Well, shit. Gerry Rafferty's dead.

In the early eighties, I worked in another city. I had not gone there entirely by choice. I had been fired from my job (again), and I took refuge there because someone was willing to hire me.

I worked in an office with several people who had come there from other cities and towns. Of all the people with my job title, only one was local. The rest of us hoped to be just passing through, on our way to greener pastures in a couple of years.

It was, in fact, a basically journeyman profession. Across the country, hundreds of young men and women like us were doing their two years here, three years there, in hopes of eventually striking the big time in a city like Los Angeles or New York. In the meantime, we toiled away in medium and small cities and towns, paying our dues.

And on many evenings – most evenings, in fact – my coworkers and I would head to a local watering hole, have entirely too much to drink, get maudlin and depressed, and ask the bartender to put on our anthem, Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street:

Winding your way down on Baker Street
Light in your head and dead on your feet
Well another crazy day, you'll drink the night away
And forget about everything.

This city desert makes you feel so cold
It's got so many people but it's got no soul
And it's taken you so long to find out you were wrong
When you thought it held everything.

You used to think that it was so easy,
You used to say that it was so easy
But you're tryin', you're tryin' now.
Another year and then you'd be happy
Just one more year and then you'd be happy
But you're cryin', you're cryin' now.

Way down the street there's a light in his place
He opens the door, he's got that look on his face
And he asks you where you've been, you tell him who you've seen
And you talk about anything.

He's got this dream about buyin' some land
He's gonna give up the booze and the one night stands
And then he'll settle down, it's a quiet little town
And forget about everything.

But you know he'll always keep movin'
You know he's never gonna stop movin'
Cause he's rollin', he's the rollin' stone.
And when you wake up it's a new morning
The sun is shining, it's a new morning
But you're going, you're going home.

Gerry Rafferty died this morning in England, after a long illness and years of alcoholism. He was 63.