You might have guessed something was up when Gerry Rafferty didn’t appear in the video for Stealers Wheel’s Top Ten international hit Stuck In The Middle With You. Joe Egan his partner in the band is seen here singing the song, although on the record he only sang the backing vocal. Rafferty had left and was only talked back in to working with the band in the wake of the song being a hit. His replacement Luther Grosvenor aka Ariel Bender seems to have left soon after Rafferty’s return, joining Mott The Hoople. There was a revolving door of line-up changes in the band but they did manage to organise this most revealing photo session that places Grosvenor and Rafferty briefly in the band at the same time as well as hinting at the gulf between Rafferty and Egan.

After writing about Baker Street and Rafferty’s time in the Humblebums, it seemed incomplete not to post Stealers Wheel’s Stuck In The Middle With You with its Dylanesque singing and lyric and seventies Folk Pop style. The song almost became popular again when Quentin Tarantino used it in 1992 for his film Reservoir Dogs (the only Tarantino film I  haven’t seen) but Rafferty allegedly refused to promote the song in any way.

In 1973 the band released Ferguslie Park, the album featured Egan’s Star, a minor hit, reaching No.25 in the UK and No.29 in the US but by the time they released their third album, Right Or Wrong they’d already suffered an acrimonious split and that was that, you know the rest.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealers_Wheel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuck_in_the_Middle_with_You