Baker Street (song)

Baker Street (song)
"Baker Street" is a song written and performed by Scottish singer-songwriter Gerry Rafferty. It won the 1979 Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically and achieved high chart positions in the UK, US and elsewhere. The arrangement is known for its saxophone riff.
Origins
Named after Baker Street in London, the song was included on Rafferty's second solo album, City to City (1978), which was his first release after the resolution of legal problems surrounding the break-up of his old band, Stealers Wheel, in 1975. In the intervening three years, Rafferty had been unable to release any material because of disputes about the band's remaining contractual recording obligations.
Rafferty wrote the song during a period when he was trying to extricate himself from his Stealers Wheel contracts. He was regularly travelling between his Scottish family home in Paisley and London, where he recalled often staying at a friend's flat in Baker Street:
The resolution of Rafferty's legal and financial frustrations may have accounted for the exhilaration of the song's final verse:
Rafferty's daughter Martha suggested in 2012 that he could also have taken inspiration from a book he was reading while he was travelling between the two cities, Colin Wilson's The Outsider (1956), which explored ideas of alienation and creativity and a longing to be connected.
Studio
"Baker Street" was recorded in 1978 at Mike and Richard Vernon's Chipping Norton Studios, Oxfordshire, during the sessions for City to City. The album City to City (1978), including "Baker Street", was co-produced by Rafferty and Hugh Murphy.
Saxophone riff
In addition to a searing guitar solo, played by Hugh Burns, "Baker Street" featured a prominent eight-bar saxophone riff by session musician Raphael Ravenscroft, played as a break between verses. Rafferty claimed that he composed the hook, with the original intention that it be sung, but Ravenscroft remembered things differently, saying that he was presented with a song that contained "several gaps". "In fact, most of what I played was an old blues riff," Ravenscroft said. "If you're asking me: 'Did Gerry hand me a piece of music to play?' then no, he didn't."
Ravenscroft came to the studio to record a soprano saxophone part on the finished track, and suggested that he use instead his alto saxophone. The distinctive wailing, bluesy sound of the sax riff on "Baker Street" was a result of the alto being tuned slightly flat, and Ravenscroft later considered this to have been a mistake. He said, in an interview in 2011, that listening to the song irritated him because he was out of tune. His contribution to "Baker Street" was termed by one writer as "the most recognizable sax riff in pop music history", and it was said to have been responsible for a resurgence in the sales of saxophones and their use in mainstream pop music and television advertising.
The 2011 reissue of City to City included the demo of "Baker Street" with the saxophone part played on electric guitar by Rafferty. A very similar sax line was originally played by saxophonist Steve Marcus for a song called "Half a Heart", credited to vibraphonist Gary Burton, that appeared on Marcus's 1968 album Tomorrow Never Knows.
Urban myths
According to one story, Ravenscroft received no payment for a song that earned Rafferty an income of £80,000 per annum. A session fee cheque for £27 given to Ravenscroft was said to have bounced, and been framed and hung on his solicitor's wall. The bouncing cheque story was denied by Ravenscroft during an interview on BBC Radio 2's Simon Mayo Drivetime show on 9 February 2012.
The saxophone riff was also the subject of another urban legend in the UK, created in the 1980s by British writer and broadcaster Stuart Maconie. As one of the spoof facts invented for the regular "Would You Believe It?" section in the NME, Maconie falsely claimed that British radio and television presenter Bob Holness had played the saxophone part on the recording, and this claim was widely repeated.
Personnel
Gerry Rafferty – lead vocals, rhythm guitar
Raphael Ravenscroft – alto and soprano saxophones
Hugh Burns – lead guitar
Nigel Jenkins – rhythm guitar
Tommy Eyre – synthesizer, electric and acoustic piano
Gary Taylor – bass
Henry Spinetti – drums
Glen Le Fleur – congas
Graham Preskett – string arrangements
Chart performance
Released as a single in 1978, "Baker Street" reached No. 3 in the UK and No. 2 for six consecutive weeks in the US. It reached number one in Cash Box and number two on the Billboard Hot 100 where it held its Billboard position for six weeks, kept out of the number one spot by Andy Gibb's "Shadow Dancing" (although this was later disputed). The song spent four weeks at number one in Canada, reached number one in Australia, and made it into the top 10 in the Netherlands. In October 2010, "Baker Street" was recognised by BMI for surpassing five million performances worldwide.
Another urban myth has claimed that "Baker Street" did overtake "Shadow Dancing" on the Billboard Hot 100 during one of its seven weeks on top in the summer of 1978, with Casey Kasem recording his American Top 40 countdown placing it at #1. However, at a dinner with Gibb's managers, then-Billboard chart director Bill Wardlow was allegedly told that if "Shadow Dancing" did not remain at #1, Gibb would be pulled from the lineup of an upcoming Billboard-organized concert. Wardlow then supposedly asked the magazine to leave the song at the top, and Kasem was told to re-record his countdown.
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Certifications
Legacy
The song was cited by guitarist Slash in 1987 as an influence on his guitar solo in "Sweet Child o' Mine". Canadian rock musician AC Newman cited the song as an inspiration for his album Shut Down the Streets (2012). The song is featured in the video game Grand Theft Auto V, as part of the Los Santos Rock Radio track list, and in the Happy Endings episode "Cocktails and Dreams", (S02E16) in which Penny's dream involves a fingerpicked-guitar version of the saxophone riff. It is heard in the closing scene of "Lisa's Sax" (S09E04), an episode of The Simpsons in which Lisa Simpson performs a brief rendition of the hook on a saxophone before the music segues into Rafferty's recording.
Undercover version
British dance group Undercover covered the song on their 1992 album Check Out the Groove. This version reached No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart and became a top-three hit in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.
Critical reception
A writer for Lennox Herald picked the song as a "stand out" from the Undercover album. Pan-European magazine Music & Media wrote that "Gerry Rafferty's rainy days anthem is now transferred from the comfortable living room to the heat of clubland. The typical saxophone hook is on acid as well." Mark Frith from Smash Hits commented, "This one's quite good actually. Transformed from a hoary old late '70s epic into a PWL rave anthem for the '90s, Baker Street has tootling sax, great vocals and is probably the most unusual record turned into a rave tune ever."
Music video
A music video was made to accompany the song, shot in black-and-white.
Track listing
"Baker Street" (edit) – 4:04
"Baker Street" (extended mix) – 5:10
"Sha-Bang" (extended mix) – 5:49
Charts
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Certifications
Other versions
Country musician Waylon Jennings covered the song to open his 1987 album Hangin' Tough.
American rock band Foo Fighters covered the song on their 1998 "My Hero" UK CD single release, on the Australian tour pack (grey cover) release, on the limited-edition European bonus EP and as one of several bonus tracks added to the remastered tenth anniversary release of their second studio album, The Colour and the Shape, reissued in 2007. The Foo Fighters cover does not include the saxophone riff, which is played instead on electric guitar.
References
External links
"Baker Street (Remix)" at Discogs
1978 songs
1978 singles
1992 debut singles
Gerry Rafferty songs
Undercover (dance group) songs
Number-one singles in Australia
Number-one singles in South Africa
Cashbox number-one singles
RPM Top Singles number-one singles
Songs about London
Songs about streets
Songs written by Gerry Rafferty
United Artists Records singles
Pete Waterman Entertainment singles
Capitol Records singles
Black-and-white music videos
Baker Street