Author's note: this just serves as a warning not to write topical/time-based introductions to my album reviews. This was originally meant to have been posted, obviously, back in April, but how time flies and these pre-written reviews get lost on my word processor and forgotten about till I remember to go looking for them. "I'm sure I posted that", he said. "No, I definitely did! I remember doing so!" But he didn't, and ends up looking even more of a jackass than usual. Oh well, not like I'm not used to it...
(Go on, laugh: you know you want to...)
Seems appropriate on this, the first annivesary of the opening of the Playlist of Life, as well as the first anniversary of his death, albeit a few months late, that we should review an album by the late Gerry Rafferty. His “Night owl” was one of the first to be reviewed originally, back in May of 2011, so this time we're going to be looking at the one that followed that. There were no hits from it, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a great album.
Snakes and ladders --- Gerry Rafferty --- 1980 (United Artists)
Following the phenomenal success of his first two albums, the first of which had yielded the now-classic “Baker Street”, and the second giving him another top ten single, this was supposed to capitalise on the popularity of “Night owl” and “City to city”, but didn't do as well as its predecessors. For all that though, it's a great album. Gerry would in fact have no more chart success after “Night owl”, and would forever be indentified with “Baker Street”, leading many to conclude he was a “one-hit wonder”, which is not miles from the truth, but he released some sterling albums in his time, even if they passed the mainstream charts by.
It opens in celtic style, with the excellent “The Royal Mile”, one of Gerry's many songs that reminisce about people and places, often from his own life. It bops along nicely, with jangly guitar, whistle from Richard Harvey and organ from Pete Wingfield, and is a nice uptempo start to the album. Guitar drives the next track, “I was a boy scout”, more in the rock vein with some cool slide guitar from Bryn Haworth and horns from two legends, Raphael Ravenscroft and Mel Collins. There's a very annoying American accent voicing the intro to “Welcome to Hollywood”, but it soon fades away and the song rides along on a sort of Mexican influenced melody, with horns and gentle percussion, nice piano and restrained guitar, Gerry presumably singing about his experiences in Tinseltown. There's a great sense of
fiesta about this, with a soaraway guitar solo from, I think, Jerry Donahue. That annoying American (or someone parodying an American accent) is back for the fadeout, which is a little off-putting: why do people always say (as the voice does here) “You're gonna love it!”? How do they know? You might hate it, whatever it is...
Good, straight and honest rock and roll for “Wastin' away”, elements of “Get it right next time” in the song, with some great piano runs, then the shortest track at just over two minutes is “Look at the moon”, driven on acoustic piano and synthesiser strings and giving us the first ballad on the album, with an almost filmic score feel, and no sooner has it got going than it's over and we're into the standout on the album, and a song that, although not released as a single, nevertheless went on to become one of Gerry's most famous songs. “Bring it all home” has a real blues/jazz rhythm, with fine performances from the two sax players and real blues piano from Billy Livsey. There's a real feeling of enjoyment and fun about this track, with a great instrumental jam at the end, and it's not surprising it caught on as it did.
Another ballad then in “The garden of England”, slow, measured and stately, with some nice strings and keyboards, a melody and arrangement not a million miles removed from ELO, then there's more of an Alan Parsons Project feel to “Johnny's song”, as the tempo kicks up again with some powerful guitar that really rocks along. “Didn't I” is a nice boogie blues number with some more fine guitar and a kind of campfire feeling about it, while “Syncopatin' Sandy” is driven on jazz piano but again betrays a certain sense of the APP in its melody.
Not surprisingly with a title like “Cafe le Cabotin”, there's a French flavour to this song, with some rocking guitar and what sounds like accordion, a nice boppy tune. I wouldn't call it one of the strongest on the album, but it's not that bad. Kind of unremarkable, although it has a nice instrumental ending. The album finishes on “Don't close the door”, one final ballad to send us on our way, this one with a very country feel, what sounds like steel pedal and slide guitar, honky-tonk piano and some cool miramba-like percussion.
It's hard to see, with albums of this quality, why Gerry Rafferty more or less faded from the public eye. Perhaps it was that old curse, the “big hit single syndrome”; people expected him to better or equal “Baker Street”, and he never did. For all that, he released a total of nine albums during his career, right up to 2000 when his last album, “Another world” hit the shops. In 2009 he did put together an odd sort of compilation of older work, with some new material and apparently some hymns and carols (!) on it, but his last major studio release was the aforementioned “Another world”.
Gerry was dogged by alcoholism which overshadowed the last decade of his life, and during 2009 he seems to have spent time moving from place to place, having “incidents” along the way, meeting his new wife and being happy for a time before finally succumbing to multi-organ failure brought on by his alcohol dependance. A sad end, and a great loss, but here we prefer to remember him by the music he left us, and I'm sure this is how he would want to be remembered.
TRACKLISTING
1. The Royal Mile
2. I was a boy scout
3. Welcome to Hollywood
4. Wastin' away
5. Look at the moon
6. Bring it all home
7. The garden of England
8. Johnny's song
9. Didn't I
10. Syncopatin' Sandy
11. Cafe le Cabotin
12. Don't close the door