In the last 60’s and early 70’s, Gerry Rafferty’s music was inescapable. He scored one of the biggest hits of the decade with his pop-tastic “Baker Street” from the album City To City which ensured him living fame when the song was covered by the Foo Fighters for my generation, and an earlier band scored Rafferty’s music infamy when Quentin Tarantino used the Dylan-esque bubble-gum pop classic “Stuck In The Middle With You” by Stealers Wheel to be the soundtrack to one of the most horrifying ear-removal torture scenes in cinema. Gerry Rafferty, singer-songwriter, passed away at his home in Bournemouth, England, as a result of liver failure at age 63.
Rafferty’s collaboration with school chum Joe Egan resulted in Stealers Wheel, but a previous band paired Egan with comedian Billy Connelly in a folk act called The Humblebums. “It was getting awkward on stage,” Rafferty would later recall of his time in The Humblebums. “When I did a solo piece, just voice and acoustic guitar, Billy would walk off stage. And his jokes were getting longer and longer while the songs were getting shorter and shorter. It made sense to part when we did.”
Rafferty’s funeral will be held in the town of his birth, Paisley, Scotland. Until then, let’s all take a trip back to Baker Street, shall we?
Tags: Gerry Rafferty, Baker Street, Stealers Wheel, Stuck In The Middle With You, Joe Egan, singer-songwriter, musician, Gerry Rafferty dead at 63, Gerry Rafferty dead, liver failure, Paisley, Scotland, Bournemouth, England, Billy Connelly, The Humblebums
