Gerry Rafferty
(April 16, 1947 - January 4, 2010)
Gerry Rafferty was a singer and songwriter, who had a smash hit in 1978 with Baker Street, a world-weary classic based on his experiences busking in the London Underground as a struggling young musician. The song reached number 3 in the UK charts and number 2 in the US.
The song was recognized by musicians rights organization the BMI at an awards ceremony in London (October, 2010) for having been played over 5 million times worldwide.
Rafferty was born on into a working-class family at Paisley near Glasgow, Scotland and grew up in a council house. He was educated at St Mirin’s Academy.
His Irish-born father was a heavy-drinking miner who died when Gerry was 16. Inspired by his Scottish mother, who had taught him Irish and Scottish folk songs as a boy, and heavily influenced by the music of The Beatles and Bob Dylan, the young Gerry started to write his own material.
He began his career busking and formed a band with Billy Connolly, the comedian.
Rafferty’s first chart success had come in 1973, as a member of a folk-rock band called Stealer’s Wheel. A commercially appealing single from their first album, Stuck In The Middle With You, received widespread radio airplay on account of its shuffling catchiness and went to No 8 in the British charts.
Rolling Stone magazine judged it “the best Dylan record since 1966”, and the song was later revived in a blood-curdling scene in the Quentin Tarantino film Reservoir Dogs (1992).
But it was the haunting Baker Street — with its searing saxophone riff — that propelled Rafferty into the pantheon of British rock legends.
After years of touring, Rafferty gave it up in 1983, declaring that he wanted to “watch my family grow”. In the same year he provided a vocal to the soundtrack of the film Local Hero (1983), and from time to time he released new material, including the albums North and South (1988) and, five years later, On A Wing And A Prayer, which featured backing vocals by his brother Jim, who also co-wrote some of the songs. The album also reunited Rafferty with his old partner from Stealer’s Wheel, Joe Egan.
Further albums were Over My Head in 1994 and Another World in 2000.
After the death of his younger brother, Joe, in 1995, a feud developed with his surviving sibling Jim over an insult he claimed his rock star brother applied to him and his friends.
Rafferty’s last original album, Another World, was followed by a collection of his old hits Days Gone Down (2006).
In London in July 2008, Rafferty was treated in hospital for liver problems. Rafferty, who battled alcoholism for many years, was admitted to hospital in Bournemouth in November with suspected liver failure.
Rafferty married, in 1970, Carla Ventilla. The marriage was dissolved. He is survived by daughter Martha, granddaughter Celia, and his brother Jim.
RIP
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