Top Ten Songs by Harry Chapin

Back in the day we lived in the Haight; our neighbors used to tease my mom sans mercy about her full-volume thing for singer/songwriter Harry Chapin. Frisco had its own home boys, after all, and the walls were thin; their patience zilch for her daily, repetitious plays of an east coaster’s drawn-out, emotional tunes. But my mom clung tight to her passion for Chapin’s story-songs and with surprise contribution from one Johnny Carson, she converted some our apartment neighbors and my brother ‘n I to Harry’s reality of lyrical gestures.

(1) Taxi
His greatest hit per rock historians, Taxi was a 6 minute, 44 second orchestration on a chance meeting with a former love that lacked closure. Chapin debuted this work comfortably on the Tonight Show in the summer of 1972 which resulted in a blitz of calls/telegrams to network execs demanding more of him. This scored an unprecedented “first” for the show with Johnny Carson bringing Chapin back the very next night for an encore performance. Taxi thus front-lined his defining work.

(2) W.O.L.D.
The fears in human experience that the media still refuses to address seemed Harry’s forte. Old enough to have been reared in a Superman society, he nonetheless tackled the ‘taboo’ of aging, explicitly in an environment (recording industry/DJ) where said is not an easy process and rarely brings wisdom unless the last chapter in a self-help book! Harry bluntly strummed it as was and W.O.L.D. spent 23 weeks on the charts, again a rarity due to the length (4:46).

"The major thing I'm afraid of" he informed once to a Rolling Stone reporter "is being 65 and saying ‘gee, I wish I had done this and that’. I want to face old age knowing I've tried all I wanted to try.”