In performances like the TOTP appearance in 1973, Egan and Rafferty would assemble a group of studio musicians to join them. Unfortunately, Gerry Rafferty had already left the band by the time their album was released in 1972, but he was persuaded to return when both the single and the album became smash hits. I will spare you video of that scene, which features Michael Madsen torturing a policeman while that song plays in the background. The song gained notoriety in 1992 when it was part of an infamous scene in Quentin Tarantino’s 1992 debut film Reservoir Dogs. By the way, until acquiring the lyrics for this post, for almost 50 years I had mis-heard the line “and your friends, they all come crawlin’” as “and your friendly uncle Colin.” Apparently another misheard lyric is “Crowns to the left of me, smokers to the right” instead of “clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right.” Stuck In The Middle With You has proved a very popular song. The sound is reminiscent of a Bob Dylan folk-rock song, and apparently people still mistake it for a Dylan tune.
That song, produced by the great American producer-songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, reached #6 on the Billboard pop charts and #2 in Canada. Stuck In The Middle With You was the one big hit for Stealers Wheel. This took place on the BBC show Top of the Pops in May 1973. So here is Stealers Wheel in a live performance of Stuck In The Middle With You. Losing control, yeah, I’m all over the place,Ĭlowns to the left of me, jokers to the right,Īnd you’re proud that you’re a self-made man, It’s so hard to keep this smile from my face, I’m so scared in case I fall off my chair,Īnd I’m wondering how I’ll get down the stairs,Īnd I’m wondering what it is I should do, I got the feeling that something ain’t right, Well I don’t know why I came here tonight,
STUCK IN THE MIDDLE WITH YOU SONG FULL
The lyrics were meant to be a parody of a music industry party, full of ‘jokers and clowns.’ The song Stuck In The Middle With You was co-written by Rafferty and Egan and appeared on their 1972 eponymous debut album. Yes, no cover matches the original, but the song is enjoyable in all of its incarnations.The Scottish folk-rock group Stealers Wheel in 1973. Because of these, it's easy to dismiss "Stuck in the Middle With You" as more of a record than a song, but that's not the case. Even though it sounds fine when it's covered, no subsequent version has matched the original recording because Stealers Wheel loaded their recording with a lot of nice little details, from a slight Dylanesque whine to the harmonized electric guitars on the bridge. In essence, it's a very basic pop-folk song, but that's what's special about it - it's simple yet memorable, the kind of song that sounds good whether it's performed by a solo artist or a full band. True, Egan and Rafferty's lyrical pretensions are a little silly, but the song itself is feverishly catchy, thanks to a great acoustic guitar riff and a sly melody. Quite an achievement for a song that was almost lost to the passage of time.
Bar bands played it regularly, Juice Newton and Jeff Healy both covered it in the mid-'90s, and the track made its way to several other film soundtracks as well.
At first, college kids spun the soundtrack continually, but once the film was on video, "Stuck in the Middle With You" returned to the airwaves, becoming a staple of oldies and AOR radio throughout the '90s. Joe Egan and Gerry Rafferty's catchy Dylan knockoff was the soundtrack to a pivotal scene in the 1992 film, and as its cult grew, so did the song's popularity. After Reservoir Dogs revolutionized indie film in the '90s, the song was viewed as a rock standard. Before Quentin Tarantino hauled out his Have a Nice Day compilations for the soundtrack of Reservoir Dogs, Stealers Wheel's "Stuck in the Middle With You" was a nearly forgotten pop-folk artifact of the early '70s.
0 kommentar(er)
