My introduction to this week's tune came with me searching for it (actually several years after it was a hit) on all of my Bob Dylan albums, as well as the ones I didn't own at the local record shop (remember Google was just a distant dream in the seventies), only to eventually learn that it wasn't Dylan after all but a couple of blokes in a band from Scotland....
Stealers Wheel were formed in 1972 by teenage friends Gerry Rafferty (who went on to some solo success) and Joe Egan. By the time their first album had been released, Rafferty had already left the band (while Rafferty was a talented musician, he was never comfortable with the fame that came from being such), but when the album became a modest hit and their first single a huge hit, he was persuaded to rejoin the band. They would go on to release two more albums but had disbanded for good in 1975 before their third album was even released. For their all too short career, Stealers Wheel released three studio albums, three compilation albums (oh, the power and glory of having a hit record), and five singles. The members of the band not including Rafferty and Egan reformed in 2008, but the ills that plagued them the first time around were still present, and the reunited band did not even last the year.
Fun Fact: The name Stealers Wheel is a play on words of a sort. The band hails from Sheffield, at one time a city noted for its steelmaking (especially for cutlery) plants, and a steelers wheel is an abrasive tool used for polishing steel.
"Stuck in the Middle with You" was released in 1973 from their debut album, the ingeniously named Stealers Wheel. The single would reach #6 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100, #8 on the U.K. Singles Chart, and #2 in Canada (so many cool kids in the Great White North!). The album peaked at #50 on the Billboard 200, and I have no idea what it did in the U.K. or Canada because the Wikipedia entry did a shit job of telling me. So there.
"Stuck in the Middle with You" deals with Rafferty's aforementioned aversion to fame and its trappings, as it describes his discomfort (the lyrics make me think alcohol and/or drugs may have been involved as well) at being at a record label function and the attendant bullshit that comes with it. The band has said it was going for a paranoid Dylanesque sound...and as I noted above, they most certainly nailed it, especially with Rafferty's vocals. The song features a nice acoustic guitar opening, followed by a funky bass line leading up to the vocals, and spread throughout is a slithering electric guitar that mimics the nausea Rafferty very likely felt. The band makes liberal use of an emaycee fave, handclaps, and as I listened throughout this past week, I was surprised by how big of a role the rhythm section--bass, drums, handclaps--played in making this tune a lot funkier than one would expect from a Scottish folk band. You probably had to be there, but this is another fine example of all the excellent pop tunes the 1970's offered to those of us who were lucky enough to live and listen through that wonderful decade.
[Props to me for getting this far without the obligatory mention that "Stuck in the Middle with You" was the song Michael Madsen--Mr. Blonde--danced to in the cop torture scene in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs.]
Lyric Sheet: "Trying to make some sense of it all/But I can see it makes no sense at all/Is it cool to go to sleep on the floor?/Well, I don't think I can take anymore..."
Enjoy:
Republican = Racist
Peace,
emaycee
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