How Good It Is

Gerry Rafferty was pretty much a known element to music fans as the voice behind Stealers Wheel and the song "Stuck In The Middle With You," but by the time that song came out, Rafferty had quit the band, which had to shoot the promotional film (they weren't quite called "videos" yet) without him. The guy lip-synching the vocals is Rafferty's partner Joe Egan. Shortly afterward, Egan talked Rafferty into coming back into the band, and they managed to put together their contractually-required third album.

https://youtu.be/OMAIsqvTh7g

Rafferty and Egan split up again, and the legal battles prevented both of them from recording for three years. But that didn't prevent Rafferty from writing songs in the interim. And it's pretty clear that "Baker Street" was a reflection of his mood through all the legal craziness that went on.

This is the cover of the 45 sleeve as sold in Italy.

But while the song was a huge hit internationally, there are two pockets of controversy surrounding it. One stems from that haunting saxophone solo, and the other comes from the fact that, at the time, no other song had spent as much time in the Number 2 position on the Billboard Hot 100 chart without ever reaching Number 1. (The "Most weeks at #2" record has been surpassed many times since then, but the six weeks that "Baker Street" spent there was the record in 1978.)

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Let me give an extra shout-out to Co.Ag Music, a YouTube channel that provided some of the moody music near the end of this week's show. They've got some cool stuff going on over there, especially if you like music with a science fiction bent to it.

No show next week! I'll see you on July 21 with something really special (no hints)!

In 1978, Gerry Rafferty was finally untangled from the legal squabbles created by the multiple breakups of Stealers Wheel. He took the experience and turned it into a monster hit, but there are a couple of intriguing controversies surrounding the song.

The song that cemented Eddie Cochran's place in the Rock and Roll firmament was written in about an hour by a 19 year old Cochran and his manager.

Murray Head is one of those guys whose name you may or may not know, but you're certainly familiar with some of his work.

In 1970 he worked on a concept album with Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber. The first single from that album was written and recorded before the entire rest of the album, and it was released by the record company to gauge interest in the idea of an entire album built around that idea. The song did poorly in the US, at least at first, but international sales were enough that MCA Records gave the go-ahead to the rest of the album. And that's how the original double album Jesus Christ Superstar came to be.

Fast-forward several years and Tim Rice again taps Murray Head to help him with a concept album, one that uses the chess rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union (no, literally: which country had the best chess players was a big deal in the 1970s and 80s) as a thinly-veiled metaphor for the Cold War. And once again, the success of the album leads to the production of a stage musical, called Chess.

And these two successes put Murray Head in an interesting place in the record books.

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Murray Head is another one of those famous guys whose name is known to few. He had two hit singles in the US, 15 years apart and very different in style, tone and content, but which have something very peculiar in common.

One of The Drifters' bigger hits might have been a sequel to one of their earlier songs, but it was definitely a prequel to one of their later songs.

In 1971, Don McLean was a known artist but hadn't yet hit it big with "American Pie." Lori Lieberman was a 19-year-old singer-songwriter who'd recently scored a contract. Lieberman attended one of McLean's shows and she was so struck by his performance

of the song "Empty Chairs" that she wrote a poem about it, more or less on the spot. She took the notes to her collaborators and they put together a song for her album. It became her first single, but it was quickly overshadowed when Roberta Flack covered it.

While the song was covered numerous times, including versions by artists as diverse as Perry Como and Michael Jackson, it wasn't until The Fugees put together a hip-hop cover that the song gained new life. Lauryn Hill's singing gives the song an extra emotional ache, perhaps because their original idea was to turn the song into a cautionary tale about substance abuse, an idea that the original writers didn't support.

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It's 1971 and Don McLean hadn't yet hit it big with "American Pie," so he was touring around and caught the attention of a singer-songwriter named Lori Lieberman, who was so touched by his performance that she wrote a poem which ultimately became a hit in multiple genres.

Before I do anything else, let me give a shout-out to a friend of the podcast, and one of its first fans who wasn't related to me. Connie Paulson provided the artwork that you see in this post. You can see more of her stuff if you hook up with the show's Facebook page.

 

In 1975 Aerosmith was pretty much just another rock band with a modest hit, but when they got writer's block, a trip to a Mel Brooks movie inspired them to come up with a title, and then Steven Tyler wrote the lyrics over the next day or so--twice, as the story goes. The song was a hit, and ten years later, it was a hit again when Aerosmith teamed up with rap act Run-DMC to cover the song. Check out the video; it's fun, it's very creative, and you barely notice that most of the band is missing:

https://youtu.be/4B_UYYPb-Gk

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The rumor goes that Aerosmith was inspired by a Mel Brooks movie to write the song that provided them with not only their first Top 10 hit, but that gave them the lever to make a comeback in 1986. As far as the rumor is concerned, let me quote another Mel Brooks movie: "It's twoo, it's twoo!"