Gerry Rafferty

I meant to blog about this earlier, but was distracted by either the play or the fact that my kitchen ceiling continues to leak nearly 4 months after the tornado.
Gerry Rafferty died on January 4th. He wrote two of my favorite pop song when I was in my youth: "Stuck in the Middle with You" and "Baker Street." I was quite the Sherlock Holmes junkie in those days (both the stories and the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce movies), and to have a pop song however tangentially related to Holmes, who lived on Baker Street, was just the coolest thing ever. That aside, it is a beautifully put- together, evocative lyric that anyone who has ever felt despair and tried to climb out of it can relate to. Not to mention that fantastic sax solo.
Unfortunately, Rafferty did not "give up the booze" as the song says, and it pretty much killed him at 63.
Link to Times obit above; photo credit Photofest.