Soul Music

Gerry Rafferty's glorious and instantly recognisable hit, Baker Street is the subject of this week's Soul Music. Rafferty died last year (on January 4th 2011) at the age of 63, leaving behind a widely respected musical legacy. The most popular of his tracks is, arguably, Baker Street: His daughter Martha Rafferty recalls hearing her father develop the melody in the attic of their Glasgow home; the sound of him picking-out the tune on his acoustic guitar would drift through the push-up attic-door, filling the rest of the house with what would become his biggest hit. She describes the inspiration for the lyrics: a book called 'The Outsider' by Colin Wilson which Rafferty was reading at the time. It's about the sense of disconnection from the world that artists often feel. Martha regards Baker Street as the lyrical version of that book. Other contributors include: Musician and founder member of Stealer's Wheel, Rab Noakes. He describes how the legal wrangling which followed the break-up of Stealer's Wheel in