Indiana Wants Me

We can only marvel at the mind of the man. We were getting ready for a little croquet action and listening to some satellite radio when the familiar siren intro of Indiana Wants Me began. Without batting an eye Reid blurts out, “R. Dean Taylor”. Perhaps a little scary that the ol’ boy would recall Taylor’s name. IWM was a top ten hit in 1970, but it was a one shot deal; a one hit wonder in an era that produced them with regularity. But you know, Reid just seems to know these things. I wouldn't be surprised if he knew Andy Kim's astrological sign. In the parlance of today, I'm just saying...


Taylor himself took an unusual path to semi-stardom. A Canadian white boy, he signed with Motown in the early 1960’s, inking up with song writing luminaries Brian Holland and Lamont Dozier. The Holland, Dozier, Holland team became responsible for many of the great Hit City USA tunes of the day. Taylor, as a writer/artist with Motown, co-wrote several songs under that label, the most famous of those being The Supremes hit, Love Child . Still, up to that point, Taylor had enjoyed very little success outside Canada and the Detroit area. But when Indiana Wants Me hit number 5 on the Billboard charts in 1970, Taylor at last received some national exposure. Enough, at least, that thirty eight years later, grown men batting about little wooden balls on a scorched South Carolina lawn still recognize the opening bars of IWM.

After the siren and an emotionally mood setting bar of ooo, ooo, ooo’s comes Taylor’s chorused plea:

Indiana wants me
Lord, I can't go back there
Indiana wants me
Lord, I can't go back there
I wish I had you to talk to

Here we have love, yes that tired, old, sway-backed horse; but life and death drama as well. The guy is obviously on the lam and the situation is coming to a head.

If a man ever needed dyin', he did
No one had the right to say what he said about you
And it's so cold and lonely here without you
Out there, the law's a-comin'
I'm scared and so tired of runnin'

So, it appears the one Indiana wants has iced a dude for having the unmitigated audacity to merely say something derogatory about his love interest. Perhaps a little extreme, but Taylor‘s excellent rendition makes vigilante justice seem totally acceptable. Taylor tells us just enough: Life on the run has deteriorated into sirens, megaphones and a hastily written love letter somewhere out on the Hoosier plain. He did it, he admits it and now the county mounties are closing in. Perhaps chivalry is not dead, but this guy soon could be.

I hope this letter finds its way to you
Forgive me, love, for the shame I put you through and all the tears
Hang on, love, to the memories of those happy years
Red lights are flashin' around me
Yeah, love, it looks like they found me

On his website, Taylor claims to have written IWM after seeing Bonnie and Clyde. Maybe so; but my version of this song imagines our over-reactive fugitive as a beer swilling, lucky strike smoking, boiler maker with three ex wives hounding him for support; and all of them pissed that he has shacked up with a stripper and fathered another damn kid. Oh well, maybe Taylor’s mob fantasy is more romantic, but something had to get him to this lowly place. Of course, most murders aren’t all that romantic and the gory details usually include the perp, moments after capture, spitting into a local news camera some version of R Dean Taylor‘s clarion call, “He needed killing”!

Indiana wants me
Lord, I can't go back there
Indiana wants me
Lord, I can't go back there

(spoken as the last lines are sung)
This is the police. You are surrounded. Give yourself up.
This is the police. Give yourself up. You are surrounded.

Hearing R. Dean Taylor’s Indiana Wants Me may have been a bit of foreshadowing for Reid’s and Wilder’s afternoon croquet fortunes. I didn't actually say “give yourself up, you are surrounded", but, as it turned out, I could have.


R. Dean Taylor's website.
You Tube version of I.W.M.