I liked what Prince and Warren Zevon did to it,” he continues. I even thought the Sam Kinison version had a certain feel and energy to it.

The Senator Bobby version was a fun thing to do. Jimi took the song one step further with this really amazing, sweaty strum. “I felt The Troggs captured the essence of the song,” Taylor says of Wild Thing. Taylor was thrilled at having his first major rock’n’roll hit, and as the years have gone by he has been delighted at the wide array of performers who have chosen to make it their own. (The Troggs would go on to turn another Taylor song, Anyway That You Want Me into a Top 10 hit in January 1967.) Recorded in just 10 minutes, and released in May 1966, it took The Troggs to No.1 in the US, and in the UK hit No.2 and propelled the band into the pop spotlight. Page originally wanted it to be the B-side to a cover of The Lovin’ Spoonful’s Did You Ever Have To Make Up Your Mind, but the band lobbied long and hard for Wild Thing as the A-side. Taylor was thrilled with his new song, but a bit embarrassed that the good Catholic boy in him had been capable of such base feelings.Īfter The Wild Ones’ version went nowhere, the demos made their way to England where the song came to the attention of producer Larry Page who was shepherding the fortunes of an up-and-coming group called The Troggs. It was all about emotion.” Five minutes later Wild Thing concluded with those immortal lines: ‘Wild thing I think I love you/But I wanna know for sure/So come on and hold me tight/You move me.’ “I had no idea where I was going with it,” he recalls. Taylor arrived at the appointed hour, sat down on a stool in front of the mic and requested that Johnson turn down all the lights.

He rang up his engineer, Ron Johnson, and told him to have his microphone all set up and to be ready for anything. Faced with a 5pm demo session at the famed Dick Charles Recording Studio, Taylor decided to fully embrace the bluesman in him.

Wild thing make my heart sing