Stuck in the Middle

“Baker Street” and the Road to Nowhere

My first memory of Gerry Rafferty was sitting in the back seat of my dad’s ‘76 Cadillac Calais.  It was red with plaid interior, and the ride felt smooth in the back.  Rafferty’s voice felt smooth, too, and I had no idea what he was singing about.  The voice sounded deep, deeper than mine at the time, not as deep as it would become.  But there was no question that this was a man, and he knew things I could not understand.  I was 5.  I did not know the word ennui, but I kind of recognized what it was.  It was part of the adult world I was in a hurry to join.  I heard Supertramp’s “Logical Song,” about the vanquished childhood I was supposedly experiencing, and when I saw Roger Hodgson lip syncing its upper registers on Solid Gold, I thought “That’s a man?”  With a beard?  On AOR radio in 1978, these were two models of masculinity were before me, but only Rafferty’s voice sounded like a register of maturity, at least at the time. 

I sat in the back seat of my dad’s car hearing Rafferty singing something about “moving down the line,” which sounded like what we were doing on Central Expressway, Dallas.  The dulcet tones of Gerry Rafferty had me right there, and whenever they reappeared, that feeling was there.  I never owned a Gerry Rafferty album, but in stolen moments on the radio, he owned at least a part of me.  It was something I could not name.  It is a cliché to find this music smooth, since that was what it was supposed to be, but there was also a mystery there.  One day, I would grow up and somehow be this, whatever this was.  Before I knew the name, before I knew much of anything, I associated this sound with comfort.  The lyrics are pretty straightforward, not much to look at now.  “Constant as a Northern star” was a nod to Joni Mitchell, but all of that would come way later.  One day, I’d be driving my own car, and then life would become something.

“Baker Street,” Gerry Rafferty’s biggest hit, also sounds smooth, but take a look under the hood and you will see why we are here now.  “Baker Street” sustains something calm about an incurable pain.   It charted, it received hosannahs by the industry, it brought Rafferty income for the rest of his life, but it is also a manifestation of something so dark, it is amazing he bothered to record the song at all.  The most distinctive sound for most listeners is Raphael Ravenscroft’s saxophone riff.  It is there at the beginning, the middle and the end, and I would prefer it not be there at all.  I play it soft on the piano, and I imagine a virtuoso doing a lot with it, because it is a good, solid riff, an earworm, a leitmotif, and on the demo, you can hear Rafferty playing it.  But it gave a lot of people the wrong idea about the instrument, even as the record spurred saxophone sales.  I would hear Sonny Rollins (uncredited) on The Rolling Stones’ Tattoo You, the first discovery of a world beyond Clarence Clemons.

So I can’t un-hear that riff, but I have to get past it to retrieve the thing that I can’t get over, and that is that same voice, once comforting to me, now that of an anesthetized malcontent, someone who has given up on life and will never change his mind.  This is a song saturated in denial, with a voice that knows better.  There is an idea of escape, but it is impossible.  You wish you could get away from here, but you never will.  But that voice entranced.  That’s why so many people bought it. 

This city desert makes you feel so cold
It's got so many people, but it's got no soul
And it's taken you so long
To find out you were wrong
When you thought it held everything

Baker Street is in London, Rafferty was Scottish, but this image of the city desert really evokes Los Angeles.  It’s a perpetual lost weekend, The Day of the Locust of the mind.  For most people who end up there, LA, despite its sunny weather and picturesque landscape is a place where people have screenplays being greenlighted almost to the top, and the writers of these near miss masterpieces are driving your Uber where they think their break is just around the corner.  It is a red Toyota Camry with leather seats.  But that Uber driver is not a fool.  He wrote that amazing screenplay.  He knows how the business works.  He knows people and has heard them quote staggering numbers about what his script is worth.  He is sitting on a movie that is better than anything currently streaming, and no one will ever know.

The Uber driver has a lover.  She knows he is destroying himself and doesn’t believe anything he says.

He's got this dream about buying some land
He's gonna give up the booze and the one-night stands
And then he'll settle down
In some quiet little town
And forget about ev'rything

That moment is never coming.  Even if this guy saw success, the trappings would just bring him closer to the stuff he should really give up.  Maybe he could have found Jesus or L. Ron Hubbard or even fucking Ralph Waldo Emerson, but not this guy.  Gerry Rafferty came from a brutal childhood in Scotland, and when he finally had a minor hit with a Dylan homage, “Stuck in the Middle With You” (it became more well known when it was used in Reservoir Dogs as the soundtrack to a psychopath taking the ear off a policeman while he boogied), he ended up pent up for three years with label problems, and when he was finally able to go out there, his record exploded. Then he said no, a lot.  He turned down offers to play with Paul McCartney, with Eric Clapton. He didn’t want to perform at all.  He made more records, sporadically, but he really drank himself into oblivion.  He drove his wife away, wrecked some London hotels, and bitched about the music business while this one song was bringing in $130,000 a year.  His daughter says that he was undiagnosed bipolar.  He died of liver and kidney disease, which meant he died of booze.

Yet, “Baker Street” remains.  That saxophone is out of tune and trashy, but what can be done?  It sounds more broken down than Rafferty, who sounds serene.  That’s how he gets us.  He is locked into that groove and sounds like he knows something.

The Uber driver is backed up on the 10.  Someone is living in the middle of nowhere, past Pasadena, probably because he made unrealistic life choices, too.  The further from the Pacific and the closer to Inland Empire, the further the dream.  This Uber is not driving Jed Clampett and the Beverley Hillbillies as close to the ocean as possible.  This Uber is not driving at all.  They could film the entire opening dance number from La La Land and no one would get hurt.  That movie almost won an Oscar?  Someone misread a cue card, but, really, someone missed a cue.  The Uber driver knows dialogue and could have written way better.  The wrong things get made.  “Baker Street” comes on the radio, and he’s wondering about what city planning could possibly have led to these hours on the road that don’t go anywhere. 

“Baker Street” keeps playing.  The Uber driver remembers hearing the song in childhood, when his father was the one driving, imagining that one day he will grow up and find his way to the Hollywood sign.  That voice was a balm, way before the driver knew what the song really meant, before he started living it hard core.

Just one more year and then you'd be happy
But you're cryin', you're cryin' now

Why can’t they put Los Angeles in one place?   

But then if they did, it would still be a city desert that had no soul.  The truth is that Los Angeles isn’t spread out enough.  The idea is to keep driving, to the little town where you could settle down and forget about everything. Another year and then you’ll be happy.  It’s a quest from the bottom when he can conquer his demons and be worthy of the woman who loves him and redeem himself in spite of all disappointments. Maybe he can get the diagnosis that will unlock the world for him.  Maybe there will be a point to all of this misery.  She will make him want to be a better man. He will find the cure for unhappiness. That feeling he got from Gerry Rafferty, before he knew what it was really about, that’s the thing he needs to get back. He needs to get away from the backstory to get to another story, the place where the music took him before he knew too much. Now that’s a movie.  It will be so good, they couldn’t possibly turn it down.