‘People Won’t Be Able to Stop Singing It!’: Jon Voight and Chip Taylor on the Enduring Rock Legacy of 1966’s ‘Wild Thing’
Jon Voight vividly remembers the first time he heard the song “Wild Thing.”
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“I was so excited!” he recalls. “I thought, ‘Oh, my God!’ And I fell on the floor!”
The year was 1965, four years before Midnight Cowboy made Voight an A-lister. And he wasn’t listening to a record or to the radio but to the song’s 25-year-old composer, who, armed with an acoustic guitar, had just performed the song for him.
“He said, ‘Did you like it?’ And I said, ‘I think it’s the greatest! People won’t be able to stop singing it! I’m telling ya, this is great!”
Voight’s assessment proved accurate a year later when the Troggs took “Wild Thing” to No. 1 in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand. Then, at the Monterey Pop Festival, Jimi Hendrix morphed the song into a show-stopping combination of feedback and pyrotechnics that still remains one of the greatest rock moments of all time.
And how did Voight get this front-row seat at the birth of history? The composer was his younger brother James, better known to songwriting aficionados as “Chip Taylor.”
“It meant a lot to me that Jon liked the song,” Taylor says. “I mean, I was really nervous about it. In a lot of different ways.”
Taylor had just written it—and written it fast—at the request of record producer Gerry Granahan, who needed a single right away for a group called the Wild Ones.
“He said, ‘Chip, somebody told me you’re writing some very interesting rock ‘n roll songs, and I have a group I’m recording this week. Do you think you could send me something?’ I was so flattered that I said, ‘Why don’t I get off the phone and see if I can write something for you now?’ And that’s what I did.”
A few hours later, Taylor had the demo. “And I came up and played it for Jon that night.”
Taylor would go on to write “Angel of the Morning” and songs recorded by everyone from Peggy Lee to Bonnie Raitt. (He has also had a prolific solo career, releasing his 23rd album, Behind the Sky, last spring.) His older brother, meanwhile, went on to earn the Academy Award for Best Actor for 1978’s Coming Home, earning nominations for three other films: Midnight Cowboy, Runaway Train, and Ali.
But at the end of the day, “Wild Thing”—all 155 seconds of it—has made as indelible a cultural mark as anything bearing the Voight brothers’ touch.
One reason, aside from its irresistible three-chord simplicity (“Two-and-a-half!” chuckles Taylor), is the use of versions by X, Cheap Trick, and Divinyls in films such as Major League (1989), Encino Man (1992), and Reckless Kelly (1993), respectively. And now, the Troggs’ original is making a cameo in the Sean McNamara-directed biopic Reagan, which hits theaters on August 30. It stars Dennis Quaid as Ronald Reagan, Penelope Ann Miller as Nancy Reagan, Robert Davi as Leonid Brezhnev, and—as a KGB agent tasked with keeping Cold War tabs on the up-and-coming Gipper—Jon Voight.
Thus Jon, Chip, and their nearly 60-year-old “Wild Thing” bonding moment comes full circle.
As used in the film, the song underscores the pundit-defying success of Reagan’s 1966 California gubernatorial campaign. But while Voight’s allegiance to the Republican party is no secret and the film is based on a Reagan biography by Paul Kengor, Voight wants viewers to know that the tone is not political. “It’s about Ronald Reagan,” he says. “That’s all.” It’s a subject with which even the liberal-leaning Taylor is cool. “I’m not on the same side of the fence as my brother is politically,” he says, “but I always liked Ronald Reagan.”
And if anyone were to suspect the timing of the film’s release to be part of a GOP strategy to influence the November election, Voight points out that Reagan was supposed to come out earlier—three years earlier, to be precise—and until COVID detailed those plans.
“We made it at a difficult time,” says Voight. “There was a lot of COVID scare, and we had very strict regulations from SAG. So if anybody got sick on the set, no matter who they were, we had to close down the set and wait 10 days to shoot again. So we all had to roll up our sleeves. But we made it through, and we did a very good job of it.”
Taylor is looking forward to seeing the results. His admiration for his brother’s acting chops, after all, goes all the way back to their childhood: “Jon was brilliant at, like, 8, 9 years old. We’d have dinner, and then he would entertain us all.
“Besides,” he adds, “it’s always flattering when somebody wants to use one of my songs.”
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