Gerry Rafferty - Baker Street
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Category: Top 40 Music On Compact Disc
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Topic: Gerry Rafferty - Baker Street
Posted By: aaronk
Subject: Gerry Rafferty - Baker Street
Date Posted: 28 December 2008 at 7:48pm
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Although the database nicely summarizes the running times for the various versions of "Baker Street," I'm wondering if anyone can help identify which versions are on each 45. What I'm gathering from the database and info from Jim is:
1) stock copies are all the 4:08 version (medium speed) 2) some promo copies exist with the mono/stereo of the 4:08 version (medium speed) So, are there two other promos or just one? Pat notes that some dj copies have 3:47 (fastest speed) and 5:56 (slowest speed) versions. Aside from the speed, does the 3:47 version just have one edit on the intro when compared to the 4:08 version? |
Replies:
Posted By: Hykker
Date Posted: 29 December 2008 at 6:56am
My promo has the LP version on one side and the short version on the other. I'm pretty sure it's the 4:08 version, though I'll have to check. Never knew there was a shorter edit. |
aaronk wrote:Posted By: Bill Cahill
Date Posted: 29 December 2008 at 8:40am
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I have two separate promos. Both state UA-X1192-Y.
The first promo contains the 4:08 version on one side as UAST 19462-E and the 5:56 version as UAST 19462. Both sides stereo. The second promo is mono/stereo 3:47 and is UA-X1192-Y. UA 19462-E-RE1 and UAST 19462-E-RE1. My understanding is that more edits were sent to radio stations but these were the only ones that made it to vinyl. Here's why there were so many versions. (As told to me by Mark Lindsay of the Raiders, who at the time of Baker street was A&R for United Artist Records) Lindsay was convinced there were three hits from the LP and that Baker Street would be the biggest. (Right Down the Line and Home and Dry were the other two) So he listened in as Director of Promotion, the legendary Charlie Minor, called radio stations about Baker Street. He heard all kinds of excuses as to why stations wouldn't play it. The song was too slow, too long, the intro was too long, the break was too long, etc. Mark wrote down all of the objections and sent out various edits to remove the objections, I believe on reel to reel tape. So some edited the intro, the middle break, or sped up the song. Mark said there were something like ten edits made, but it appears that only three versions made it to vinyl, as listed in Pat's book. |
Posted By: EdisonLite
Date Posted: 29 December 2008 at 10:31am
| Very interesting story about Mark Linday's reaction and what he did. And I never knew Mark became an A&R man. |
Posted By: Hykker
Date Posted: 29 December 2008 at 12:23pm
I find it odd that they would have made as many as 10 edits of a song by an essentially unknown artist (yeah, we all know he was a member of Stealer's Wheel, but Gerry Rafferty was hardly a well-known act). You've got to admit that the sax solo is what "made" the song. While his follow-ups (the aforementioned ones, plus "Days Gone Down") were chart hits in their day, "Baker Street" is the only one that's stood the test of time. |
Posted By: sriv94
Date Posted: 29 December 2008 at 3:26pm
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What I find somewhat ironic is that people complained about how slow the LP version of "Baker Street" was, yet I do believe the 45 version of "Home And Dry," while an edit, is slower than the LP version. ------------- Doug --------------- All of the good signatures have been taken. |
Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 29 December 2008 at 5:49pm
| Bill, does the 3:47 promo really run that length? A friend of mine sent me a dub, but his copy runs 3:51, and it's actually slightly slower than the stock 45 version. I'm wondering if the pitch control on his Technics turntable was accidentally not set to zero. |
Posted By: Yah Shure
Date Posted: 29 December 2008 at 6:53pm
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I have three different "Baker Street" promo 45s. In the chronological order that they were received:
http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh240/YahShure/GerryRafferty-BakerStreet4-08monoDJ.jpg - 4:08 mono /4:08 stereo (March 28, 1978) http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh240/YahShure/GerryRafferty-BakerStreet5-56DJ.jpg - 5:56 stereo / 4:08 stereo (April 14, 1978) http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh240/YahShure/GerryRafferty-BakerStreet3-47monoDJ.jpg - 3:47 mono / 3:47 stereo (April 17, 1978) From the non-charting department: Before "Baker Street", the song that would later become the title track to the City To City LP was released around Halloween, 1977. At 3:47, the stereo/ http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh240/YahShure/GerryRafferty-CityToCitymonoDJ.jpg - mono "City To City" DJ 45 (UA 1098) runs shorter than the LP version, and plays at its original, slower speed. |
Posted By: Gary Mack
Date Posted: 29 December 2008 at 7:50pm
My 3:47 promo 45 also runs 3:51. Our station (Z-97 in Dallas/Fort Worth) played that version and I remember the tip sheets we followed saying that was the favored edit for Top 40s. Seems to me the issues included both the mix and at least one very obvious edit in the earlier promos. GM |
Posted By: eriejwg
Date Posted: 29 December 2008 at 8:32pm
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Everyone:
Can the 3:47 promo be recreated from the 4:08 version? |
Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 29 December 2008 at 8:32pm
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Yah Shure, thank you very much for confirming what I thought to be true. I knew that a 4:08 mono/stereo configuration existed, thanks to fellow forum member jimct. Nicely summarized!
Gary, thank you very much for that extra bit of information, too. It appears that the database is slightly incorrect, then. It says that 3:47 is the fastest speed of all the versions, which is not quite accurate. That version actually runs about a half percent slower than the stock 45 version. The one obvious edit you correctly recall is in the intro. The edit is right before the first horn (not the horn "hook"), as the song starts to build up. It occurs at 0:04, after the cymbol tap and immediately before that horn. Everything else seems to match the stock 45 version exactly. Now, as far as mix differences go, I didn't hear anything obvious between the 4:08 and 3:51 versions. I do not own the LP version to compare with the shorter versions. |
Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 29 December 2008 at 8:33pm
| John, hopefully I just answered your question. |
Posted By: eriejwg
Date Posted: 29 December 2008 at 8:39pm
| Yes, Aaron, appears we were posting at the same time... |
Posted By: Bill Cahill
Date Posted: 30 December 2008 at 7:50am
| I loaded up all versions in Adobe from a Techniques Quartz Radio station turntable. Who knows, there could be pitch differences in other folks copies, but I find that the 3:47 stereo and 4:08 stereo copies are almost exactly the same pitch, but my 3:47 mono DJ side is a faster pitch than any other version including the 3:47 stereo side. Maybe somebody else can confirm. |
Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 30 December 2008 at 10:59am
| Very interesting, Bill. This is probably why the database says that the 3:47 version is the fastest speed of all the versions. Does the 3:47 mono side actually run 3:47? My friend who sent the dub only sent the stereo side. |
Posted By: Yah Shure
Date Posted: 31 December 2008 at 9:26am
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Bill, thanks for all of the great "Baker Street" info!
And - in spite of having owned the 4:08 mono/stereo promo 45 for thirty years, then scanning it and posting the link above - I just now noticed that the mono side misspells Gerry's last name as "Raffetry." And the variations just keep on comin'! :) |
Posted By: eriejwg
Date Posted: 31 December 2008 at 9:53am
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John:
Thanks for posting the 3:47 promo scans. I finally got that tricky edit, after hearing someone else's recreation and how Aaron described the edit about. Noticing the intro is stated as :24 helped too, as my intro is 24.5 (with a half second dead space at the very beginning) It's kinda clunky sounding, as that drum tap/going into the horn reminds me of a bad sounding tap splice! |
Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 31 December 2008 at 10:25am
| Actually, I thought the edit was pretty smooth sounding, although you can hear where the splice is on the 45. If you make the edit digitally in the exact same spot, the edit is not noticeable at all. This is because tape is spliced on a diagonal, causing one channel to come slightly ahead of the other. By the way, if you put the edit right on the cymbol tap before the horn, you've made the edit too early, and it will sound more clunky. |
Posted By: crapfromthepast
Date Posted: 31 December 2008 at 11:34am
Actually, I think the read heads on the pro reel-to-reel decks are also on a diagonal, so that splices fall at the same time for left and right channels. It's been about 20 years since I was knee deep in splice tape, but I'm pretty sure that's correct... |
Posted By: eriejwg
Date Posted: 31 December 2008 at 11:37am
| No, I made the cut right after the cymbal tap at :04 and the second edit right before the horn. Ya hear it a couple times and it's smooth, just initially it didn't. |
Posted By: eriejwg
Date Posted: 31 December 2008 at 11:40am
| Splicing blocks, what memories! |
Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 31 December 2008 at 12:14pm
All I know for sure is that on most 45s mastered from tapes that have been spliced, you can clearly see that one channel comes before the other just by zooming in closely to the wav form. On "Baker Street," for example, the splice at the horn can be seen (and heard) just a fraction of a second earlier in the right channel. Thankfully, when I started working in radio in 1994, reel-to-reel was on its way out. I only had to splice tape until about 1996, at which point we started using digital editors. I remember we used to have a DAT(?) multi-track recorder. I think it could handle up to eight tracks, but I haven't seen or used one in over 10 years. |
Posted By: crapfromthepast
Date Posted: 31 December 2008 at 12:48pm
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Interesting! I remember that many of the splice blocks had a few notches on them, and if you did you edit with the 90 degree notch instead of the 45 degree notch, your edit would have a delay in one of the channels. I'm really surprised that there are 45s where you can hear the left/right delay - you'd think that the engineers at the record companies would know stuff like that!
I remember converting all my old spliced production stuff to two-track DAT in 1997. A few of the splices were over ten years old and were starting to get a little sticky. All these years later, a part of me misses the hands-on aspect of cut-and-paste editing. The other half doesn't miss at all the generation loss, the weird EQ and level settings from deck-to-deck, speed errors, and very expensive blank tape! If I'd had these digital tools back then, I would have been unstoppable. (As it was, I was merely... stoppable.) |
Posted By: Yah Shure
Date Posted: 31 December 2008 at 1:33pm
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I don't miss the never-ending supply of dull razor blades in the studio. Nor do I miss having tape segments strewn over every piece of production studio furniture and equipment at 2 A.M., only to grow tired and forget what was what while attempting to replicate the "One Fine Morning" 45 in stereo.
But I do miss the extra energy derived from the physical activity, be it from constantly retrieving and filing records/carts/CDs, or the movement associated with the hands-on activity that Ron mentioned. That's what kept me pumped. I bought a splicing block at Radio Shack maybe twenty years ago, when I realized I didn't have one to work on old airchecks. It'll get some use... one of these years. |
Posted By: Hykker
Date Posted: 31 December 2008 at 2:31pm
I'll have to second Yah Shure's comments on reel-to-reel tape. While it made you feel like you were doing "real" radio, I don't miss doing production on reel. It's so much easier to tweak a piece of production with some sort of digital workstation...adjust levels, add compression or EQ, or "slide" an edit so it flows just right. Ditto for in-studio for phoners. It never failed, you'd have the tape all cued up to play on-air and you'd get a call that would have made a great phone bit. With a Shortcut (or at my last on-air gig, an old computer running SAW) it was easy, reel-to-reel not so much. Alas, much like the music industry itself, it seems the more and better toys there are to work with the less creativity there is. As far as DATs go, there was a format that never really caught on except with Deadheads. At my last station, we'd get custom artist drops on DAT (for some reason), luckily one of our nearby sister stations had one for us to borrow to dub. |
Posted By: EdisonLite
Date Posted: 01 January 2009 at 11:36am
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<I remember we used to have a DAT(?) multi-track recorder. >
Aaron, I've never seen or heard of a multi-track DAT recorder (only 2 tracks for DAT), but I wonder if you're referring to A-DAT machines. Those were 8-tracks and digital and almost the same name. Is that what you used? They were quite popular around 10-15 years ago. |
Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 01 January 2009 at 1:02pm
| Yes, I'll bet that's what it was, Gordon. I just remember it was a digital tape that could handle 8 tracks. |
Posted By: Bill Cahill
Date Posted: 01 January 2009 at 1:06pm
| As far as the length on my 3:47 Baker Street, both sides, mono and stereo, make it to "not quite 3:51". But I didn't check with headphones. |
Posted By: TimNeely
Date Posted: 14 November 2012 at 2:31am
A few U.S. stock copies contain the 5:56 version on them. I know this because I own one. It is labeled as the 4:08 version, however. |
Posted By: KentT
Date Posted: 25 December 2012 at 11:54am
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A note, the US issues are sped up. The UK appearances on either 45 or LP are correct speed. A note, heads on open reel machines are not on an angle. The reason why splices are done diagonally is to reduce pops on playback and reduce dropouts. ------------- I turn up the good and turn down the bad! |
Posted By: Steve Carras
Date Posted: 28 March 2016 at 8:33pm
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THEN there's issue of Stealer's Wheel's two different versions (LP and 45 of 1973's "Everyone's Agreed..Turn..Fine". ------------- You know you're really older when you think that younger singer Jesse McCartney's related in anyway to former Beatle Paul McCartney. |
Posted By: Ron S
Date Posted: 08 January 2019 at 1:15pm
| A question....How much faster is the dj 45 edit than the 45 version of 4:08? |
Posted By: sriv94
Date Posted: 08 January 2019 at 4:50pm
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Maybe about 1%. The promo version has an additional edit in the intro compared to the stock single, which accounts for most if not
all of the time difference. ------------- Doug --------------- All of the good signatures have been taken. |
Posted By: Ron S
Date Posted: 08 January 2019 at 7:45pm
Thanks.....not much of difference....I made it 2% faster but still not much a difference. I always remember the song being faster than the version I have |
Posted By: eriejwg
Date Posted: 09 January 2019 at 8:54pm
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I know the 45 version of Right Down the Line is faster
than the LP. The 45 of Baker Street is faster than the long LP version but I don't know how much. ------------- John Gallagher Erie, PA https://www.johngallagher.com" rel="nofollow - John Gallagher Wedding & Special Event Entertainment / Snapblast Photo Booth |
Posted By: KentT
Date Posted: 19 January 2019 at 7:18pm
Yes, I suspect he had Alesis ADAT machines. They used SVHS transports for storing the digital data, and could be daisy chained with a controller for more tracks if desired. These were common in demo studios, some broadcast production, and even professional recording studios sometimes used them. Yes, dealt with my fair share of splices on analog tape, and aligning and maintaining tape machines in broadcast facilities as one of the engineers. ------------- I turn up the good and turn down the bad! |
Posted By: sriv94
Date Posted: 19 January 2019 at 7:21pm
And I mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. The third single was "Home And Dry," which ran slower in its 45 edit than in its LP version. ------------- Doug --------------- All of the good signatures have been taken. |
Posted By: KentT
Date Posted: 27 January 2019 at 9:27pm
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Yes, slower on 45 than the USA LP. Side 1 of "City To
City" was sped up on USA United Artists LP discs. Long side, and the side was long. On most European issues, UK and Germany known. the deadwax on Side 1, was very close to the label area. Enough that many automatic turntables and record changers would have issues with the last song on side 1. If I were dealing with this issue, speeding up this side slightly was a decent way to deal with the issue, and make those key tracks more airplay friendly. Being "Baker Street", "Right Down The Line" and all else could be OK. ------------- I turn up the good and turn down the bad! |