Night Owl by Gerry Rafferty

Album: Night Owl (1978)

Charted: 5

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"Night Owl" is the title track to Gerry Rafferty's third solo album, the follow-up to his best-seller, City To City. Like Rafferty's hit "Baker Street," the song is undoubtedly autobiographical to some degree, as he sings about the ennui he gets from his life as a performing musician and the loneliness that creeps in when the lights go down. At the time, Rafferty had left his native Scotland and relocated to England.
The song was released as a single backed by "Why Won't You Talk to Me?" Like the rest of the album, it was written by Rafferty and produced by Hugh Murphy on the United Artists label. >>>
Suggestion credit:
Alexander Baron - London, England, for above 2
The Lyricon solo was played by Raphael Ravenscroft, the guy who performed the famous sax solo on "Baker Street." The Lyricon is a breath-controlled analog synthesizer invented by Bill Bernardi and Roger Noble of Computone Inc. in Massachusetts in the early 1970s. It was the first electronic wind instrument to be constructed.

Comments: 1

James from Ashland, OregonGerry Rafferty's Night Owl evokes the same sense of disconnect and alienation as in "Baker Street," released two years earlier in 1977. When night comes he feels alone and looks for solace in the bars and alcohol and "in a space and time" of his own. Losing himself in dreams and shadows he finally regains his sense of life's flow. You feel the longing in Rafferty's isolation. But the flow of the music undercuts the alienation of the words and we lose ourselves in the Rafferty's warm vocal, the swaying rhythm, and the sweet Lyricon solo. In the genre of "Night Owl" songs -- and there have been more than two dozen different Night Owl compositions since 1951 -- Rafferty breaks new ground in theme and structure. http://owlthingsconsidered.org/night-owl-songs-1968-90/#NO10

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