Proclaiming you're sooo sick of "Baker Street" will be the fashionable thing to do today. The death of Gerry Rafferty means the oldies station will drag out his biggest solo single - if they ever put it away, that is - and his entire career will be summed up in that single song. Perhaps they'll put in "Stuck in the Middle" by Stealer's Wheel, and make a reference to the Tarantino movie scene that ruined the song for millions. (I'm just getting to the point where I can hear it without wincing.) It's a pity "Baker Street"'s monster-hit status keeps some from listening to the actual song, because it's a nice piece of pop music. The album has some sweet tunes on it as well, and Rafferty's work with Stealers Wheel contains some geme.

Don't know much about the fellow's later career, and it's always unwise to speculate about such things, but it seems as if the success of the "City to City" album turned off the creative taps for good. The follow-up was thin broth by comparison, and even had the deadly signs of ambition i.e., I'm not a pop star, I'm a composer, and this is my statement. That's how I recall it, anyway - it began with one of those penny-whistle-laced tunes that tells you the singer is heading back to his roots, the song went on and on until it had exhausted its simple idea, and nothing else on the album stood out. Sky news reported last night that he'd had a drinking problem for a long time; perhaps that killed his skills. Or he just got a lot of money and stopped caring. Someone will tell us on the wikipedia bio.

He probably got sick of "Baker Street" too. If you had a headache, that guitar solo at the end would hurt. I saw him perform the song once on an afternoon TV show - Merv or something, don't recall. Here's Gerry Rafferty, singing Baker Street! It wasn't live, of course. The instruments weren't even plugged in. No amps. In those days people just pretended the musicians were playing - everyone knew they weren't, but it would have been impolite somehow to point it out. If you remember "Baker Street," you know it fades out at the end. So they did what they had to do with all lip-synced tunes that fade out: bring up the clapping as the band pretends to play softer. Then the band just stops, as if gratified by all this spontaneous clapping that started all at once when they turned down their instrument volume, and the band nods and looks silly and that's the end of it.

I remember Rafferty's expression. He looked absolutely miserable.