Day After Day #82: Baker Street

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).  

Baker Street (1978)

As you can imagine, life was a lot simpler in the summer of 1978. I was 10, in between fifth and sixth grades, and living it up, at least as much as a 10-year-old can. Both my parents worked, so as a prototypical latchkey kids of the '70s, I was pretty much left to my own devices all day. Except for a six-week stretch when I was bused to day camp (which was pretty fun), I was riding my bike all over town, playing baseball and street hockey with my friends and generally just out goofing off until dinner time.

I wasn't buying music yet but I was listening to it a lot courtesy of the Toronto Top 40 stations, CHUM-AM and CFTR. Top 40 back then was pretty all over the place. For example, CHUM would publish weekly charts of the top 30 songs. For July 15, 1978, the top song was Meat Loaf's "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad," followed by the Rolling Stones ("Miss You"), Gerry Rafferty ("Baker Street"), Bonnie Tyler ("It's a Heartache"), Jackson Browne ("The Load Out/Stay"), Andy Gibb ("Shadow Dancing"), Billy Joel ("Only the Good Die Young"), Carly Simon ("You Belong to Me"), Bob Seger ("Still the Same") and Frankie Valli ("Grease"). Further down were the Band, Eddie Money, Genesis, Rod Stewart, the Commodores and Anne Murray. Like I said, all over the place. I hadn't discovered FM radio yet, but the AM stations were delivering a decent cross-section of what was happening, both good and bad.

One artist who got a ton of airplay that summer was the aforementioned Gerry Rafferty. The Scottish singer was previously in Stealers Wheel, who had a big hit with "Stuck in the Middle With You" in 1973 (which of course became popular again almost 20 years later when Quentin Tarantino used it in Reservoir Dogs). 

After that band split up, Rafferty was unable to release any material for three years because of legal issues. His first post-Stealers Wheel release was the 1978 album City to City and it was huge, thanks to the lead single "Baker Street." Goddamn, I loved that song. It went to #1 in Canada (and #2 in the U.S.) and was everywhere that summer, thanks to that killer sax part played by Raphael Ravenscroft. 

Rafferty wrote the song during that time when he was embroiled in legal problems. He was staying at a friend's place on Baker Street in London at the time when he was in town to meet with lawyers.

"Winding 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/This city desert makes you feel so cold/It's got so many people, but it's got no soul/And it's taken you so long/To find out you were wrong/When you thought it held everything."

The song ends on a positive note, possibly inspired by the resolution to the legal mess Rafferty found himself in, carried out by a hot guitar solo.

"He's got this dream about buying some land/He's gonna give up the booze and the one-night stands/And then he'll settle down/In some quiet little town/And forget about everything/But you know he'll always keep movin'/You know he's never gonna stop movin'/'Cause he's rollin', he's the rolling stone/When you wake up, it's a new mornin'/The sun is shining, it's a new mornin'/You're going, you're going home."

There's been a lot of back and forth over the years about who came up with that iconic sax riff. Ravenscroft claimed he came up with it while Rafferty said he told Ravenscroft what to play. A remastered version of City to City was released in 2011 and included the original demo of "Baker Street," complete with the riff played on electric guitar. 

Slash later cited the sax riff as an influence on his guitar solo on Guns 'N Roses' monster hit "Sweet Child o' Mine." The Foo Fighters covered the song as a B-side to their song "My Hero," playing the riff on guitar. It's okay, but it's not as good as the original.

Rafferty had another hit with the next single off City to City, "Right Down the Line," which is an excellent song. He had a few minor hits off his next album, but his subsequent albums didn't perform well. He didn't like to tour, which didn't help matters. Rafferty had a serious alcohol problem throughout his life that ultimately led to his death in 2010 of liver failure.

It was a sad ending, but when I think of Gerry Rafferty, I think of "Baker Street" and that carefree summer of '78.