Classic Rock Magazine – February 2006
Rags to Riches
by Peter Makowski
Hands up anyone who’s even thought briefly about Supertramp in the last, say, 25 years. Apart from the prog swots and anal anoraks, we very much doubt if the band have penetrated the average listener’s musical consciousness in a long, long time. Alright, so we know they were on the Magnolia soundtrack – but even that film is more than five years old, fer Chrissakes.
There’s a couple of good reasons why Supertramp have been relegated to the bargain bin of history. First, they achieved monumental European success relatively early on in their career, and then virtually abandoned this side of the hemisphere to pursue fame and riches in the US, disappearing up their collective portals. Second, since their depressing demise, Supertramp’s back catalogue has been badly mismanaged. It’s taken almost 10 years to release the current twin-CD compilation, Retrospectacle.
When we said ‘demise,’ the reality is that Supertramp still exists, helmed by the one-half of the original songwriting team, keyboard man Rick Davies. The other half, Roger Hodgson, has been solo since the mid-1980s. He recently played a rapturously received, sold-out show at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire.
Managed by Davies’s wife, Sue, Supertramp have continued to release albums and tour with various line-ups. In fact Davies owns the Supertramp name and is largely responsible for the release of the Retrospectacle set. Which makes it puzzling that he was reticent to contribute to this feature, finally agreeing to communicate tersely via an email Q&A (see page 74).
In 1974 I saw Supertramp play the whole of their Crime Of The Century album at a record company showcase. I remember being mightily impressed. Indeed, I shall throw a critical hand-grenade into the arena and say that Crime... stands proudly alongside epics as mighty as Tommy, The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway and even Dark Side Of The Moon. It still sounds fresh and urgent today. A recent listening transported me back to the days when long-playing records made grand statements and were not just marketing ploys. Nights would be spent studiously rolling spliffs on finely crafted album sleeves, while studying song lyrics in a chin-stroking manner...
This was a period when music was vibrant and original. Supertramp represented an acme of talent that included bands such as Family, Pink Floyd and Traffic, and countless other torch-bearing, pioneering musicians who set groundbreaking standards.
Supertramp’s story kicks off in 1969. Swindon-born Rick Davies’s band The Joint (formerly known as The Lonely Ones) found themselves stranded in Munich, making a living composing music for B-movies. “It was a good experience but Germans make the worst films in the world,” Davies once said. “We were just a cheap way for them to get music on films.”
Destitute and surviving on a diet of pea soup, one of Davies’s film contacts said he knew a millionaire in Switzerland, Stanley August Miesegaes, who was interested in getting involved in the music business. Miesegaes, a young Dutch businessman, wasn’t particularly impressed by The Joint. But he saw potential in Davies and proceeded to plough money into various eccentric ventures. One was dubbed ‘Rick Around The World In 80 Tunes,’ which involved Davies and a bunch of musicians traveling the globe in Land Rovers, writing songs influenced by each country they visited. Davies: “It sounded fantastic but it wasn’t real at all. So I went back and I began auditioning for what was going to be the first Supertramp.”
Enter Roger Hodgson, a fresh-faced youth from Portsmouth and a recent graduate of The Stowe Boarding School in Buckingham. A total contrast to the stern, jazz-obsessed Davies, Hodgson was immersed in hippy culture and was a fan of bands such as Spooky Tooth, Jethro Tull and Traffic. Originally on bass (“My favourite instrument”) Hodgson was joined by Richard Palmer on guitar and Bob Miller on drums, completing the line up of Supertramp Mk 1. The band took their name from a cult classic, WH Davies’s The Autobiography Of A Supertramp.
Davies: “There was a huge change happening at that time. I had been in Europe and hadn’t been aware of it until I went to see Rory Gallagher and Taste. Prior to that I thought that to get anywhere you had to be a pop star. But with the new bands coming up there were fresh standards to live up to – and that’s what we were aiming for.”
Supertramp signed to A&M and released a self-titled album in 1970. It wasn’t a particularly memorable debut. “We were very green then,” said Davies. “There was this thing about not having a producer. We thought: ‘Paul McCartney’s not using a producer, why should we?’ It was that sort of naiveté.”
“It worked on the first album,” countered Hodgson. “It had its own kind of magic.”
Supertramp toured constantly, building up a solid following on the college circuit and selling enough albums to keep A&M interested. By the time they got to record their second album, Palmer and Miller had left. Three new members had arrived: Frank Farrell (bass), Kevin Currie (drums) and Dave Winthrop (saxophone). Hodgson had switched from bass to lead guitar. Indelibly Stamped, which remains infamous for its cover sporting a nude female torso festooned with tattoos, was a much meatier effort than its predecessor, developing theme upon theme in musical layers, with a sound not too dissimilar to Hodgson’s beloved Traffic.
Live, the band became a more animated proposition. “It was just rock’n’roll, said Davies. “We used to get people up on stage. It was just chaos, bopping away doing countless encores, but there was meat and potatoes behind it.”
More line-up shuffles were on the horizon as Supertramp struggled to find their feet. Farrell quit to pursue a solo career and Scot Dougie Thompson entered the scene. Thompson had previously eked out a living playing West End strip joints and subsequently joined the Alan Bown Set. “It was a very strange time,” Thompson recalled. “Sometimes Dave [Winthrop] wouldn’t turn up, and then he'd reappear a couple of gigs later as if nothing had happened. We did one gig in Swansea where the drummer didn't show, so Roger and Rick split the drumming."
Which leads us to the arrival of Bob C. Benberg, a Californian who had been drumming with pub rock darlings Bees Make Honey. Impressed by his unique style and enthusiasm, Supertramp hired him and took on the road, where they started playing raw versions of songs that would form the basis of their landmark album, Crime Of The Century. Benberg's distinctive, punchy, clipped drumwork, along with Thompson’s economical bass lines, helped refine Supertramp’s sound, pushing Davies and Hodgson into a more accessible direction.
Now that the rhythm section had been sorted out there was one more thing left to do. When sax player Winthrop finally stopped coming to gigs the band sat around and pondered their next move. Thompson remembered his old playing partner in the Alan Bown Set, John Anthony Helliwell. Thompson immediately phoned up Helliwell and invited him down for a jam. As Davies once recollected with some amusement: “He had a blow, then he sat down and there was silence for about 20 seconds. Then he did a joke about an Irishman who got a pair of water skis for Christmas and spent the rest of the year looking for a lake with a slope. We had to have him!
A natural comedian and multi-instrumentalist, Helliwell’s relaxed, proficient approach countered the drama of the band’s new sound and stopped it becoming too pretentious. Supertramp had finally arrived.
Sometime during late ’73 the band severed their ties with the millionaire Miesegaes, taking them out of the lap of luxury and throwing them into the cold. The band eventually appointed a manger, Dave Margereson, who would leave his job in A&R at A&M to work with Supertramp full-time. “I saw the band play live. I liked them, but I didn’t go nuts about them,” Margereson recalled. “I became friendly with them over a lot of late nights and I suggested we hire a cottage and they go away and work on new material.”
Helliwell: “We all went to Somerset with our girlfriends, wives, kids and cats. That’s when things really gelled.”
Supertramp spent three months rehearsing solidly and then laid down some backing tracks for Jerry Moss (the ‘M’ of A&M; the ‘A’ being Herb Alpert) to hear. Moss was impressed and gave them carte blanche to carry on, with the proviso that they came up with a single. Land Ho was a rather twee affair and it was suggested strongly that the group should hire a proper producer. This marked the arrival of Ken Scott, a veteran knob-twiddler who had worked with a diverse array of talent including The Beatles, David Bowie and The Mahavishnu Orchestra.
With Scott on board, Supertramp went through the arduous task of the recording Crime Of The Century. It was a painfully long process, as the technology of the time couldn’t match the group’s fastidious demands. Tracks were laid down verse by verse and the whole operation was done with meticulous precision of a stop-motion Wallace and Gromit movie.
Hodgson: “By the time we got to the studio we were primed to take it to another level. Ken Scott was a wonderful teacher. It was a magical time.”
But there was already a split appearing between the once inseparable team of Davies and Hodgson. As Benberg observed: “Rick and Roger had a close writing partnership until they started writing Crime... Then their relationship became really odd. They didn’t talk a lot to each other. The two of them would communicate their lives through these songs.”
Crime... was a very expensive album to make. It was estimated that Supertramp would have to sell three-quarters of million copies to recoup A&M’s investment. But in the final analysis, “the record company loved it,” said Thompson. “The general response was: ‘We’re not sure what this is, but it’s huge.”
Crime Of The Century was released to immediate critical and public acclaim – as Hodgson found out when he returned from a break in Morocco. “When I got off the plane, I saw a copy of Melody Maker where it said our album was No. 1. I couldn’t believe it.”
Loosely going under the guise of a concept album (“Concept albums were the thing, so we set out to make an album that had a beginning, a middle and an end,” said Davies), Crime... was an impressive selection of songs produced by a formidable writing team. Tracks such as School, Bloody Well Right and Dreamer sounded cutting-edge and progressive for the time. But Supertramp also had an innate ability to mix eccentric, far-out ideas with a commercial sensibility that enabled them to cover all the bases. “The university crowd seemed to find hidden meanings in our songs,” says Margereson, “but mums and dads liked us as well, because the songs were full of great melodies.”
Live, Supertramp were also an exciting proposition, ploughing all of their profits into cutting-edge technology, investing in the same sound equipment used by Pink Floyd. Crime... was followed by extensive touring, which set the pattern for the rest of the band’s career.
Recording the follow-up to Crime... would prove to be a daunting task. But no one could have expected the problems that were ahead. During a tour of America, Hodgson sustained a broken arm, and the band had to wait until he recovered. Tired from touring, they had to reach into their vaults to produce enough material to complete the album, which was regarded as a ‘patch-up’ job. They called it, appropriately, Crisis? What Crisis? Hodgson was disappointed: “It could have been much better than Crime... but it wasn’t. We really didn’t enjoy making it.”
Still, tracks like Sister Moonshine, Lady and Ain’t Nobody But Me captured Supertramp’s sharp pop sensibilities along with their penchant for adventurous musical interludes. With Crime... still selling by the truckload, they didn’t lose too much impetus. Then, in 1975, Supertramp decided to shift their focus to the US market. They played a farewell concert at London’s Albert Hall and moved over to Los Angeles.
In-between a heavy touring schedule they recorded another album, 1977’s Even In The Quietest Moments, up in mountains of Colorado. Davies: “What we didn’t realize was that the thin air in the mountains makes your voice go weird. It also made it hard for John to play sax. So we ended up finishing the album in LA.”
Although not Supertramp’s most memorable effort, it became their first album to enter the US Top 20. It also featured the anthemic crowd pleaser Give A Little Bit that would prove to be one of their most enduring anthems. Up until this time Supertramp’s success had been steady but gradual. Nothing could have prepared them for the commercial breakthrough they made with 1979’s Breakfast in America. Margereson: “Crime... was a steady seller; Crisis... was never accepted as a great album. ...Quietest Moments had Give A Little Bit, and that put us back up there. When the songs for Breakfast... came together it felt like it was our time.”
Almost overnight, Supertramp were transformed from a rather quaint, eccentric band into a multi-million-selling, hit-making entity. Breakfast... soared to No. 1 in the US chart. It was the full English experience.
In fact, some of the material had been written over 10 years previously. Hodgson: “My late teens were an incredibly fertile period as far as songwriting was concerned. I’d bought a harmonium and composed the basis of a lot of material that came out in later years. Those songs included Dreamer, It’s Raining Again, Give A Little Bit and, of course, Breakfast In America.”
Breakfast... sits comfortable alongside Crime... as Supertramp at their finest. It went on to sell a staggering 18 million copies worldwide. Another grueling tour followed, involving 52 tons of gear, $5 million worth of equipment and a 40-man crew. It was Supertramp’s time...Or was it?
Margereson: “Breakfast... was the biggest-selling album in the world in 1979. It was the album that saved A&M. The band were at their peak musically and visually. But the tour was far too long and it knackered the band.”
Supertramp found themselves burnt out at the end of their Breakfast... campaign, and Hodgson made the surprise announcement that he was thinking of leaving the band. Davies immediately initiated the release of a live album, Paris, hoping Hodgson and the rest of the members would be able to rehabilitate in the meantime. But the longer Supertramp were inactive, the more fragmented they became. Everything came to a head during the recording of the prophetically titled 1982 album...Famous Last Words.
By now Hodgson – “The cosmic one,” as Margereson described him – had moved away to live in an alternative society in Nevada. [sic]
Thompson: “Roger got a bit cocky. He thought he and Rick should hire a new backing band and carry on with Supertramp that way.”
Margereson: “It came down to one thing: Roger wanted to change members of the band and Rick, God bless him, said: ‘No, this is the band, if you’re not happy then you can leave.”
Matters quickly became farcical. Tired of the endless boardroom encounters, Davies and Hodgson decided to send their wives along to meetings instead.
Margereson: “It got to the point where the two wives were disagreeing over which single should come out first. Ever heard of Spinal Tap?
As the band started recording Famous Last Words, Roger announced it definitely would be his last album and tour with Supertramp. He recalled: “The band wasn’t united. I’d given 14 years of my life to Supertramp because I really believed in it. And it was getting to the point where I didn’t believe in it any more.”
Hodgson briefly changed his mind and offered to rejoin the band, but by then Davies felt it was too late and said no. With camps firmly divided, Hodgson was set to depart for good. Meanwhile, Margereson quit because he was tired of all the bickering. As all this high drama was going on, Rick and Sue Davies moved quickly to become Supertramp’s controlling force. When Sue, a former A&M employee, was introduced as the Supertramp’s manager at an awards ceremony, it was first the rest of the group had heard of it. They were shocked and disgruntled.
Hodgson: “Rick’s wife becoming the manager was destructive. It put a spanner in the works. The whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth. On the last day of the Famous Last Words tour I couldn’t wait to get out.”
Margereson: “Cutting ties with the band was awful. I’m not really over it now. Why I became persona non gratis with Rick and Sue, I honestly don’t know.”
Since then, Davies has continued recording and touring with Supertramp in various incarnations, using new and, occasionally, original members. He has also drafted in former Crowded House vocalist/guitarist Mark Hart to sing Hodgson’s parts, much to the chagrin of former members. Thompson: “Without Roger it’s like washing your feet with your socks on. It’s a parody.”
Hodgson was more philosophical: “I don’t think it makes the band look good and it wasn’t something that was agreed. In a strange way I’m the one that is free. It’s 22 years since I left the band, but in the fans’ minds I’ve never left.”
So where does that leave Supertramp now? It’s a shame that a clash been [sic] two talented but stubborn individuals should prevent the classic line-up of the band treading the boards again.
“Things definitely changed,” says Hodgson. “Rick has the headache of living up to a name that means so much to so many people. He handles it the way he does. I would’ve handled it differently.”
So what are the chances of a reunion?
Hodgson: “I’ve never said never. I’ve never been the one to stop it happening. But it has to feel right. At this point I don’t feel openness from Rick and Sue. I feel quite happy the way my life is going. I don’t need it to happen.”
Thompson: “The chances are pretty slim. It’s not impossible. But as long as it’s under a dictatorship, it’s not going to happen.”
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