“Not what my life’s about”: Story Structure and Theme in Harry Chapin’s “Taxi”
(First post about “Taxi” here.)
More about the story song “Taxi” by Harry Chapin. Let’s look at those other story elements—structure, motif, and theme.
Structure
Structure is essential to a story, for example, with the beginning to create the conflict or problem that intensifies the middle, and also setting up the ending.
Now I don’t know enough about musical structure to explore how that contributes to the story. But I do notice that “Taxi” has a traditional ballad structure—quatrains in an ABAB rhyme scheme, with alternating 4-beat and 3-beat lines. The ballad, of course, is a classic way to tell a story in song, especially in the English, African-American, and Appalachian traditions.
Also most of these story songs don’t have the expected pop-music chorus which repeats a musical and textual passage. Instead they might have a bridge of sorts that, rather than repeating, provides a transition from the middle to the end. In pop music, this is often a “middle 8”—a transitional section in the middle of the song, usually 8 bars, which brings a change in melody, lyrics, and harmony.
In “Taxi,” the middle-8 is a dramatic three-verse duet—two verses sung by Harry, and one in falsetto by his bassist Big John Wallace:
Oh, I’ve got something inside me
To drive a princess blind.
There’s a wild man wizard
Hiding in me, illuminating my mind.
Oh, I’ve got something inside me,
Not what my life’s about.
‘Cause I’ve been letting my outside tide me
Over ’til my time runs out.
Baby’s so high that she’s skying
Yes, she’s flying, afraid to fall.
I’ll tell you why baby’s crying–
‘Cause she’s dying, aren’t we all?
—
This middle section is a transition—a separation AND a connection – between the memory of the shared past and their expectations, and the present in the cab, when: There was not much more for us to talk about.
Whatever we had once was gone.
So what’s going on before this essential middle transition? Meeting Sue, who has fulfilled her dreams, has resurfaced the memory of his own former dreams:
You see she was gonna be an actress,
And I was gonna learn to fly.
She took off to find the footlights,
And I took off to find the sky.
In the middle, Harry recognizes that he has failed not just materially, but failed to be himself. He uses almost violent terms to describe the conflict of his “wild man wizard” trapped inside the cabdriver’s body:
Oh, I’ve got something inside me
To drive a princess blind.
There’s a wild man wizard
Hiding in me, illuminating my mind.
And he realizes he’s wasting himself with this day-to-day existence which keep running on until it inevitably just “runs out”.
Oh, I’ve got something inside me,
Not what my life’s about.
‘Cause I’ve been letting my outside tide me
Over ’til my time runs out.
But he also recognizes something about Successful Sue—that achieving her dreams might not have brought true fulfillment:
Baby’s so high that she’s skying
Yes, she’s flying, afraid to fall.
I’ll tell you why baby’s crying–
‘Cause she’s dying, aren’t we all?
So this middle section is a transition into the ending, and usually the ending shows a change, some result of the action of the story. The change here is not an action or a decision, but just that sour despairing revelation—and he’s still treating it by “flying high in my taxi, taking tips, and getting stoned.”
In story songs, there’s often some twist or irony (because short stories often have those as a clever way to quickly conclude), like in “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” by Jim Croce from 1973—It’s the tough guy Leroy who ends up “like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone”, and the anonymous jealous husband who ends up with the victory.
Or in “Ode to Billie Joe,” the “too busy and happy to care” family in the beginning is fragmented and forlorn in the end.
In “Taxi,” the songwriter concludes that the teen lovers—the would-be actress and pilot—“both get what we asked for”–
And here, she’s acting happy
Inside her handsome home
And me, I’m flying in my taxi
Taking tips and getting stoned
You know what, though—there’s a sequel to this story, and it’s even named “Sequel,” where we learn this chance encounter actually did change his life for the better. Like the songwriter, the character Harry quit driving and became a musician, fulfilling a dream he didn’t know he had. The story takes up years later, when he takes another cab to “16 Parkside Lane,” to find that Sue has come down in the world and lost the handsome home. But when he finds her in a ramshackle apartment, she’s poor but happy. It’s not a successful song, comparatively, and really, there are some stories where a sequel will just spoil the ending.
(Within a year, Chapin was dead—killed in a car accident on his way to do a charitable event.)
—
Theme and Motif
Simply put, a motif is a recurrent pattern or image that helps develop the theme. A theme is a message or concept that is illustrated or revealed by the story events. Chapin’s major motif is “contrast,” which he uses in contrasting ways for even greater effect. First, the contrast between the characters to illuminate their different outcomes, but also their commonality—she ends up rich, he ends up poor, but neither is happy.
This contrast is carried through in the motif of “height” (as in “high ambitions”). “She took off to find the footlights” (that is, on the ground), “I took off to find the sky,” (high). His use of internal rhymes also connect and contrast ideas—like- skying/flying/crying/dying, outside/tide, and Through the too many miles and the too little smiles.
The use of contrast as the central motif emphasizes the theme, which is “dashed expectations”… but also (ironically), fulfilled expectations. Harry’s expectations are dashed, Sue’s are fulfilled, but neither ends up happy. So if we were to state the theme in a cliche, like “the moral of the story,” what would it be?
“Be careful what you wish for, because whether you get it or don’t get it, you’ll be disappointed?”
“Life is what happens when you make other plan?”
I don’t know… I think it’s more profound than that, but I can’t pin it down… something like, “Make your life something fulfilling even if your dreams are dashed.”
I am guilty of always wanting to wrap the story up with a red bow and a clear message. But life’s not like that, is it? And anyway, one of the pleasures of doing a story in 20 lines or so is that a less determinate ending lets the story go on in the reader’s mind. “Concept themes” are often more useful than “sentence themes”, because they are open-ended and allow the audience to speculate. And so I think I’ll go with just that concept. This song is about the experience of dashed expectations. No message. No sequel.
Next up: The unusual story song… one with a happy ending!
