Westside – July 11, 2001
Roger Hodgson: The long way home
By Craig McKee
Everything is falling into place for Roger Hodgson.
The man responsible for soul searching songs like Dreamer, The Logical Song, Give a Little Bit, The Long Way Home, and Even in the Quietest Moments – songs that catapulted the rock group Supertramp to worldwide record sales of more than 80 million – has finally found peace at age 51.
Hodgson says he is on a spiritual and creative sabbatical, and with the help of spiritual mentor Anandi Devi, he is finding a joy and contentment in life that had previously eluded him.
“There’s a lot of music bubbling in me and I feel my most creative period is to come, and I’m taking whatever time it takes for this sabbatical, this huge transition I’m going through, which actually includes a divorce, and we’ll see where it goes from there,” Hodgson said in an interview last week.
“I’m not in any hurry; there’s incredible pressure in this industry, and I’m deciding for once not to succumb to it.”
Despite the break from making new music, Hodgson has agreed to join Ringo Starr and His All-Starr Band for a tour that comes to Montreal on July 27. The band also includes Howard Jones, Ian Hunter, Greg Lake and Sheila E.
“I just really enjoy the idea of it, of being thrown in a pot with a few other musicians and really to see how much magic we can create,” he says. “It’s really the risk factor that’s appealing to me.”
He says that Ringo will sing about half the show, doing a selection of solo and Beatles songs, while the other band members will perform two or three songs each to make up the other half.
“Obviously I’m a huge Beatles fan; they had a huge impact on me growing up, so it’s a real honour to be invited to play with Ringo,” Hodgson says. “And I really like the idea of Beatle music and Supertramp music being played in the same show.”
And the former Supertramp keyboardist has very fond memories of Montreal, a city that embraced the group before it broke through elsewhere.
“We were in Louisville, Kentucky, out on the streets, giving away tickets to people to try and get an audience for the evening show, and then a few nights later we were in the Montreal Forum playing to 15,000 people. It was the most incredible feeling. I’ll never forget it. Montreal really did take us into its heart more than any other city in North America, and has remained a special place for me definitely.”
Hodgson says the passion that he had for making music in his early years has returned since he met Devi, who he describes as the teacher he’d always been looking for – someone he feels he was destined to find.
“She’s having a profound effect on me, healing a lot of wounds and opening my heart, and having a profound effect on the music that flows from me because of it.
“If I want really to bring out some music that’s of a different more powerful caliber – what I’m calling a higher octave – first of all I’ve got to do some work on myself.
“As an artist I really believe we haven’t begun in what is possible in music. To me music is first and foremost food for the spirit.”
Hodgson left Supertramp after a highly successful world tour in 1983. He followed that in 1984 with the double platinum album In the Eye of the Storm, but the 1987 follow-up Hai Hai, marked a low point in Hodgson’s life and career.
“I made an album totally for the industry, to please the industry or please other people, and I fell flat on my face, and I was the unhappiest man alive.”
This marked a dramatic turning point for Hodgson, a transition that was punctuated just two weeks after the release of the album by a serious accident that occurred when Hodgson fell out of a sleeping loft on to a concrete floor. He was left with two broken wrists and a serious head injury.
“It took about a year and a half for my wrists to recover, and I actually received quite a bang on my head, my whole head crunched in too, which probably knocked some sense into me.”
Hodgson says he believes that the accident was a blessing in disguise and a wake-up call, because it forced him to re-evaluate where his life and career were going.
“I was so distraught inside myself because of what I’d done making an album, that I really believe I put myself out of commission in that accident,” he says. “I literally put myself in handcuffs, and broke both my wrists to stop the way my life was going. And that really taught me a lesson how strong the drive for truth and for being true to myself as an artist was.”
He says that this accident, and a serious illness he contracted while in Ecuador in 1996, both pushed him to new levels in his search for meaning.
“Our greatest wake-up calls can really be our greatest opportunities for growth and breakthroughs.”
The injuries and the experience with Hai Hai led Hodgson to drop out of sight for the bulk of the next 13 years. He did release a live album in 1996 called Rites of Passage, which featured his son, Andrew, on drums. He had also appeared on the Yes album Talk in 1990. His most recent recording is Open the Door, released in 2000.
And of the question that Hodgson gets so often: Will there ever be a Supertramp reunion?
“If there could be a really inspired coming together for the right reasons, then yes, it’s always possible. But if it’s just for financial reasons or because people are broke or whatever, no that’s not going to happen, with me in it anyway.”
He says that often bands can reunite years after breaking up, because as the members get older their positions can soften.
“That’s the reason I’m not closing the door to Supertramp, ‘cause I would like to heal some relationships that need healing there, and that might be an opportunity to do that.”
Hodgson did get together with fellow Supertramp founder Rick Davies in 1993 with an eye towards creating a new Supertramp album, but differences between the two led to Hodgson backing out of the project. He and Davies have not spoken since.
Hodgson says that his focus now is on the new phase his life has entered and on the music he plans to create.
“I sang Even in the Quietest Moments a couple of days ago, and every word got to me. I was almost in tears at the end of the song. And I realized that for many years I’d been singing them but not feeling them. It’s all about being connected,” he says.
“I think as a culture we’re so disconnected from our hearts. We’re caught up in our heads and we’re caught up in TV and the culture and the media and everything else that’s fed us, and we’ve just lost touch with our hearts. And I just feel one of the most fortunate people alive having found someone to steer me back to my heart and reconnect with that place.”
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