Stealers Wheel

In present-day memory Stealers Wheel is recalled chiefly through a couple of tracks, yet at the height of their activity the Scottish group seemed positioned as the United Kingdom’s equivalent to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Persistent personnel upheaval alone thwarted that trajectory after an encouraging launch. Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan first crossed paths as teenagers at school in Paisley. Rafferty had already enjoyed three years of visibility inside the Humblebums before that outfit disbanded, then launched a solo career that stalled when his debut album Can I Have My Money Back? (Transatlantic, 1971) failed commercially. He had enlisted Egan and Roger Brown as vocalists on the sessions. Rafferty and Egan formed the nucleus of Stealers Wheel, handling guitar and keyboards respectively, though their strongest asset resided in the close vocal blend they achieved, comparable to the interplay between Graham Nash and David Crosby. Brown, Rab Noakes on guitar and vocals, and Ian Campbell on bass joined in 1972, yet that configuration endured only a few months. When the band signed to A&M later that year, Brown, Noakes, and Campbell had already departed, their places taken by guitarist Paul Pilnick, bassist Tony Williams, and drummer Rod Coombes, formerly of Juicy Lucy and later a member of the Strawbs. This hastily assembled unit proved highly effective behind Rafferty’s and Egan’s harmonies on the self-titled debut album produced by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Released in 1972, the record earned both critical praise and strong sales, anchored by the hit single “Stuck in the Middle with You,” which reached the Top Ten in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Even that breakthrough carried friction: Rafferty had already exited before the album appeared, his role filled on tour for most of 1973 by Spooky Tooth guitarist Luther Grosvenor. DeLisle Harper replaced Tony Williams for live dates as well. With a stable road lineup supporting them, the debut album climbed to number 50 on the American chart while “Stuck in the Middle with You” achieved million-selling status. At that juncture management convinced Rafferty to rejoin, prompting Grosvenor, Coombes, and Pilnick to leave. After the rapid turnover of the prior year, Stealers Wheel adopted the same operational model that Walter Becker and Donald Fagen had chosen for Steely Dan: Egan and Rafferty operated officially as a duo, recruiting studio and touring musicians as required. Demand for further hits remained intense. “Everyone Agreed That Everything Will Turn Out Fine” achieved modest chart placement, while the mid-tempo “Star” reached the Top 30 on both sides of the Atlantic. Their second album, Ferguslie Park—named after a district in Paisley—was recorded with session players and peaked just inside the American Top 200, though it found greater favor among college listeners; its quality, a collection of inventive melodic pop-rock songs, stood in contrast to its commercial showing. The album’s disappointing sales generated friction that nearly severed the Egan-Rafferty partnership. Compounding the strain, Leiber & Stoller departed amid their own business difficulties, and the duo could not settle on a consistent pool of session players for a follow-up. Consequently Stealers Wheel remained inactive for eighteen months. When the contractually required third album, Right or Wrong, finally surfaced, it proved stronger than circumstances suggested, yet the group had already dissolved by the time of its release. Legal entanglements with management kept both Rafferty and Egan out of the studio for the next three years. Once those matters were resolved, Egan issued two albums on the European Ariola label. Rafferty, meanwhile, scored a major success in 1978 with the single “Baker Street” and the album City to City. After 1975 the Stealers Wheel name was permanently retired by its two principals, although Rafferty later revisited several songs he had co-written with Egan on his mid-nineties album Over My Head. Both men subsequently addressed the group’s contentious history in their lyrics. Numerous best-of collections continue to feature their recordings, and “Stuck in the Middle with You” endures as a seventies staple, notably resurfacing on the soundtrack of Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs in a version by the Jeff Healey Band.