This winter's Baker Street/ Marylebone Walk has proved very popular. The first question people ask is, what's the story behind the song? Well...
Baker Street was recorded by Scottish singer-songwriter Gerry Rafferty in 1978, was an international number 1 single and sold millions.
It was Rafferty's 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 family home near Glasgow and London, where he often stayed at a friend's flat in Baker Street. As Rafferty put it, "everybody was suing each other, so I spent a lot of time on the overnight train from Glasgow to London for meetings with lawyers. I knew a guy who lived in a little flat off Baker Street. We'd sit and chat or play guitar there through the night."
The resolution of Rafferty's legal and financial frustrations accounted for the exhilaration of the song's last verse:
When you wake up it's a new morning
The sun is shining, it's a new morning
You're going, you're going home.
The song was cited by guitarist Slash as an influence on his guitar solo in Sweet Child of Mine!
Baker Street was recorded by Scottish singer-songwriter Gerry Rafferty in 1978, was an international number 1 single and sold millions.
It was Rafferty's 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 family home near Glasgow and London, where he often stayed at a friend's flat in Baker Street. As Rafferty put it, "everybody was suing each other, so I spent a lot of time on the overnight train from Glasgow to London for meetings with lawyers. I knew a guy who lived in a little flat off Baker Street. We'd sit and chat or play guitar there through the night."
The resolution of Rafferty's legal and financial frustrations accounted for the exhilaration of the song's last verse:
When you wake up it's a new morning
The sun is shining, it's a new morning
You're going, you're going home.
The song was cited by guitarist Slash as an influence on his guitar solo in Sweet Child of Mine!
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