"Winding your way down on Baker Street
Light in your head and dead on your feet
Well, another crazy day, you'll drink the night away
And you forget about everything"
Light in your head and dead on your feet
Well, another crazy day, you'll drink the night away
And you forget about everything"
"Baker Street"
Gerald "Gerry" Rafferty (16 April 1947 – 4 January 2011) was a Scottish singer-songwriter probably best known for his songs "Baker Street", "Right Down the Line", and (with the band Stealers Wheel) "Stuck in the Middle with You". Make sure you spell his name correctly, e.g. "Gerry" not 'Jerry", but "if you get it wrong you'll get it right next time".
"These tropes are going, they're going home":
- Celebrity Is Overrated: He was never comfortable with the fame side of the music business, to put it mildly - he was only interested in writing and performing music and explicitly rejected stardom. His friend Billy Connolly said, "I wanted success and fame and I got it, to a degree. Gerry wanted respect. He wanted his talent to be respected. He wanted his songs to be respected. And he certainly got that."
- Cool Shades: His tinted glasses were one of his trademarks.
- Cover Version: Allen Toussaint's "Get Out of My Life, Woman", John Lennon's "Out the Blue".
- Hidden Track: "The Grinches," on Another World.
- Location Song: "Baker Street", about the London street. It's a melancholic jazz song.
- London: "Baker Street" was inspired by the real place.
- Musical Pastiche: "Stuck in the Middle with You" (a Stealers Wheel song that Rafferty cowrote and sang lead on) is a Bob Dylan pastiche that is so dead-on it's been continually misattributed to Dylan ever since its release.
- New Sound Album: Sleepwalking introduced synthesizers and drum machines into his work.
- One-Woman Song: "Mary Skeffington" note
- Self-Titled Album: 1974's Gerry Rafferty, which is primarily a compilation of songs he recorded as a member of the Humblebums with Billy Connolly at the start of his career.
