THE BEAT GOES ON

THE BEAT GOES ON

Gerry Rafferty: Stuck In The Middle Of Baker Street

LONDON—Gerry Rafferty is clearly a man who knows how to wait. It's been four years since his last hit with Stealers Wheel, the group he formed with fellow Scot Joe Egan. Most of those four years have been taken up with legal wrangles after that band's management went bankrupt. But this year, with a new label, Rafferty came back with "Baker Street," a hit constructed according to the old Stealers Wheel formula.

That formula includes high-pitched vocals with just a tinge of anguish or self-pity, but stopping well short of West Coast wimp. It includes a strong 60's pop melody line and, preferably, a welltried and trusty theme, in this case them old Big City Blues. But as Gerry Rafferty himself admits, "Any talent I have is probably in melodic things and I try to write lyrics that don't embarrass me when I listen to them a few years later. But words are the hard part for me."

Which is borne out all too well on some of the other songs on the current City To

Coffee With My Fellow Employees

Who's that bohind the CREEM coffee cup? Hint: He's got ail his clothes on this time. (Turn page)

City album. "The truth will make you free," anyone? Still, it's the vocals which count with Rafferty, that especially British mixture of angelic choirboy and Dylan -esque world-weariness. He developed originally not, as many have supposed, from too many nights with Dylan impersonators on the folk scene, but as a bar band guitarist and singer. "I started off playing electric guitar at 16," he said. "I was playing in rock bands in and around Glasgow, and I started writing songs. Of course, playing around Glasgow or any big city on Friday and Saturday nights, you're playing to the kids who just wanna get up and bop, which was fine, except I couldn't do my own songs. Then I met Billy who said, why don't you join us and do the folk-clubs. Because in the folk thing, people sat down in chairs and listened."

"Billy" is Billy Connolly, the Big Yin, now a kind of Scottish long-haired working class Lenny Bruce and a national hero in that country. When Gerry met him, he was playing banjo in a band called The Humblebums, a

sort of tartan Kingston Trio. With Gerry's voice and songs, the group got a recording contract and moved to London at the end of 1969. Soon afterwards, Billy realized that he was better at telling funnies than singing songs, leaving Gerry to make a solo album, which came out in America on Blue Thumb.

This record, Can I Get My Money Back? was really the beginning of the Stealers Wheel group. Singing backup vocals was Joe Egan, a songwriter and old friend of Gerry's from his home town, Paisley. These two formed the nucleus of that band, which was signed to A&M. The company was trying at the time to make a name for itself with its British acts, so veteran Coasters and Drifters producers Leiber and Stroller were flown in to make the first album. The result was "Stuck In The Middle With You," a big hit all over in 1973. A second album included a second hit, "Star."

But Stealers Wheel had problems. When the band was hustled out on the road with David Bowie after the first hit broke, Gerry decided they hadn't practiced enough yet, and quit temporarily.

When he came back, the procession of backing musicians in London had started. By the time it finished it seemed as though half the musicians in London had been (briefly) in the band, including former Herd and future Mott The Hoople members.

The third album came out amidst the chaos and flopped. Rafferty retreated to Scotland to write songs, which he does very slowly, never throwing any finished ones out, with true Scottish thrift. United Artists liked what they heard and so did deejays who made "Baker Street" and the follow-up "Whatever Happens In Your Heart" into turntable hits.

He's also been able to answer the critics who used to accuse Stealers Wheel of being only a studio band, not interested in live, performances. A tour of Britain, with a new band, proved that earlier in the summer. Rafferty himself is a taciturn fellow and apparently unmoved by this sudden success the second time around: "I believe in fate a great deal. It was either meant to be or not. It's just taken a while, that's all." QUESTION MARK, MIWhether Burroughs or Hapshash and'the Colored Coat sparked the Heavy Metal genre has now been superseded by a more crucial problem: The Origin Of Punk Rock. Running amok, field scientists and archeologists (motivated by dubious federal grants) are attempting to document and catalogue every available shred of evidence that might lead to some solution.

Dave Laing

The Boys In The Bunker

A rare, never before published picture of Nazi leader Adolph Hitler rehearsing his famed 1923 Munich Beer Hall butsch. Nazi propaganda chief Joe "Goober" Goebbets (holding his hand in a prototype of the famed open-hand Nazi salute) is advising Hitler to get a process before launching his campaign to exterminate blacks and Jews. Seated, to the left, is Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goerring, before developing his taste for chocolate eclairs.

Name The Mystery Band

Prof. Moulty of the Count Five Research Center believes he has made a significant discovery which may lead to new knowledge about the development of primeval punk. Unearthed from beneath a concealed pile of moldy Monkee bubblegum cards in a ramshackle Woolworth's in a deserted community near Saginaw, Michigan, this photo supposedly represents a positive link between punk (or "garage music") and the primal rhythms of the Midwest Mongoloids, transmitted secretly via an underground string-andDixie cup communication system during the monotonous summer of '63.

Prof. Moulty cites these crucial clues in the photo as proof: 1) the omission of the noggins from the picture (Mongolians were usually ashamed of their afflicted

Zounds! What Have We Here?

Now you know why ho wears the shades... Hey, Martin, what was in that drink—or are you just upset 'cause your show got cancelled?

facial features), 2) the absence of the drum instrument (Mongols provided the backbeat by pounding their flesh), and 3) the shadow of Sky Saxon lurking in the background (definite proof that this punk pioneer was directly inspired by the primitivism of the Mongoloids).

Unfortunately, there are no hieroglyphics or other markings on the photograph to help identify the band. Nevertheless, Prof. Moulty (author of assorted rock encyclopedias and reference works like Joe Cocker: Nobody's Lucifer and Making Whoopee With Donovan Leitch) feels certain that his research team is on the verge of a historical discovery akin to the landmark revelation that psychedelia was the brainstorm of immigrant mu-

tants from Nagasaki.

However, any information regarding the identity and whereabouts of this unknown (but terribly important) band is most welcome and should be sent promptly to C.F. Research Center in San Jose, CA (the good prof, promises to reimburse all postage). Or simply call toll free at (800) 800-8000. Operators will be anxiously standing by to record your message.

Robot A. Hull

Bacon It To The Streets

IOWA CITY—They've been saying it's true for years, but now somebody has proof.

Local hog king John McNutt, who steadfastly refuses to change his name, claims that his oinkers are quiet, friendly and hungriest when he pipes classical music into their pens. But when the piggies get a ringlet-full of rock, they "get a bit edgy" and try to bury their heads in the mud.

How this news will affect the careers of Hoghat and April Swine is still unknown.

Rick Johnson

Saturday Night Lever Bros.

BAY RIDGE, BROOKLYN —While John Travolta and the Bee Gees try to decide how to divvy up the trillions of dollars Saturday Night Fever has earned them— reportedly enough to purchase the entire month of October—the man truly responsible for the whole honkeroo is still back in Brooklyn bagging groceries.

Eugene "Tony" Robinson was just an average bagboyby-day, disco-fool by night two years ago when writer Nik Cohn chose him as the subject of an article on the Disco Phenom for New York magazine. Paramount Pictures bought the story, Travolta learned how to dance without looking like a duck and the rest is Boredom.

It wasn't bagtime to bigtime for Robinson however. Although he earned $400 as an extra in the film, he's still just "stayin' alive" in Bay Ridge, putting the eggs on the bottom as always. "I just wish a little more had happened to me because of it," says the dejected sackist.

Maybe if he tried putting the bag over his head . . .

Rick Johnson

5 Years Ago

Glitter Bug?

Now that David Cassidy is planning to retire from the rigors of the biz, rumors are flying that Marc Bolan has been approached to replace Davey in the Partridge Family. Hmmm ....