Excerpt from RAM magazine - August 24, 1979
SUPERTRAMP
Is There Schizophrenia In Heaven?
Harry Doherty penetrates the dressing room of the most enigmatic phenomenon to top the world charts this year.
It’s 2 am in the car-park of the Cleveland Coliseum, and the fanbelt on Roger Hodgson’s motor home has just snapped. We’re stranded. And the baby’s crying. And Roger, singer-guitarist-pianist of Supertramp, wants to talk about the psychic powers of music.
“Rock ‘n’ roll is just touching upon what’s possible with music,” he confidently begins. “I really think of rock ‘n’ roll as being very primitive. I think of what we’re doing as being very primitive. We haven’t even begun to explore. The power of music has been forgotten. The ancients knew it, and we’re rediscovering it very slowly. Music has the power to heal, to hypnotise, to make people totally sad, happy, joyous. I’d like to find out how to do all those things.”
Rick Davies (kebyds, vcls) would probably say that’s a load of rubbish.
Roger Hodgson and Rick Davies are the contrasting personalities – the philosopher and the realist – who write, sing and play with Supertramp. Supertramp are big business in America right now. They have the rare distinction in the US of making an album that dropped from number one to two with a bullet. Their current North American tour, a massive 50-concert jaunt now winding to a close in Canada, has attracted audiences in excess of 10,000 nightly.
Supertramp are British, have released six albums (four with today’s personnel) and now reside in Los Angeles. Breakfast In America the latest in the saga, has been widely interpreted as a cynical overview of the American life-style. Supertramp themselves have conflicting views on the matter, one half admitting that it is an opinion on the US while the other denies all guilt.
It’s a mistake, says John Anthony Helliwell, the band’s mildly eccentric sax-player, to read too deeply into the lyrics. Sure, he admits, the tone does poke a finger at certain elements of the American life-style, but no more than that. Nevertheless, lines that proclaim that there are “so many creeps in Hollywood” and “you watch the television, it tells you what you should” make it hard to swallow the diplomacy.
Bob Benberg, their affable Californian-born drummer, is genuinely surprised, the thought had never struck him. “I don’t think it was meant as a big social comment,” he offers tentatively.
Bass-player Dougie Thomson, a Scot, doesn’t mind California at all. Dougie loves it. The good weather allows him the pursue activities – deep sea diving, for example – that it’s impossible to explore consistently in old Blighty.
The droll Davies, looking the worse for wear as the tour nears its end, readily confesses his dislike for the West Coast in particular. So why settle down there?
“Well,” he explains slowly, “as we live in L.A., it’s very hard to say whether or not we’ve settled down in America. I don’t think that’s a place where anybody wants to settle down, not even Americans.”
Hodgson makes light of Breakfast In America. Some of the pertinent observations contained in the album were his, but he doesn’t disguise the fact that the social freedom California affords suits his religious beliefs much more.
“I started getting into yoga and spiritual things in England, but you could say it found fertile soil in California. Yoga is considered weird in England, but in California it’s not. It’s an everyday word that people have a lot of respect for and it’s what a lot of people are into. The same as being a vegetarian. In England you’re a weirdie. So there’s that and the climate. In California, you feel that you want to be healthy, because you feel good. In England, unfortunately, you almost live your life in a raincoat.”
He emphasizes there was no deliberate concept. The fact that listeners searched for one was a hangover from the days of Crime Of The Century, the album which brought them back into the spotlight in 1974.
“It’s just a collection of songs. We chose the title because it was a fun title. It suited the fun feeling of the album.”
Hodgson and Davies are the only remaining original members of Supertramp, although it will be argued that the band’s real history didn’t begin until 1973 when the pair recruited the services of Benberg, Thompson [sic] and Helliwell in a desperate attempt to give their ailing rock career the kiss of life.
Until the band was re-shaped, Supertramp had endured an inauspicious spell. The future had originally looked bright when Rick Davies, with financial help from a mysterious Dutch financier called Sam, broke up his own group, the Joint, to form another. Out of the auditions came public schoolboy Roger Hodgson, guitarist Richard Palmer and percussionist Robert Miller. Palmer wrote the lyrics; Hodgson and Davies combined to compose the music. An album, Supertramp, the start of a long and patient affiliation with A&M Records, came out in 1970 and attracted little attention.
When the second album Indelibly Stamped was released a year later, only Hodgson and Davies remained from the original band, now joined by Frank Farrell (bass and piano), Kevin Currie (percussion) and David Winthrop (flutes and saxophones). After the failure of that album and band, Davies and Hodgson decided that drastic action was needed to put their band back on the rails. They jettisoned Farrell, Currie and Winthrop. First they found Dougie Thompson [sic] and, through him, nabbed John Helliwell. Davies had seen Benberg play with Bees Make Honey and made him an offer that he could very well have refused but, for some reason, didn’t.
A&M’s faith having been re-affirmed, the band retreated to a cottage in Somerset called Southcombe. Although they’re understandably loth [sic] to use the term, the cottage was run along the lines of a “hippy commune” in which they lived on the breadline and rehearsed the material for Crime Of The Century to perfection.
With that, Ken Scott was drafted in as their producer. His arrival, coupled with the fact that Davies and Hodgson had struck a strong vein of compositional inspiration, was to prove invaluable. He is chiefly responsible for the reputation Supertramp have accumulated as a fussy band in the studio, producing perfect stereo for your hi-fi. It’s a compliment that Davies and Hodgson accept begrudgingly.
Davies lays the credit (or the blame) for the careful production on the shoulders of both Hodgson and Scott. Hodgson, however, says that he’s not too bothered about the sound.
“There’s no real powerhouse musician in the band,” Davies explains. “Because of that, I think that we need to be fussy in the production.” But he seems particularly aggrieved that Breakfast In America took eight months to record – “a ridiculous amount of time, really.”
Roger, he says, is dominant in the production – “and he’s welcome to it. If I ever did a solo album, I’d just get the best producer I could think of and leave it to him. I skived a lot when we did Breakfast In America. It just gets boring, beyond being any fun at all. You’ll walk in and they’re playing a certain section and five hours later, they’re still on it… but I’m certainly grateful for the results. I would just add to the confusion if I hung about.”
Hodgson maintains Ken Scott is responsible for their hi-fi status. “We have a reputation now for high quality, so we can’t release bad sound-quality. It’s worthwhile, but if you left me to my own devices, I’d go home with my eight-track stereo recorder and probably put an album out on that.
“That [sic] albums that I like aren’t of very high recording quality. If you listen to all the Beatles’ stuff, it’s terrible. It was recorded abominably but, because the vibe in it is so nice, you don’t even think about it. We’re doing that slowly. There’s more of a band vibe on Breakfast In America than ever before. In a way that’s what took us so long. We almost lost that, and we spent three months finding it again.”
Another ingredient in Supertramp’s arrival is its grueling touring pattern.
When they go out on the road, it’s never a half-measure. This is not the first nine-month tour on which Supertramp have embarked, but the weight of endless one-nighters has taken its toll.
This will, in fact, be Supertramp’s last major tour – one of the few areas where Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson find themselves in total agreement.
When the subject of touring is raised, Davies wears a decidedly painful expression: “I think we’re going to have to use the time a little more creatively than just endless tours, because that will kill us in the end. We have to figure that one out.”
Dougie Thompson [sic] strategically points out Supertramp are caught up in the commercial circle of touring-the-US/recording-for-the-US/touring-the-US.
Davies is particularly desperate to crack the system, hoping that they might do condensed tours in the future.
His writing, he says, has suffered more than anything else. “The five songs that I did on Breakfast are the only things that I’ve done in three years. I can’t think straight when we’re on the road. I’m just thinking about where we’re going next.
“The problem is that three of the band are not writers. It’s up to them to find their little niches, for when the band aren’t touring. It’s down to ‘can we survive without being around each other so much?’ Can we all exist within our own little worlds and then come back together as Supertramp? It’s difficult, because John loves to tour. He loves to play more than anything else, whereas I’m ready to go home. I feel bad for him. It’s a question of being able to handle that.”
Roger, more pragmatic, doesn’t have such crises of conscience. He’s made his mind up: he’s determined to get touring before touring gets him.
“Touring agrees with me less and less now. I think this is the last one for me. It’s probably the last one for all of us. There’s more things to life. I still want to play to people, because that’s in a musician’s blood, but in a way I get as much, probably even more, playing an acoustic guitar in front of a room full of people than I do getting up there in front of 15,000 people. I get much more reward within myself.
“It’s a show. I feel like I’m part of a show. I don’t feel I’m me. But in a room full of people you know that every single subtlety will be picked up. Artistically, our show is like a play. We go out and do the same play every night, maybe slightly different depending on how you feel and how you vibe with the actors. That’s how I see us now. It’s like an experience that people come and see. That’s the biggest motivation, that people do want to see it, and I really believe that it’s one of the best rock shows that’s ever been.
“But as far as my life goes, I don’t feel that it’s expanding me musically or artistically. It’s my job, basically, at the moment. It’s something that we’ve got to do in order to earn ourselves the freedom to develop artistically, which means coming off the road.
“I’m feeling very clear about this in my mind. I don’t think we can do much more with the songs. We’ve done it. The show is as good as it can be. All we could do now with the music we’ve got and the songs and lighting is get bigger and better – and there’s no point, really, because we don’t want to get any bigger than this. By the end of this tour, it’ll be time to move on.
“Rick said something once about the Beatles; that their most creative period came when they stopped touring. That might have been coincidence. It might have been LSD. But I think there’s a great truth in that. Touring is a very unreal world. You haven’t got your feet on the ground.
“It’s funny, but although I have a great belief in the show, I won’t miss it when we stop.”
I saw Supertramp play twice in America, once in front of 15,000 partisans in Buffalo, New York State (a city which lays claim to being the first US center to adopt the band, and where the local radio station was first to champion Crime Of The Century and its single, Dreamer), and before a more critical audience of 10,000 in Cleveland, Ohio, an area never before visited by the band. I came away impressed, if not totally converted to their cause.
The band certainly place demands on their audience, playing a tiring two-and-a-half hour set which might be less than enough for the average Supertramp freak but which I found a little on the long side. They maintain that it couldn’t be trimmed down any further.
For their reputation as studio aces, Supertramp are a much more powerful proposition live. Songs that aren’t exactly bouncing with vitality on vinyl are miraculously brought to life in concert. I’m thinking particularly of Davies’ superbly soulful ballad, From Now On, and Hodgson’s forceful epic, Fool’s Overture, both of which were monumental on stage.
The soulful facet of Supertramp is not usually given prominence but I found it sometimes lurked embarrassingly behind a couple of heavy-handed arrangements. Mostly it emanates from Rick Davies’ moody, somber playing but John Helliwell’s saxophone bursts help emphasise it.
Helliwell, too, tries hard to give the band an image other than just of dedicated musos. His English cheekiness finds favour with American audiences (“My backing band and I will now play…” “Roger Hodgson will now accompany me for this next song.”)
A veteran of the early-Sixties trad jazz boom (well, he was 14 then), Helliwell’s sax playing has taken him through spells backing Jimmy Ruffin, Johnny Johnson and Arthur Conley and a period in the Alan Brown [sic] Set. Now you know where his soul style which fits perfectly into Logical Song comes from.
That inner-soul may be one reason why Supertramp have taken off with such a vengeance in the States. The band were confident that the market was there, and left England after breaking through at home with Crime Of The Century, going to live in Los Angeles and placing themselves entirely at the disposal of A&M, virtually begging to be “exploited.”
But few people anticipated the kind of impact that Breakfast In America would make. Benberg bet Rick Davies a hundred dollars that it would make top five. Davies was never happier to lose a bet.
Roger Hodgson, on the other hand, was convinced of its destiny.
“I always knew it was going to be a huge album. I knew our time had come and if it hand’t happened, the big man in the sky was playing a trick on us. I felt that it had to happen, the mere fact that we had to struggle so long for it.”
Breakfast was a very different album from its predecessors, and the band are aware of that. They had become wary of their reputation for turning out conceptual epics, and had decided to turn the tables by releasing a pop album – hence the inclusion of the title track, which had been written eight years previously by Hodgson.
“If Rick had his way,” Roger shyly digs, “it wouldn’t have been on this album either. He never liked the lyric to Breakfast. It’s so trite: ‘Take a look at my girlfriend.’ He’s much more into crafting a song. He would have been happier if I’d changed the lyric to either something funnier or more relevant. I tried, but it didn’t work out, so I was stuck with the original.
“The songs on this album were chosen because we really wanted to get a feeling of fun and warmth across. I think we felt that we had done three pretty serious albums” – (Crime Of The Century, Crisis? What Crisis? And Even In The Quietest Moments) – “and it was about time we showed the lighter side of ourselves.”
Davies does admit that he wasn’t keen on either the song or the title Breakfast In America, but came round to Roger’s way of thinking after viewing the album in a wider context.
“That title almost allows for pop songs. The actual song, Breakfast In America, doesn’t mean much. Neither do Oh Darling or Goodbye Stranger, so I saw a shape and it fitted.
“The pop side has always been a part of the group’s character. Maybe it’s been swamped a bit by the Genesis comparison, but it’s always been there. In a way, it’s easier to write minor-key opuses than a really good catchy pop song. That’s not easy at all. Roger has a stack of them a mile high, you know.”
Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson rule with a velvet fist. Their influence is unobtrusive but firm. There is an unspoken rule that the privacy of the individual must not be infringed. Supertramp is a very exclusive family.
In three days with the band, I don’t think I saw Davies and Hodgson converse once, other than to exchange courteous greetings. They’re vastly different personalities but they both write interestingly pertinent songs, with a depth of content that’s often overlooked in the rush to applaud (or criticize) the delicacy and prettiness of their music. Who can deny, though, a sympathy with the tone of Logical Song? The accuracy of that lyric is not a fluke; it is the mark of most songs by Davies and Hodgson. As far back as Crime Of The Century, Logical Song finds a predecessor in School. It was after Crime Of The Century though, that Hodgson and Davies drifted apart. The philosopher found God. The realist found reality.
If you encounter any problems with this site, please
The Garden Gate - Roger Hodgson
Site hosted by Lunarpages
Copyright 2003-2006 Indelibrella