“Gerry Rafferty – Baker Road Lengthy”

In October 2010, the music was recognised by BMI for surpassing 5 million performances worldwide. It was awarded Gold Certification on two events, on 1 April 1978 and 22 July 2013 by the BPI within the UK.

ORIGINS

Named after Baker Road in London, the music was included on Rafferty’s second solo album, Metropolis to Metropolis (1978), which was Rafferty’s first launch after the decision of authorized issues surrounding the formal break-up of his outdated band, Stealers Wheel, in 1975. Within the intervening three years, Rafferty had been unable to launch any materials due to disputes concerning the band’s remaining contractual recording obligations.

Rafferty wrote the music throughout a interval when he was attempting to extricate himself from his Stealers Wheel contracts; he was recurrently Travelling between his household residence in Paisley and London, the place he usually stayed at a buddy’s flat on Baker Road. As Rafferty put it, “all people was suing one another, so I spent a number of time on the in a single day practice from Glasgow to London for conferences with legal professionals. I knew a man who lived in just a little flat off Baker Road. We’d sit and chat or play guitar there by way of the evening.” Privately, Rafferty additionally spent a number of time consuming, which he famous he mentions within the lyrics, “gentle in your head and lifeless in your ft.”

The decision of Rafferty’s authorized and monetary frustrations accounted for the exhilaration of the music’s final verse: “If you get up it’s a brand new morning/ The solar is shining, it’s a brand new morning/You’re going, you’re going residence.” Rafferty’s daughter Martha has stated that the guide that impressed the music greater than some other was Colin Wilson‘s The Outsider (1956). Rafferty was studying the guide, which explores concepts of alienation and of creativity, born out of a longing to be linked, right now of Travelling between the 2 cities.