Gerry Rafferty

Gerry Rafferty had a way of telling stories that sounded as if he had lived them firsthand. His music, whether solo or with bands, always carried that air between the streetwise and the intimate, as if the lyrics had been written in a neighborhood café or on the backseat of a night bus. This is evident in songs like Baker Street, where the saxophone paints an urban landscape and Rafferty’s voice gets lost in the hustle of a city that never sleeps. He wasn’t just a singer-songwriter: he was someone who turned everyday anecdotes into songs that resonated as if you had lived them yourself.

Before the world knew him for Baker Street, Rafferty spent years bouncing between projects that shaped him. He started with the Humblebums, that folk-pop duo alongside Billy Connolly where, according to lore, they even flipped through Berlin’s phone book looking for unusual surnames. Then came Stealers Wheel, the band he formed with his old friend Joe Egan, which, despite legal troubles, scored a hit with Stuck in the Middle with You—a song that, years later, slipped into cinema with a scene no one forgets. But Rafferty didn’t stop there: in 1978, when he recorded City to City, he found his definitive voice, that blend of melancholy and rhythm that would make him unmistakable.