Musical Career
Rafferty left St. Mirin's Academy in 1963. He worked in a butcher's shop, as a civil service clerk, and in a shoe shop, although as he noted in a later interview: "But there was never anything else for me but music. I never intended making a career out of any of the jobs I did." On weekends he and a schoolfriend, Joe Egan, played in a local group named The Mavericks, mainly covering chart songs by groups such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. In the mid 1960s Rafferty earned money, for a time, busking on the London Underground. In 1966 he was a member of the band The Fifth Column, along with future Stealers Wheel collaborator Joe Egan. The group released the single "Benjamin Day"/"There's Nobody Here" (Columbia 8068), but it was not a commercial success.
Read more about this topic: Gerry Rafferty
Famous quotes containing the words musical and/or career:
“I think no woman I have had ever gave me so sweet a moment, or at so light a price, as the moment I owe to a newly heard musical phrase.”
—Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)
“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)