True Or False – Explanations

OK – clearly I have some explaining to do.

Katie says:

Cliff, I hate to big up your bad-boy status, but if you were cautioned in a UK police station you must have been either arrested or summonsed for something first… *apologetic grimace*

I thought when you are stopped and picked up by police and they question you and let you go for something even though you’ve broken the law, then that’s a caution. Maybe it’s a warning. Anyway – word to my homeys. In Wales.

She then has audacious timerity out which to point:

… and also I thought that the sax player on “Baker Street” was Raphael Ravenscroft. I am starting to feel like the little boy in “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.

Correct! The sax player on the song was Raf Ravenscroft. A friend of mine worked for him in a studio and I went round there one day to do a bit of recording. The sax was lying around there, so I played it. The one on Baker Street. I played it. And yes, I did the riff.

The Bob Holness thing is an urban myth, and a brilliant one because Bob gets asked about it to this day. I do have a good story about Baker Street, though:

Raf Ravenscroft discovered a few short years ago that he was never paid for that session. His friends urged him to get in touch with the record company and collect his millions for his part on the wordwide smash hit. He wrote to the company and they said “Yes indeed, it turns out we owe you some money. Cheque’s in the mail.”

A few weeks later, when the royalty cheque arrived in the post, Raf opened it, fully expecting that his boat had come in. The letter in the envelope offered the record company’s apology for not having paid him sooner. As he said, they did owe him money for the session and please find enclosed the (measly) fifty pounds as promised for the session.

Instead of banking it, the cheque for £50 is on the wall as a talking point. Fifty quid for one of most famous sax riffs in popular music.