Fact #117377
When:
Short story:
Gerry Rafferty releases his biggest hit single, Baker Street, in the UK, where it will peak at No3.
Full article:
“The thing I’m proudest of with Baker Street,” says Gerry Rafferty, “is that I managed to make a depressing experience into something positive and uplifting.”
As a Glasgow-based singer and songwriter, Rafferty had tasted success with his band Stealer’s Wheel whose Stuck In The Middle With You had been a massive international smash but the aftermath of that success plunged Rafferty into despair. “I was living up near Loch Lomond when the band split, but I found myself having to make weekly visits to the lawyer’s office in Holborn to thrash out the legal details of the break-up. This went on for two years while I was trying to establish myself as a solo performer, and it was very depressing.”
Rafferty sought refuge from his misery by meeting his musician friend Ian Campbell at his mews house just off Baker Street, and the pair would retreat to The Globe pub nearby. Inevitably, often the worse for wear, Rafferty and Campbell would sit up through the night, drinking steadily. “One night in the summer of 77 we stayed up, playing guitars until the sun came up. I had to get the train to Glasgow from Euston, and as I walked down there with my guitar case in my hand, it was such a beautiful morning, such a positive feeling.”
He started Baker Street on the train and completed it on the shores of Loch Lomond. “Those lines - ‘He’s got the dream about buying some land, give up the booze, but you know he’s the rolling stone,’ – that’s abut Ian, but as a whole the song’s about the loneliness and alienation of being a stranger in a big city when I wanted to be home in my cottage with my wife and child.”
Nevertheless, the experience proved valuable when Baker Street went gold, and City To City, the album from which it came, went platinum.
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As a Glasgow-based singer and songwriter, Rafferty had tasted success with his band Stealer’s Wheel whose Stuck In The Middle With You had been a massive international smash but the aftermath of that success plunged Rafferty into despair. “I was living up near Loch Lomond when the band split, but I found myself having to make weekly visits to the lawyer’s office in Holborn to thrash out the legal details of the break-up. This went on for two years while I was trying to establish myself as a solo performer, and it was very depressing.”
Rafferty sought refuge from his misery by meeting his musician friend Ian Campbell at his mews house just off Baker Street, and the pair would retreat to The Globe pub nearby. Inevitably, often the worse for wear, Rafferty and Campbell would sit up through the night, drinking steadily. “One night in the summer of 77 we stayed up, playing guitars until the sun came up. I had to get the train to Glasgow from Euston, and as I walked down there with my guitar case in my hand, it was such a beautiful morning, such a positive feeling.”
He started Baker Street on the train and completed it on the shores of Loch Lomond. “Those lines - ‘He’s got the dream about buying some land, give up the booze, but you know he’s the rolling stone,’ – that’s abut Ian, but as a whole the song’s about the loneliness and alienation of being a stranger in a big city when I wanted to be home in my cottage with my wife and child.”
Nevertheless, the experience proved valuable when Baker Street went gold, and City To City, the album from which it came, went platinum.