![]() ![]() The album City to City (1978), including "Baker Street", was co-produced by Rafferty and Hugh Murphy. "Baker Street" was recorded in 1978 at Mike and Richard Vernon's Chipping Norton Studios, Oxfordshire, during the sessions for City to City. Rafferty was reading the book, which explores ideas of alienation and of creativity, born out of a longing to be connected, at this time of travelling between the two cities. Rafferty's daughter Martha has said that the book that inspired the song more than any other was Colin Wilson's The Outsider (1956). ![]() The resolution of Rafferty's legal and financial frustrations accounted for the exhilaration of the song's last verse: We'd sit and chat or play guitar there through the night." I knew a guy who lived in a little flat off Baker Street. "Everybody was suing each other, so I spent a lot of time on the overnight train from Glasgow to London for meetings with lawyers. 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 in Paisley and London, where he recalled often staying at a friend's flat in Baker Street: ![]() In the intervening three years, Rafferty had been unable to release any material because of disputes about the band's remaining contractual recording obligations. 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. The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) awarded the song a platinum certification in July 2022. In October 2010, the song was recognised by BMI for surpassing five million performances worldwide. The arrangement is known for its saxophone riff. Rafferty received the 1978 Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically. The song spent four weeks at No. 1 in Canada, reached No. 1 in Australia and South Africa, hit No. 3 in the United Kingdom, and made it into the top 10 in the Netherlands. Released as a single in 1978, it reached No. 1 in Cash Box and No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, where it held its Billboard position for six weeks, blocked from the top spot by Andy Gibb's " Shadow Dancing". " Baker Street" is a song written and performed by Scottish singer-songwriter Gerry Rafferty. ![]()
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