THE family of late singer-songwriter Gerry Rafferty have agreed to lend a selection of his personal items for an exhibition of his memorabilia.
Rafferty's daughter, Martha has agreed to loan Paisley Museum the items - including the famous guitar painted by celebrated Scots artist John Byrne and the hand-written lyrics to his biggest hit, Baker Street.
The exhibition about the Paisley-born musician will run from March 7 to May 9 and is part of the Bring It All Home Festival, organised by Renfrewshire Council in conjunction with the Rafferty family. The display will also feature other guitars decorated by Byrne and artworks by the painter, who is also from Paisley and was a close friend of Rafferty, who died in January 2011.
Byrne designed the covers for many of the singer's solo albums as well as the record sleeves for Stealers Wheel, which Rafferty formed with fellow Paisley songwriter, Joe Egan and had a worldwide hit with Stuck In The Middle.
The Bring It All Home Festival was held in Paisley for the first time earlier this year and featured a sold out performance by James Grant at Paisley Abbey and a songwriting competition.
This year's expanded festival, from April 11 to 20, includes three headline concerts, one of which will feature family and friends of the Rafferty family, including Rab Noakes, Barbara Dickson, and Eddi Reader.The songwriting contest is being held again in partnership with The University of the West of Scotland, with a music scholarship as prize.
Rafferty fan and owner of the Apollo Music record store in Paisley, Mike Dillon said: "I expect the exhibition will attract visitors from not only this country, but from all over the world."
Renfrewshire Council leader Mark Macmillan said: "It is fitting that the success and talent of one of Paisley's most famous sons should be celebrated with an exhibition like this. For many people the music of Gerry Rafferty was part of the soundtrack to their lives."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article