Joe Egan, singer-songwriter of Stuck In The Middle With You, dies aged 77
Tributes have flooded in for the singer and co-founder of Stealers Wheel.
Joe Egan, the singer and co-founder of Stealers Wheel, has died at the age of 77.
The news was confirmed by the family of his late bandmate Gerry Rafferty.
The band were best known for their hit single Stuck in the Middle With You, which was released in 1973.
The news was confirmed on the Facebook page of Rafferty, who died in 2011, with his daughter Martha sharing a series of images of Rafferty and Egan.
She wrote alongside: "Very sad news that the other half of Stealers Wheel, Joe Egan, passed away peacefully yesterday afternoon with his nearest and dearest around him.
"I will always remember him as a sweet and gentle soul. May he rest in peace."
Egan and Rafferty met as teenagers in Paisley, working together in a string of bands including The Fifth Column and The Mavericks before forming Stealers Wheel.
The band achieved chart success with tracks like Late Again, Star and Everyone’s Agreed That Everything Will Turn Out Fine.
But their biggest hit came with Stuck in the Middle With You, which reached No. 8 on the UK singles Chart and No. 6 on the US Billboard Hot 100.
The band split in 1975, but Stuck in the Middle With You had a resurgence in 1992 when it featured in a pivotal scene in Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs.
Speaking about the song’s inclusion in the film, Tarantino previously told Rolling Stone: "That was one of those things where I thought [the song] would work really well, and [during] auditions, I told the actors that I wanted them to do the... scene, and I’m gonna use Stuck in the Middle With You, but they could pick anything they wanted, they didn’t have to use that song."
He continued: "And a couple of people picked another one, but almost everyone came in with Stuck in the Middle With You, and they were saying that they tried to come up with something else, but that’s the one.
"The first time somebody actually did the torture scene to that song, the guy didn’t even have a great audition, but it was like watching the movie. I was thinking, 'Oh my God, this is gonna be awesome!'"
Egan also released two solo albums in his career, Out of Nowhere in 1979 and Map in 1981.
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Molly Moss is a Trends Writer for Radio Times, covering the latest trends across TV, film and more. She has an MA in Newspaper Journalism and has previously written for publications including The Guardian, The Times and The Sun Online.
