Stealers Wheel
Prior to Stealers Wheel, Gerry Rafferty had played in a Clydesdale
folk duo called The Humblebums in the late 60s with
superstar-comedian-to-be Billy Connolly. Billy would introduce
Rafferty as "this wee guy fae Paisley that writes magic
songs".
Joining up with Joe Egan, he formed Stealers Wheel who enjoyed
their first hit with Stuck In The Middle With You in May
1973.
After a scrappy self-titled debut album made as a quintet, the
album Ferguslie Park (named after a notorious district
of Paisley in Scotland) saw Stealers Wheel reduced to the song writing
core of Joe Egan and Gerry Rafferty, a move that heightened the
focus on their sublime close harmonies - favourably compared
to Simon & Garfunkel or CSN.
Constant personnel changes and a series of legal wranglings
stifled any more success for Stealers Wheel, and Rafferty and Egan
ended their partnership in 1975.
Rafferty enjoyed a successful solo career, becoming a
transatlantic superstar thanks to 1978 hit Baker Street
- and its parent album, City To City, which
sold over 2.5 million copies. His follow up album, Night
Owl was again well received but failed to emulate the
success of City to City. It was to be the high point
of Rafferty's career. His next two albums, Snakes and Ladders
and Sleepwalking failed to make any impact.
Rafferty quit the music industry altogether in 1983, with Baker
Street ensuring him a life-long income of
around £80,000 per year. He did make sporadic solo albums in
the late 80s and 90s, but by then he had split from wife Carla and
become a semi-recluse in Los Angeles. The death of brother Joe in
1995 was said to have been particularly devastating for him, after
which his relationship with his remaining sibling, Jim, took an
extraordinary turn.
Jim Rafferty set up a website called Effing Peasants (allegedly
named after an insult Gerry threw at him and his friends) where he
dismissed his famous younger brother as "The Great Gutsby"
and "The Human Bottlebank", claiming he was a paranoid
drunk.
Then the real humiliations began. In 2005 - and now back in the
UK - Rafferty was rushed to hospital after a collapse at his
Hampstead home, after which he denied overdosing on prescription
drugs.
A year later he was greeted by police at Inverness Airport
after a ten-hour bender on a flight from LA via Heathrow. He was
apparently so drunk that he had to be escorted from the plane in a
wheelchair, an episode that so appalled waiting friends that they
refused to collect him. When none of the airport taxis would
accept him, Rafferty was taken by police to a drying-out clinic
run by the Church Of Scotland.
In July 2008 he was thrown out of the exclusive Westbury Hotel
in Mayfair, London, where he had been steadily sinking whisky for
four days and relieving himself in public areas of the hotel. He
checked himself into St Thomas' hospital and was diagnosed with
liver problems. On 1 August he vanished from the hospital, leaving
behind his clothes and luggage, and disappeared without trace.
Rafferty died on 5 January 2011.
Destined to be remembered - if at all - for the cameo
appearance of Stuck In The Middle With You in Quentin
Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, Stealers Wheel crafted
many other tunes worthy of patronage by 'K-Billy's Super Sounds of
the 70s'.
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