Gerry Rafferty - Personal Life

Personal Life

"There have been periods in my life where I have experienced depression...It has been through some of my darkest moments that I have written some of my best songs. For me, singing and writing is very therapeutic...My main ambition is to continue to write music, which helps me to evolve in a spiritual sense and hopefully to inspire others."

Rafferty met Carla Ventilla (a 15-year-old apprentice hairdresser from an Italian family in Clydebank; Rafferty was 18 at the time) at a dancehall in 1965—a story he later recounted in the song "Shipyard Town" on the album North and South. They married in 1970 and lived in Scotland with their daughter, Martha Mary, before moving to the south of England in the late 1970s, where they divided their time between their farm near the Kent-Sussex border and a home in Hampstead, London. Rafferty's lengthy commutes from London to Scotland inspired a number of songs on the album City to City (including the title track and "Mattie's Rag", which recounted his delight at being reunited with his daughter), while the later move south inspired "The Garden of England" (from the album Snakes and Ladders) and a number of songs on North and South. Gerry Rafferty and Carla Ventilla divorced in 1990. After the completion of Another World, in 2000, Rafferty planned to move back to Scotland and bought Eaglestone House, "a substantial listed 1860s mansion" in the Highland village of Strathpeffer, although he sold the property two years later and never actually moved in.