Singer-songwriter Gerry Rafferty, who died this week, is best remembered for his classic 1970s hit Baker Street. It is just one of a number of well-known tracks closely linked to London locations.
Click on the map to find out the stories behind Baker Street and eight others.
The Welsh songstress’s 2008 tale of anguished separation is set firmly at the Tube station in the title, which lies on the Bakerloo line in London’s Little Venice. A departing train provides the well-used metaphor for a broken-hearted lover whose relationship has run its course.
The Scottish musician’s hit was inspired by his early career as a busker on the London Underground and regular visits to a friend’s flat in Baker Street. The famous saxophone riff boosted sales of the instrument and its use in mainstream pop, known as “the Baker Street phenomenon”.
Costello’s 1978 hit from his second album draws on the exclusive area of west London’s lesser-known edgy past. Now home to film stars and bankers, it was once a haunt of prostitutes as alluded to in the singer-songwriter’s vivid descriptions.
From the arresting opening line “I never thought it would happen with me and the girl from Clapham” through to its gritty story of love, pregnancy and separation, the Deptford group’s much loved 1979 hit screams London with every vocal inflection. The title refers both to Clapham Junction and the predicament of the song’s subject.
Suggs’s 1995 track is a homage to his favourite part of London where “you can do anything you want to” among the bric-a-brac and stalls of its famous open-air market. The area is synonymous with his former pop/ska band Madness which formed there in 1976 and produced a string of top 10 hits.
As a young boy, Guyanese-born musician Grant settled with his parents in Kentish Town and went to school in Tufnell Park, but it is the street market in Brixton referred to in the title with which he will forever be associated. The track reached number two in 1983 in the UK and US.
When the band released this track in 1978, number 90 Wardour Street in Soho was home to the Marquee Club where they and their contemporaries played. The song is a rant against the skinheads and punks who brought a new violence to the club scene. But their ultimate evocation of urban decay has to be Down In The Tube Station At Midnight.
For many, the 1967 hit remains the archetypal ode to London. Ray Davies’s lyrics describe a melancholy observer watching lovers “Terry and Julie” (commonly but incorrectly thought to be actors Terence Stamp and Julie Christie) on a bridge. The narrator’s spirits are lifted by the scene over the River Thames and Waterloo Station.
The Faces’ psychedelic anthem from 1967 was the first in the UK to be banned for overt drug references. The title is thought to derive from the nickname for Little Ilford Park in Manor Park, Newham, where singer-songwriter Steve Marriott grew up. “Itchycoo” is thought to be a reference to the stinging nettles which grew there.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.