After all, most rock is about instant gratification: we want the world an we want it now - and if we don't get it, we protest or whine. Gerry Rafferty is the odd man out of rock & roll because his perspective is so radically different. "You gotta learn by your mistakes/You gotta die a little every day/To try an' stay awake." I'll stack that unsentimental insight up against the best of Graham Parker or, for that matter, Neil Young. Unlike, say, Elvis Costello, who's toured America indefatigably in pursuit of a stardom he purports to despise, Rafferty, the night owl, never blinks.Īnd what Rafferty sees is as tough, brutal and truthful as anything the New Wave has yet washed up. But his vision is clear, unclouded by psychoses or contradictions. Success will have a tough time spoiling Gerry Rafferty, because he always looks a gift horse in the mouth with his jaundiced eye. Those lines are from "The Tourist," a title that sums up Rafferty's attitude toward rock & roll: he wouldn't want to live there, and it isn't even a particularly nice place to visit. Way back here in the twentieth century," he sings with weary bemusement - and complains that his feet hurt. But on his new LP, Night Owl, Rafferty shrugs like Atlas when he describes receiving the news that "Baker Street" was Number One in America, where he couldn't be bothered to tour.
It isn't every day that an artist breaks a three-year silence and immediately enjoys an international hit like last year's "Baker Street," not to mention several successful followups from the same album. Instead, he seems to be carrying its weight on his shoulders. Gerry Rafferty should be sitting on top of the world.
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