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Chip Taylor, the songwriter behind the Troggs\u2019 rock hit \u201cWild Thing\u201d and actor Angelina Jolie\u2019s uncle, has died. He was 86. <\/p>\n
Taylor died Monday in hospice care, according to Page Six,<\/a> citing Taylor\u2019s longtime friend, producer Billy Vera.<\/p>\n Taylor, born James Wesley Voight in Yonkers, N.Y., in 1940, was actor Jon Voight\u2019s brother, but built a formidable music career outside of his famous sibling\u2019s shadow. <\/p>\n As a teen guitarist, he joined the band Town & Country Brothers, which toured with Neil Sedaka. His songwriting submissions to RCA Records impressed the artist Chet Atkins, who championed his tunes in the country music scene. Taylor also wrote out of the same 1650 Broadway building in New York where Gerry Goffin and Carole King were based. <\/p>\n In 1966, Taylor penned \u201cWild Thing\u201d for the garage-rock band the Troggs, which rocketed to No. 1 and kicked off a new mode for rock \u2019n\u2019 roll that favored grungier musicianship and more overt sexuality. \u201cThat upstrum, there? You wouldn\u2019t play that if you were properly schooled,\u201d he told the Independent in 2023<\/a>. \u201cI did it because I didn\u2019t know any better. I ended up with this innocent energy. It came out of me looser that way, the feeling just flew out of me.\u201d<\/p>\n Jimi Hendrix famously performed the song at Monterey Pop in 1967 in a fever of sexual tension (it featured in the 1968 concert documentary), making it an era-defining rock hit and Taylor\u2019s most famous tune. He also wrote \u201cAngel of the Morning,\u201d popularized by Juice Newton and Merrilee Rush, and penned songs performed by Willie Nelson, Linda Ronstadt, Johnny Cash and Janis Joplin, among many others. <\/p>\n Taylor\u2019s career pivoted in the \u201980s, when he became a professional gambler and a rogue on the Atlantic City casino strip. Yet he had a later career resurgence in the 2000s, after he met fiddle player Carrie Rodriguez at the South by Southwest Music Conference in Austin, Texas. The pair released several acclaimed alt-country albums together. Taylor\u2019s 2012 single \u201cF\u2014 All the Perfect People\u201d prominently featured on the soundtrack for the hit Netflix series \u201cSex Education.\u201d<\/p>\n