Gerry Rafferty—the Scottish singer-songwriter who had a string of 1970s hits in “Baker Street,” “Right Down The Line,” and “Stuck In The Middle With You”—has died after a long kidney-related illness. He was 63. Rafferty, who had battled alcoholism for years, had been put on life support in November after his kidneys failed, but survived being taken off the machines and returned home, where he died.
Rafferty was a former subway busker who had his first recordings under the name The Humblebums, a group that he co-founded with comedian Billy Connolly, followed shortly by his solo debut, Can I Have My Money Back. In 1972, Rafferty formed Stealers Wheel with school friend Joe Egan, releasing a critically and commercially successful self-titled debut later that year under the direction of influential producers Lieber & Stoller. That record featured the hit “Stuck In The Middle With You,” a song whose intentionally Dylanesque style still causes some confusion, and which later garnered a totally different kind of unshakable mental connection when it soundtracked a scene in Reservoir Dogs.
Stealers Wheel disbanded in 1975, and Rafferty embarked on a successful solo career with his second album, 1978’s City To City, and notably its single “Baker Street,” an ever-crescendoing portrait of urban inertia that would become both Rafferty’s signature song and an adult-contemporary staple thanks to its huge, sweeping saxophone solo, which instantly conjures a sort of sunglasses-at-night, back-alley romanticism. The song reached No. 2 on the charts and, according to some sources, led to “The Baker Street Phenomenon,” a resurgence in sales of saxophones and their use in mainstream rock and pop songs. (The solo is so legendary, it even has its own Facebook page.) According to Rafferty, “Baker Street” still earned him £80,000 a year some 30 years after it was released.