GERRY RAFFERTY: GERRY RAFFERTY, who has died aged 63 after a long illness, wrote the multimillion-selling hit Baker Street, which more than 30 years after its 1978 release still netted him an annual £80,000 (€96,000).
Rafferty was born in Paisley, near Glasgow, an unwanted third son. His father, Joseph, was an Irish-born miner who died in 1963, when Gerry was 16. That year, he left St Mirin's academy and worked in a butcher's shop and at the tax office. At weekends, he and a schoolfriend, Joe Egan, played in a local group, the Mavericks.
In 1972 after a period with comedian Billy Connolly's folk act, The Humblebums, Rafferty and Egan formed Stealers Wheel, a soft-rock group. Their eponymous debut album climbed the US charts and included the million-selling Stuck in the Middle With You, memorably resurrected for a key scene in Quentin Tarantino's film Reservoir Dogs(1992).
Disentangling Rafferty from early contracts took three years, but his subsequent solo career, beginning with City to City, was constructed more cannily. Rafferty played every instrument on demo tapes. City to Citywas recorded at Chipping Norton in the Cotswolds but mixed and overdubbed at Advision Studios in London by Donegal-born recording engineer Declan O'Doherty.
Signed to United Artists, Rafferty and Hugh Murphy co-produced the album for £18,000 in 1978. Fuelled by Baker Street, the hit single from City to City, the album sold five million copies and Rafferty became a millionaire.
Refusing to tour America, he recorded his successful follow-up, Night Owl(1979), which yielded further hits: Days Gone Down, Get It Right Next Timeand the title track. These, plus the less popular Snakes and Ladders(1980, recorded in Montserrat), are the gorgeously produced works of Rafferty's prime. His last successful foray was when, after contributing a vocal to the soundtrack of the film Local Hero(1983), he produced the Proclaimers' 1987 hit Letter from America.
He had always drunk too much and he eventually spiralled into alcoholism, putting on weight, which made him unhappier. His wife finally left him in 1990.
He moved to California. In 2008 he left America, helped from wheelchair to plane by a woman he met in a video store. They rented a house in Ireland, until taxis and doctors refused to attend him. That August, a five-day binge at a five-star London hotel ended when the management had him admitted to hospital.
He vanished in the night but later claimed that he was "extremely well", living in Tuscany and preparing a new album. He was relatively well, but in Dorset, not Tuscany. He never made another album.
He is survived by daughter Martha, granddaughter Celia, and his brother Jim.
Gerald Rafferty: born April 16th, 1947; died January 4th, 2011