My introduction to this week's tune was WLS-89 out of Chicago in 1978, the year it became a big hit for this week's featured artist. Oddly enough, I didn't care for it in its original run, and it was only years later that I began to appreciate its greatness. Better late than never....
I briefly touched on Gerry Rafferty when I wrote about his original band Stealer's Wheel in Vol. CCCLXXII, but as his career stretched out for many more years I'll do a proper bio paragraph. After his time in Stealer's Wheel, Rafferty hit mega stardom in the late seventies, and sadly his career never recovered from it. Over the course of the next three decades Rafferty would continue to record, but his discomfort with the trappings of fame would only fuel his alcoholism and his withdrawal from society. For his career, Rafferty released eleven studio albums (one #1 in the U.S. and two top fives in the U.K.), and twenty singles with a top five in America and two more top fives in Great Britain. Rafferty's behavior veered erratic as his alcoholism worsened in his last years, and he succumbed to liver failure in 2011.
"Baker Street" was the second single from Rafferty's 1978 album, the rather urbanly named City to City. The song would reach #2 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100 and #3 in his native U.K. The album would be the only #1 of his career here in the States and would peak at #6 on U.K. Album Chart.
Fun Fact: While doing my half-assed research, I came across this line in Wikipedia: "[The sax solo] is said to have been responsible for a resurgence in the sales of saxophones and their use in mainstream pop music and television advertising." Ahem. Nothing against the brilliant sax solo, but it seems to me there was this kid Springsteen with a sax player something something Clemons that lit the saxophone scene just a few years before....
"Baker Street" opens with an eerie, smoky sax solo and you immediately know you're headed into territories unknown. While largely autobiographical, the song has echoes of feelings so many of us know: waiting for the one lucky break, the chance that there's a start for something new. Rafferty nails just about every aspect of this one--the lyrics are damn near literary, his vocals capture the joy and pain of his protagonists, the killer sax solo, a killer guitar solo, and a man making the most of his abilities. In the end, it's a song about hope, even if in all likelihood it's a false hope. For even a false hope is better than no hope. Thus endeth the lesson....
Lyric Sheet: "Windin' your way down on Baker Street/Light in your head and dead on your feet/Well another crazy day, you'll drink the night away/And forget about everything..."
Enjoy:
Fuck Donald Trump
Peace,
emaycee
