greets him by name and he replies in kind: she is Sue, an old flame from Harry's youth. They had gone their separate ways to follow their dreams: Sue wanted to be an actress, and Harry wanted to learn to fly (hinting at Chapin's real-life experience at the United States Air Force Academy).

When the taxi arrives at Sue's home, she vaguely offers to get together with him sometime, but Harry knows this won't happen. Sue gives him a $20 bill for a $2.50 fare and tells him to keep the change. (The fare would be equivalent to $17 in 2022.)

Harry realizes they both got what they asked for: Sue is "acting" happy in a loveless marriage and sterile affluence, while Harry is "flying" a taxi, taking tips, and "getting stoned."[3] A censored radio version of the single replaced "stoned" with "stalled".

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'."[4]

Record World called it "spell-binding," saying that Chapin "sets up, develops and resolves a situation in 6:40. A very short 6:40."[5] Billboard called it "a strong piece of folk ballad material while lengthy, should garner hefty top 40 and FM play with sales and chart action to follow."[6]

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". It also remains his last appearance on the Hot 100 chart, though his last single "Story of a Life" would reach No. 5 on the Bubbling Under Hot 100. 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:

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.”

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 part, which she declines to take.

Harry reflects on the circle of their lives. When they were young, she had wanted to be an actress and he a pilot. Ten years ago she was acting happy in her high-end life while he was flying high, stoned in his taxi. Today he "act[s] as I'm facing the footlights, And now she's flying with both feet on the ground."

The song ends with:

So I guess it's the sequel to our story

From the journey between 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.

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.[13]

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.

• William Shatner performed "Taxi" 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.