Gerry Rafferty - Attitude To The Music Industry

Attitude To The Music Industry

Rafferty drew a clear distinction between the artistic integrity of a musician, on the one hand, and the music industry's need to create celebrities and sell products, on the other. In an interview with Colin Irwin in 1988, he said: "There's a thin line between being a songwriter and a singer and being a personality... If you feel uncomfortable with it you shouldn't do it. It's not for me – there are too many inherent contradictions." Two decades later, speaking to the press after Rafferty's funeral, Charlie Reid of The Proclaimers confirmed Rafferty's dislike of celebrity: "He was not entirely comfortable with fame. Even more so than most people who work in this business, he saw it as not a good thing". Reid believed Rafferty was fundamentally unsuited to the pressures of celebrity: "He struck me as a very, very sensitive man and for someone like that, fame was probably not appropriate." Billy Connolly agrees that Rafferty had different priorities: "I wanted success and fame and I got it, to a degree. Gerry wanted respect. He wanted his talent to be respected. He wanted his songs to be respected. And he certainly got that."

Generally an autobiographical writer, Rafferty returned to this theme often, in the lyrics of Stealers Wheel songs such as "Star", "Stuck in the Middle With You", and "Good Businessman", and later solo tracks like "Take the Money and Run" (from Night Owl), "Welcome to Hollywood" (from Snakes and Ladders), and "Sleepwalking" (from the album of the same name). The liner notes to the compilation album Right Down the Line, written by Jerry Gilbert with Rafferty's close cooperation, note his consistent refusal to tour the USA and "generally 'play the industry game'." It was ironic that Rafferty—a lover and collector of religious icons, who would later name one of his publishing companies "Icon Music"—was also an iconoclast. According to Michael Gray, Rafferty's personal manager at the height of his success, he turned down many opportunities to work with other artists: "... he retained a healthy scepticism not just about the music industry but about society, money and politics in general. His background was soaked in Scottish socialism and poverty, his mind sharp and his personality acerbic, and he wasn't going to be dazzled by the glamour of success."

Rafferty never changed his mind about the music business; if anything, his views hardened. In 2000, he told the Paisley Daily Express that the second Stealers Wheel album, released in 1974, had been named Ferguslie Park, after a deprived area of Paisley, "to get as far away as possible from all the bullshit of the music industry in London." In a November 2009 interview with the Sunday Express, he said: "The music industry... is something I loathe and detest. It conjures up images of a gigantic factory spewing out parts of the machine. In many respects, this of course is exactly what it is now. Pumping out s**t like there’s no tomorrow." The last word came from Monsignor John Tormey, celebrating Rafferty's funeral mass, who suggested the singer's attitude to fame was an indication of his spiritual integrity: "He always searched for a more authentic way to live his life, shunning the outward trappings of celebrity so that he might live as he chose to live his life."