Baker Street

I am a big believer in lists and rankings. Show me any sort of "best of" list be it ranked or unranked about any subject I am remotely interested in and I'm all over it. Music charts, basketball power rankings, top restaurants, best travel destinations…the list of lists could go on and on. Rolling Stone magazine seems especially adept at making lists that distract me for hours and hours. I still have their 100 Greatest Albums of the 80s issue from November 16, 1989 and their Top 100 Game of Thrones characters list they published last year made me stop working for a while on the day it was published so I could digest the whole thing in detail (I made up the time, I swear). My favorite new (to me) lists may be Eater.com's lists of best 38 or 18 restaurants for cities in the United States and Canada. Essential stuff to find some good grub on the road.

Over the years, I've made my own share of lists. The last two summers I've ranked NBA mascots and team names on my other blog, My Swag Was Phenomenal, which details my life as a Washington Wizards fan. When I was in college at the University of Michigan, my friend Andrew Royster and I used to include a Top 10 albums list (that I am sure were heavily overfilled with Moody Blues albums) in every letter we wrote back and forth to each other (this is when people actually wrote letters on pieces of paper; imagine that!). Even at 46 years of age, I continue to make music lists today; every year I make an unranked list of 50 albums that I would take to a desert island with me as a way of recording my current taste in music.

So considering my obsessions with lists and especially music lists, I have to have a number one song of all time, right? That's correct. I do. My hands down, no question about it, number one song of all time is Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street". So it seemed appropriate to me to make a quick pass by the real Baker Street in London when I was on the other side of the Atlantic a few weeks ago so I could pen a few words about my favorite song ever.

"Baker Street" wasn't always my favorite song. I remember as a kid really hating the song when it was released, although admittedly most of the reason I disliked it was that it was keeping "The Smurf Song" by (you guessed it) the Smurfs, from the number one position on the English pop charts. I remember sitting with my dad in our car while on vacation in France that summer listening to the announcement of the number one song and being disappointed by the Smurfs still being at number two. My musical taste has matured just a bit since 1978, although I still have my Smurfs 45 rpm single.

Looking south down Baker Street, August 29, 2014.

"Baker Street" is about Rafferty's struggles to extricate himself from a record deal he had signed while a member of Stealer's Wheel, a group that released three albums in the early 1970s. While with Stealer's Wheel, Rafferty wrote and released the song "Stuck in the Middle With You" which might not have been a hit at the time but continues to enjoy plenty of airplay today. When he decided to dissolve Stealer's Wheel and go out on his own, his record company objected, claiming he was under obligation to record for them and blocked any release or recording of a solo album.

So for a three year period during the 1970s, Rafferty was involved in a legal fight to record as a solo artist which required him to travel to London a lot. While in the city, he ended up staying at a friend's place on Baker Street, which is obviously how the song got its name. "Baker Street" is not exactly an uplifting song. It's full of imagery about how depressing the city is and a longing for time in the country living a quieter, less complicated life. The lines "This city desert makes you feel so cold/Its got so many people, but its got no soul" in the middle of the first verse set the tone right away. Along the way to the end of the song, he explains how disillusioned he is with the music industry and describes drinking every night as a means of coping with what he is going through and escaping the personal hell that the city represents.

Despite the depressing nature of the lyrics, I find the song very romantic and it sort of has a happy ending. I love the character who is haunted by meaningless relationships and a love of alcohol as a means of coping (Rafferty struggled with alcohol for most of his life). Musically the song is amazing. It is punctuated at critical points by gorgeous saxophone playing by Raphael Ravenscroft (I actually have his solo album which I assume was recorded off the success of "Baker Street", for what that's worth) and a guitar solo after the last verse which is surely overshadowed by Ravenscroft's playing but which is no less deserving of recognition. It's an odd song to achieve worldwide acclaim; it's not structured as a verse-chorus with a bridge type of song. I guess its popularity is a measure of its brilliance.

I realize this post isn't really about my trip to England, so if you are disappointed in reading this I'm sorry. But I thought Gerry Rafferty deserved this post (he died in 2011 so won't be making any more music). This song has made my life better and I'm glad my stopping by Baker Street in London allowed me to co-opt my own blog for selfish reasons for just one post.

Gerry Rafferty's City to City; "Baker Street" is track number two.