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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0According to his friend John Byrne, Gerry Rafferty, \u201cWent through hell and arrived at his final destination with a sense of peace and fulfilment, but what a journey.\u201d \u00a0Occasional singing partner Barbara Dickson said, \u201cHe liked having money and status, and why shouldn\u2019t he have done it? He had a image of himself being almost like an American rock star and that was okay. \u00a0He was always well off and drove nice cars, and coming from a very humble upbringing, he felt that was an achievement I\u2019m sure.\u201d His PR guy Michael Grey feels that there wasn\u2019t anything that anyone could have done to save Rafferty from himself: \u00a0\u201cWhen he would say, \u2018Oh, let\u2019s not go to the gate for this (flight), let\u2019s have another drink,\u2019 it never occurred to me that he was on the road to becoming an alcoholic…but Gerry wasn\u2019t nearly such a nice man when he\u2019d had a certain amount of whisky.\u201d \u00a0Although he didn\u2019t pass away until January of 2011, Gerry Rafferty began circling the drain in the 1990\u2019s when the decade saw his beloved wife Carla leave him, the death of both his brother Joe and his long time friend and producer Hugh Murphy. It was a sad twenty year decline for someone who Dickson later said, \u201cHe was a titan, a giant. \u00a0He could have been as famous as any songwriter in the world, but chose not to be.\u201d Gerry Rafferty was a huge but complex talent. Unfortunately, the road to stardom is littered with similarly talented artists who fell by the wayside trying to become famous or because they did become famous.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A native of Paisley, Scotland, Gerry Rafferty had already worked in the Glasgow music scene for a decade before he teamed up with the not yet famous comic Billy Connolly. \u00a0\u00a0Performing as The Humblebums, they were an odd pairing with the introverted Rafferty and the extroverted Connolly playing songs and telling stories. Eventually, the stories got longer and Connolly\u2019s path to stardom veered away from music. \u00a0When the partnership dissolved in 1971, Rafferty tried his hand at making a solo record (<\/span>Can I Have My Money Back?<\/span><\/i>). \u00a0It sank with nary a trace but his next partnership with his old Paisley mate Joe Egan struck gold with a song meant as a parody of Bob Dylan. \u00a0<\/span>Stuck in the Middle With You<\/span><\/i> could have been even bigger stepping stone for them had their record company not filed for bankruptcy, thereby leaving Stealers Wheel with unpaid royalties and a tangle of legal troubles. \u00a0Rafferty retreated into solo work, traveling the land with his wife Carla and daughter Martha trying to sell his introspective songs while the Punk Rock wave rose and fell about them. The road to stardom that had seemed so short when <\/span>\u00a0\u00a0Stuck In the Middle With You<\/span><\/i> became a hit turned into a much longer slog.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0All the while, Rafferty wrote and self recorded his songs. \u00a0Endless trips to London to sort out the Stealers Wheel fiasco meant hours of train travel from Scotland. \u00a0The trips there and back prompted the title for his next album, <\/span>City to City. \u00a0<\/span><\/i>At the end of another day of wrangling with the lawyers, Rafferty and fellow musician Rab Noakes would meet to hoist a few at The Globe on the corner of Marylebone Road and Baker Street. \u00a0<\/span>Baker Street<\/span><\/i> was written near the end of his second album\u2019s creation, about the same time the legal proceedings were put to bed. \u00a0He and producer Murphy couldn\u2019t make the song\u2019s melody line stand out until Murphy had the idea of using session sax player Raphael Ravenscroft to play what would become <\/span>Baker Street\u2019s<\/span><\/i> iconic hook. \u00a0Even though his label wasn\u2019t keen on releasing it as a single, the song rose to the top of the charts, eventually knocking the Bee Gees <\/span>Saturday Night Fever<\/span><\/i> soundtrack from the top spot. \u00a0Paul McCartney sent his congratulations for recording \u201can incredible song.\u201d \u00a0It wasn\u2019t lost on Rafferty that he had, \u201cbecome an overnight sensation from doing what I have done for a decade.\u201d \u00a0According to <\/span>Classic Rock Magazine<\/span><\/i>, when he died at age 63, \u201cHis work had made him a millionaire, but the considerable due he merited as a songwriter of rare craft and intuitive skill had largely eluded him.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Where did Gerry Rafferty\u2019s life and career run off the rails? \u00a0<\/span>Stuck in the Middle With You <\/span><\/i>pushed Stealers Wheel into endless \u00a0touring. Rafferty himself claimed he was near a nervous breakdown when he quit the band in the early 1970s. \u00a0He returned to record a couple more albums in 1974 and 1975, but the magic wasn\u2019t there and internal tensions with the band ground the whole thing to a halt. \u00a0During this same period, Rafferty began to see the record companies as the enemy. Dickson described his state of mind as, \u201cHe was obsessed with keeping control and he didn\u2019t trust anybody in the music business. \u00a0Also, he saw himself as a serious writer, which indeed he was, but being a pop star is a Faustian pact. You cannot start dictating the terms two years in.\u201d Rafferty developed a reputation as being an artist who was difficult to work with.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There were more fine albums and hit songs, notably <\/span>Night Owl <\/span><\/i>which scored hits with the title track and <\/span>Get It Right Next Time <\/span><\/i>that were compared to the best works of Steely Dan. \u00a0Later came 1980s <\/span>Snakes and Ladders <\/span><\/i>and 1982s <\/span>Sleepwalking<\/span><\/i>. \u00a0Indeed, the <\/span>Greatest Hits<\/span><\/i> album released in 1997 is full of songs that one will hear and say, \u201cOh, that was Gerry Rafferty!\u201d \u00a0The <\/span>City to City <\/span><\/i>track<\/span> Whatever\u2019s Written In Your Heart <\/span><\/i>is a good example of a song so good it generated a fan letter from another notable songwriter, James Taylor. \u00a0<\/span>Stuck in the Middle With You <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Baker Street<\/span><\/i> kept the royalties coming in (especially after Quentin Tarantino used the former in a pivotal scene in his movie <\/span>Reservoir Dogs<\/span><\/i>) leaving Rafferty with the income necessary to live a good life while trying to not be famous. \u00a0No matter how good his records were, he refused to tour behind them. Michael Grey, head of PR at United Artists characterized this phase of Rafferty\u2019s career: \u00a0\u201cHe was very guarded, but I could understand that. I had seen many sides of the record business by then. He was very sure of his own talent and equally suspicious of how it would be exploited.\u201d \u00a0Even his daughter noticed how the success of <\/span>Baker Street<\/span><\/i> changed the game: \u00a0\u201cWhen <\/span>Baker Street<\/span><\/i> became the hit that it was, adults changed towards me. \u00a0They smiled more, gave me bigger portions of food at school lunches, and I remember feeling how fake and phony people became. \u00a0Children see things as they really are.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Martha also thinks that feeling disillusioned with the music business made her father seek some form of inner spiritual peace. \u00a0For a time he lived with Martha in California studying the teachings of George Gurdjieff, a Russian born spiritualist. The search for inner peace did not keep him from drinking and by November of 2010, he was on life support in the hospital suffering from multiple organ failures. \u00a0He was able to recover enough to spend a last Christmas with Martha\u2019s family and to have an extended conversation with his old friend John Byrne. Byrne recalled, \u201cGerald and I blethered, laughed and shot the breeze for a good five or six hours non-stop. He was perfectly coherent and ready to quit this world for the next. \u00a0Two days later, he peacefully slipped away.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Byrne gave the eulogy at his friend\u2019s requiem mass on January 21, 2011 attended by some 400 mourners including then Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond. \u00a0A tribute concert the next month featured Martha, Dickson, Rab Nokes, Jake Bruce and The Proclaimers. His home town renamed a street Gerry Rafferty Drive. \u00a0It seems the songwriter who didn\u2019t want to be all that famous will be remembered for more than must the haunting saxophone hook in <\/span>Baker Street.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There are aspects of Gerry Rafferty\u2019s story that don\u2019t exude optimism, yet we can go back and leave the last word to him: \u00a0\u201c<\/span>And you wake up it\u2019s a new morning – The sun is shining it\u2019s a new morning – And you\u2019re going, you\u2019re going home.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/i>If you have ever heard <\/span>Baker Street<\/span><\/i> (and I am willing to bet you have), you now have Ravenscroft\u2019s sax line stuck in your head. If this triggers a couple of choruses or <\/span>Stuck in the Middle With You,<\/span><\/i> I am sure Rafferty wouldn\u2019t mind.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 After all of this talk about\u00a0Baker Street<\/em>, you didn’t think I wasn’t going to ear worm you with it, did you?