Kiste Gerry Rafferty

Every Album, Every Song
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-78952-215-0
Verlag: Sonicbond Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 128 Seiten

Reihe: On Track

Sometimes acclaimed as Scotland's finest-ever singer-songwriter, Gerry Rafferty was born in 1947. After developing a passion for several genres of popular music during childhood, from traditional folk and classical to rock'n'roll and the early 1960s beat boom, he played in a couple of bands during his teens. After joining The Humblebums, an acoustic duo with future stand-up comedian Billy Connolly, and releasing a solo album Can I Have My Money Back?, he formed Stealers Wheel, whose debut spawned the transatlantic top ten hit 'Stuck In The Middle With You'. Initially a five-piece band and finally a duo, they split in 1975.
He resumed his solo career three years later with the single 'Baker Street' and accompanying album City To City, the global successes of which proved impossible to surpass. Although he disliked many aspects of the music business, rarely toured, never played live in America, and became increasingly reclusive in later years, he released eight more albums before his death in 2011, with a posthumous collection Rest In Blue following ten years later.
This book examines in detail all his recorded songs, some of them quite starkly autobiographical in content, from every stage of his career.

John Van der Kiste has published over a hundred books, mostly historical biography and music, including titles for Sonicbond on The Rolling Stones, Eagles, Mott The Hoople and Ian Hunter, Free and Bad Company, and Manfred Mann's Earth Band. He has reviewed books and records for the local and national press and fanzines and written booklet notes for CD reissues from EMI and other labels. A former DJ and performer with various groups, he also co-wrote one track on Riff Regan's Milestones, and played harmonica on London's The Hell For Leather Mob. He lives in Devon, UK.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kiste, Jon van der

Leseproben

Chapter 7

Can I Have My Money Back? (1971)

Personnel:

Gerry Rafferty: guitar, vocal, piano

Joe Egan: backing vocals

Rab Noakes, Zed Jenkins, Alan Parker: guitar

Roger Brown: guitar, backing vocals

Gary Taylor: bass, backing vocals

Rod King: steel guitar

Hugh Murphy: backing vocals

Tom Parker: Hammond organ, harmonium, harpsichord

Tom Lasker: piano

Henry Spinetti, Andy Steele: drums

Johnny Van Derrick: violin Produced by Hugh Murphy

Recorded at Morgan Studios, London

Record label: Transatlantic (UK), Blue Thumb (US)

Release date: October 1971

Running time: 40:23

‘New Street Blues’ (2:59)

A few seconds of muffled chat (‘Do it on the microphone, thank you, Gerald’) lead into some sharp stabs of brass, organ, lead guitar and piano rhythm.

Stuck at home, our hero decides to go downtown and look up a friend with whom he can talk or drink the night away – a theme Gerry returned to on another ‘street’ song with more success a few years later.

‘Didn’t I?’ (3:42)

Love, doubt and seeking reassurance are the main themes in this charmingly simple song. ‘Didn’t I tell you we could make it as long as you believed in me?’. Paisley meets Nashville, with a little help from country-style steel guitar alongside the usual acoustic picking, bass and drums.

‘Mr Universe’ (2:43)

This jaunty, gently humorous song with a Bonzo Dog Band air was inspired by reading a bodybuilding advertisement in a comic and took the form of a plea from a seven-stone weakling sick of having sand kicked in his face to be turned into somebody different. A man’s voice announces grandly that ‘You can have a body like mine’, and lively piano with Beach Boys-style vocal harmonies made this one of the more accessible songs.

‘Mary Skeffington’ (2:31)

Mary Skeffington was Gerry’s mother’s name, and he used the melody of her favourite hymn, ‘Sweet Sacrament Divine’, as the intro when writing a song for her as he urged her gently to go to sleep ‘and make believe that you are just a girl again’. We can assume that Mary heard the song, as she lived to be 95, passing away around 2000. Gerry remained proud of it, later saying he thought it ‘a nice little song’, and was happy when people told him it was one of their favourites. ‘I draw less from the past these days, but I’ve certainly drawn on the past in many songs’.

‘Long Way Round’ (4:49)

The longest number on the album was a song of travel, with an element of mystery or an unexpected twist. A traveller looks across the water, travelling to the other side where someone is waiting for him. He gets onboard a ship in stormy weather on a rough sea, and a stranger sits next to him. It turns out to be his brother, who later walks away without knowing where he’s going. A convoluted, unfinished story is given colour with a backing of predominantly piano and organ, supplemented by some subtle touches of bass and lead guitar towards the end and striking vocal harmonies. Anyone familiar with Procol Harum’s seafaring epic track ‘A Salty Dog’ might wonder whether it had any influence on this song.

‘Can I Have My Money Back?’ (1:51)

Inspired by a recurring childhood memory from Paisley, aged around nine or ten, Gerry regularly went to an old flea-infested cinema known as The Bug Hut. Films were always at the mercy of a half-drunk projectionist, and patrons’ viewing pleasure of Superman or Flash Gordon was often spoiled by the film suddenly breaking down. If it wasn’t fixed, the box office would be besieged by youngsters demanding a refund. So goes verse one. Then we’re introduced to the politicians, who do nothing to alter the status quo of one law for the rich, another for the poor. It’s sung to a jaunty skiffle rhythm with fiddle and pennywhistle throughout, and after the final verse, Johnny Van Derrick’s sprightly fiddle dance finishes it all off. It gave Gerry his first modest taste of single-chart success, reaching number 70 in Australia.

‘Sign On The Dotted Line’ (Rafferty/Egan) (2:34)

A listen to the unreleased Fifth Column song ‘Time Is Like A God’, as mentioned above, will remind us that Gerry was not one to waste a good tune. The dream of the aspiring rock ’n’ roller seeking a career and coming up against the money man with the big cigar was an inspiration that Gerry and Joe would have good reason to revisit later on. Trading a relatively untroubled existence playing guitar in a small bar for a life controlled by someone who pretends to be a Starmaker, signing on the dotted line and then wishing he’d stayed at home instead, is the theme, and might’ve in part served as a metaphor for the future of the young 20-something songwriter recording his first solo album. Some unobtrusive yet effective brass touches, striking multi-tracked vocals and harmonies make this another of the more commercial tracks, bringing Dean Ford’s vocal and again the style of Marmalade to mind. Like ‘Shoeshine Boy’, Simon Turner recorded this on his 1973 album.

‘Make You, Break You’ (3:29)

Imagine a mid-period Beatles outtake with a slightly funky rhythm, underpinned by forceful piano with a catchy tune, and that sums up the spirit of this track well. There’s a bit of a John Lennon feel about the lyric, a sly putdown of a woman who’s not quite all she seemed at first – butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, and ‘Every time I see you look in a mirror/I can tell that’s who you really are’.

‘To Each And Everyone’ (2:46)

A keyboard intro – probably a harmonium – leads into a bittersweet song of farewell. The narrator says goodbye to everyone around him, who could be his friends or family: ‘I know it’s been fun, but we’re living a lie’. Mid-tempo with more crisp keyboards in the instrumental break, the song ends on a rather lovely and definitely Beatles-inspired chord.

‘One Drink Down’ (Rafferty/Byrne) (2:50)

The one song in Gerry’s solo catalogue co-written by the artist who painted so many of the album sleeves was a plaintive country waltz, with violin prominent in the backing. A son has married an unfaithful woman who suddenly leaves without warning, and the only solution to an old problem is to be found – we learn in the opening line – in ‘Rafferty’s Bar’.

‘Don’t Count Me Out’ (3:49)

Inhabiting similar territory to ‘Make You, Break You’, this is a mid-tempo song but of lesser quality and probably the weakest track on an otherwise excellent album. Lyrically, it’s rather slight, as he begs his friend not to tell him to drink too much and that it’ll be the death of him: ‘Don’t count me out’.

‘Half A Chance’ (4:26)

One of only two songs to pass the four-minute mark, this is about going out on the town to an evening show. The entertainment includes singers, Lily the generously endowed stripper and ‘Billy with his big banjo’, and to use a cliché, a splendid time is guaranteed for all. The song goes through a few dynamic changes, with touches of music hall, a few seconds of soft jazz guitar, and most distinctively of all, piano-led sections that sound very much like The Beatles’ ‘The Fool On The Hill’. Though not immediately the most commercial song, it’s probably the most adventurous.

‘Where I Belong’ (2:03)

The album finishes with a fairly short and rather personal-sounding song, Gerry just accompanying himself on piano, with no vocal harmonies or any other instruments. Lyrically, the message is bleak, about finding it harder to get through each day. The vague hope of being where he belongs is really the force that keeps him going. It makes a rather downbeat ending to an album that, in several other tracks, provided humour and a good share of instantly commercial fare.

Bonus Tracks (Who Knows What the Day Will Bring? anthology (2019))

‘So Bad Thinking’ (Egan/Rafferty) (3:22)

Originally the B-side to ‘Can I Have My Money Back?, there’s a slight jazz feel with the mellow lead guitar and piano. Love has gone wrong in the lyric; she’s never going to see the light, and it’s ‘so bad thinking about it’ that he can’t sleep at night. This also appears as a bonus track on some 21st-century CD reissues of the album.

‘Mary Skeffington’ (Overdubbed version) (2:31)

This was the original recording, with the unnecessary addition of what sounds like a horribly bland synthesized accordion and equally irritating percussion in places.

It was released as a single in 1978 (B-side ‘Shoeshine Boy’) by Logo Records, who had acquired the Transatlantic catalogue and were keen to cash in on the success of ‘Baker Street’. Not having been consulted, the artist himself was unimpressed.

‘Who Cares’ (Demo version) (4:58)

This is the first of three rather different...