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STUpendOUs
1/5/2011, 08:46 PM
Gerry Rafferty Passed away... Loved his music and boy could that man party!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1344534/Baker-Street-rich-dreams-plunged-Gerry-Rafferty-drunken-self-destruction.html


Not for nothing was Gerald ‘Gerry’ Rafferty known as the master of rock ’n’ roll self-destruction.
He did it all — wrecked five-star hotel rooms, was hospitalised after drinking binges on private jets, spent years locked in expensive legal disputes and bitter feuds, and saw his 20-year marriage *collapse into an alcoholic mire.
He lived for years as a depressive recluse — and listened to his famous hit song Baker Street over and over again. Every so often, he lashed out at what he called the ‘loathsome’ music industry.
But, for all that, he was also an extraordinarily talented musician, hailed for having ‘a truly beautiful voice with perfect pitch’ and as the ‘consummate composer’ of one of our most enduring hits — the multi-million-selling Baker Street, with the famous soaring saxophone solo.
The song has racked up more than four million radio plays and provided him with an endless supply of royalty cheques — more than £80,000 a year — since its release in 1978.
But depression and contradiction ran through Rafferty’s life like a dark core.
On the one hand, he claimed he hated public attention and the music industry. ‘Bob Dylan once said that fame was a curse,’ said Rafferty. ‘I think that, from an early stage in my career, I was aware that there were pitfalls of so-called celebrity. Once you have entered that world, you can no longer be the observer in life. You become the observed.’
But, on the other hand, he enjoyed his wealth. He chartered jets, bought a country estate and was constantly popping up in the headlines for the wrong reasons.
Rafferty was haunted by his biggest hit. Because, for all its searing beauty, if you listen closely (which he is said to have done obsessively over recent years), Baker Street is neither a romantic nor happy song.
The lyrics are about alcohol and depression, promiscuous sex and ‘people with no soul’ — and proved to be worryingly autobiographical. While one memorable line includes the promise to ‘give up booze and one-night stands’, poor Gerry never conquered his private demons.
Rafferty was born in Paisley, near Glasgow, on April 16, 1947, the unwanted third son of Joseph, an Irish-born, alcoholic, deaf miner, and Mary, who did her best to protect her offspring from their father’s drunken rampages.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1344534/Baker-Street-rich-dreams-plunged-Gerry-Rafferty-drunken-self-destruction.html#ixzz1ADPOpKkH


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