Supertramp - In the Footsteps of Wanderers

Supertramp are one of the strangest “cases” in rock history. Born in England thanks to the funding of a Dutch benefactor, they spent ten years in semi-obscurity until that American breakfast that would feed them forever, catapulting them into the charts of best-selling albums of all time. Even their identity in the collective imagination remains rather undefined to this day: a quasi-progressive outfit for older listeners, a nostalgic souvenir of middle-school parties for the generation in between, a musty relic for the younger crowd. For everyone, an enigma: a band that almost by chance entered the museum of rock glories and slipped out again on tiptoe. Supertramp's career could be lifted out of rock history entirely and nothing much would change: there are very few links connecting them to the bands that came before, and practically none to those that followed. But music lovers – as opposed to statisticians – would lose out on a wagonload of immortal melodies and choruses, the kind that simply do the heart good, full stop.

Still, it would be misleading to relegate Supertramp to the rank of an easy listening band: their most inspired records, in fact, revealed the imagination and versatility of a thoroughly accomplished ensemble of musicians, capable of moving effortlessly from carefree refrains to complex instrumental suites, almost miniature rock operas, worthy of bands far more celebrated than them. With the humility of street clowns, of those very vagabonds that inspired even their name, these English craftsmen opened new doors for 70s pop-rock, giving birth to a sound that was utterly unmistakable and inimitable. So much so that no one, in fact, ever tried to replicate it, which perhaps helped make it feel retro today, indissolubly tied to one era. Curiously, then, their “originality” ended up having a boomerang effect, often being (mis)understood as a flaw.

Uncle Sam and the Tramp

The strange story of Supertramp begins in 1969, when a Dutch millionaire named Stanley August Miesegaes, known as “Sam”, impressed by a performance by singer-pianist Rick Davies with the Joint in Munich, decides to give him a chance, providing funding and inviting him to form his own band. An ad thus appears in Melody Maker: “Genuine opportunity to join a band. Contact me”. Signed Rick Davies. Three musicians make it through the auditions: bassist, singer and songwriter Roger Hodgson, drummer Bob Miller and guitarist Richard Palmer, who, under the name Palmer-James, would go on to write the lyrics for King Crimson masterpieces such as “Larks’ Tongues In Aspic”, “Starless And Bible Black” and “Red”. The name chosen by the band, on Palmer's own suggestion, references an early-20th-century novel by W.H. Davies, “The Autobiography Of A Supertramp”.

Signed by A&M, the four musicians release their self-titled debut album Supertramp (1970), promoted by a show at London's Revolution Club. The curiosity stirred up by the band, however, soon turns into disappointment: their quasi-prog-rock is deemed too amateurish to compete with the productions of the era. In reality, on closer listening, the record already reveals, in embryonic form, some of the hallmarks of their best sound – the tenderness (the acoustic intro of “Surely”), Hodgson's typical falsetto ballads, his harmonious voice here still a bit indebted to Jon Anderson of Yes (“Home Again”, “Shadow Song”), Davies's fondness for bluesy jams (the twelve minutes of “Try Again”) – but also an energetic, almost psychedelic art-rock verve that would rarely resurface later on (“Nothing To Show”, “It’s A Long Road”, “Maybe I’m A Beggar”). The harmonies and vocal interplay, Davies's organ and Palmer's guitar take center stage in a constant interplay between acoustic and electric parts. Never released in America and always overlooked by later anthologies, the album remains a gem for fans and devotees of the band.

That same year, having brought saxophonist Dave Winthrop on board, the band played at the Isle of Wight Festival, one of the era's legendary hippie-rock gatherings. But their road ahead was still uphill all the way. The fairy tale of the "super tramps" seemed on the verge of fizzling out, plagued by failures and a string of departures: after Palmer, who bailed out following a nervous breakdown, Miller left too at the start of 1971.

For the follow-up album Indelibly Stamped (1971), Kevin Currie came in on drums and Frank Farrell on bass, while Hodgson switched to guitar, increasingly emerging as the band's other "mastermind". Having abandoned any psychedelic leanings, Supertramp swerved toward jazz-pop-rock, with Davies singing lead on some tracks for the first time with his trademark rough bluesman's voice. The rock grit of the debut still left a few traces ("Remember", "Potter"), but what prevails above all is a melancholy mood (the acoustic nostalgia of "Travelled", fished out from the languor of Crosby, Stills & Nash, the aching love song "Forever", the delicate "Rosie Had Everything Planned", the 1920s-style piano-and-sax number "Friend In Need").

A taste for jamming, irony and sheer playing-for-fun starts to emerge in tracks like "Coming Home To See You" (a dialogue between two lovers translated into a pantomime for organ and harmonica, complete with a mimed choo-choo train at the end), while Davies tries to hone his ballad template on the piano-led "Times Have Changed". The record's true tour de force, though, is Hodgson's: "Aries", a swirling acoustic piece of over seven minutes that fully deserves a place among the band's classics.

All in all, it's a raw, uneven record, but with a few flashes of pure class.

Commercially, though, the outcome was once again disappointing: the album drew attention mainly for its bizarre cover depicting a mysterious nude, tattooed female bust. The live shows would prove even more disastrous. With the charity funding used up and a £60,000 debt for instruments and recording costs still unpaid, even their generous "Uncle Sam" took offense and walked away. It was the prelude to the band's first big bang: Davies and Hodgson were left forlornly on their own, heads full of dreams but little else.

Resurrection on the Farm

Over the following two years, however, the spell was cast. Credit Ken Scott, former David Bowie producer who decided to bet on them; credit the days spent in isolation on an eighteenth-century Somerset farmhouse put at their disposal by A&M itself; credit the duo's new partners in the adventure — whatever the reason, the quintet that rose from the ashes of Supertramp bore almost no resemblance to the talented but insecure band of the first two records. Three new musicians joined on a permanent basis: bassist Dougie Thompson, drummer Bob Benberg and saxophonist John Helliwell. And a magical sound came to life, marrying the grace of pop choruses to the instrumental grandeur of progressive rock.

That's the secret behind Crime Of The Century (1974), widely regarded — rightly so — as their masterpiece.

Opened by a horn fanfare, the single "Dreamer" rolls out a cheerful, sticky-sweet chorus, buoyed by that electric Wurlitzer piano destined to become one of the band's trademarks: it would be their icebreaker on the charts (the album reached No. 4 in Britain), alongside the other, more pedestrian single, the bluesy "Bloody Well Right". Better than both is the witty opening ballad "School".

But the record's emotional climax lies in a trio of suites still somewhat tied to a "progressive" sensibility: "Hide In Your Shell", a gorgeous, nearly seven-minute sentimental ballad built on abrupt tempo shifts and a swelling dialogue between Hodgson's aching voice and Davies's keyboard; "Rudy", a touching meditation on loneliness warmed by Davies's luminous piano and gritty voice, but also by near-hard rock guitar work (an experiment repeated on "Asylum"); and finally the majestic title track, with a fine piano riff serving as a prologue to the various sonic panels, before the grand symphonic finale, awash in keyboards and a blistering sax solo.

A kind of concept album on themes of madness, alienation and paranoia, Crime Of The Century finally brings the Supertramp formula into focus: a singular blend of heavy rock and American R&B with the English folk-pop tradition, reworked through a progressive lens, via the rhythmic approach of piano and keyboards and John Helliwell's full-bodied horns, his sax often taking on the role usually reserved for lead guitar in rock bands. Beyond their vocal interplay and the dual songwriting credit, Davies and Hodgson reveal two distinct musical approaches: the former, a devotee of American rock and rhythm and blues, favours rougher atmospheres and thornier arrangements; the latter, schooled in folk-pop, crafts the brightest choruses and the most melodic ballads. Allowing for the obvious differences in scale, one might think of it as a reprise of the Lennon–McCartney dualism.

That very pop spirit of the Beatles lurks within the grooves of Crisis? What Crisis? (1975), alongside Davies's renewed blues yearning, distilled into the musical-theatre piece "Ain't Nobody But Me". Progressive stylings, meanwhile, are scaled back, with a few welcome exceptions, such as the romantic "A Soapbox Opera", which wraps a thoroughbred melody in baroque airs and theatrical arrangements (the live version performed on the Paris live album is even more evocative); halfway between light lieder and pop operetta, the track is a small masterpiece of grace and pathos. But the record also thrives on the reflected light of small gems like "Just A Normal Day", with string-and-piano arrangements poised between Broadway and certain 1950s jazz-club atmospheres; the multifaceted "Another Man's Woman", in which Hodgson also proves himself a skilled guitarist; the bittersweet ballad "Lady"; and the acoustic "Two Of Us", a showcase for Hodgson's own delicate, intimate songwriting, the tender-hearted hippie minstrel. Scott's production helps forge a meticulous, elegant sound, even if at times a touch precious.

The record's melodic appeal earns Supertramp a decent commercial success and heavy rotation on FM radio playlists, prompting them to try their luck in America, where the five relocate to record Even In The Quietest Moments. It's 1977, and Supertramp are by now hopelessly out of step with the times. Punk fever is already sweeping both sides of the Atlantic, with the Ramones on one shore and the Sex Pistols on the other. Suites are now outlawed, and even a guitar solo is viewed with suspicion.

Almost oblivious to all this, Davies and co. carry on their own way, placidly musing on "quietest moments" while hell breaks loose outside. Not only that: they even go on to compose one of the longest and most epic suites in their catalogue, the nearly 11-minute "Fool's Overture", made even more explosive in the live version on Paris; the track has a sweeping momentum: after a soft opening reminiscent of Barclay James Harvest's "Summer Soldier", it's an excerpt from a Winston Churchill speech (!) that introduces the main keyboard theme before Hodgson's aching voice enters, promptly answered by the piano, then the final apotheosis, as choir and keyboards surge back to the fore. One of the band's signature devices recurs here: the trick of first entrusting the chorus to piano or keyboards, letting the voice pick it up only later, once it has already lodged itself in the listener's ears (and heart).

For the rest, the record continues to move along its usual lines, drifting between Hodgson-style pop delights (the acoustic tenderness of the single "Give A Little Bit", the hypnotic melody of "Babaji") and Davies-style blues-jazz ballads (the enveloping "From Now On", the more convoluted "Downstream"), with a few bucolic echoes of the hippie era (the countryside outing of the title track, complete with chirping birds). Michel Colombier's strings add an extra touch of poignancy. Nothing out of the ordinary, one might say — but everything is damn well in its place: by now Supertramp had forged a bulletproof formula, as thrilling in its freshest moments as it is cloying in its more self-indulgent ones. They could count on a devoted band of fans who stuck with them, and they seemed content with that.

Conquering America

Now settled in California, the English quintet waits two years before releasing their new record. There's time enough for punk to decline and new wave to explode, for the end of "classic" prog and the arrival of the new electronic pop. But, as usual, Supertramp remain impervious to the shifting of fads and trends. The new album Breakfast in America (1979) will simply bring their "pop" songwriting into focus, definitively laying down the axe of progressive rock.

Shortly before the album's release, Rick Davies bets drummer Bob Benberg a hundred dollars that in the US the record won't crack the top five: like putting a chip on the wrong color after having bet everything else on the winning number... The album smashes the charts, staying at No. 1 on the American top ten for six weeks, and with eighteen million copies sold worldwide, establishes itself as one of the most successful bestsellers in rock history.

The voice-keyboards-horns triangulation runs at full tilt, bolstered by sparkling arrangements and a production polished to a shine. The symphonic moments, leaner than in the past, are always in service of the songs' melodic payoff. But above all, Supertramp have sharpened their ability to write "songs" in the simplest and noblest sense of the word. This is their most Beatlesque and most classic album; many — even among their fans — will continue to regard it with suspicion, as a partial renunciation of the experimental ambitions of previous works (Crime Of The Century above all), as the record that compromised the band's "true sound" in the eyes of the world. In fact, seen from the opposite angle, Breakfast in America can be read as the final landing point of their science of the hook, the melody, the harmony: their "Pet Sounds".

As befits any self-respecting "pop" album, there's the knockout single, namely the Hodgson-esque "The Logical Song", which with its quirky rhythm (almost "disco") and its aching melodies will lull an entire generation. It's a song about disenchantment and bewilderment (“There are times when all the world’s asleep/ the questions run too deep/ for such a simple man/ won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned/ I know it sounds absurd/ but please tell me who I am”), with a lovely electric piano figure accompanying the flourishes of Hodgson's falsetto, amid a flurry of whistles and keyboard trills, before the grand finale, with Helliwell's epic jazz sax solo. Another lopsided, circus-like rhythm, driven by piano and an arrangement for harmonica, guitar, trombone and clarinet, marks the march of the title track, in which Hodgson tells of his "American dream" (curiously, some years later he would declare he had always hated the song).

Supertramp's America is an eldorado as fascinating as it is illusory, as the cover art also testifies: a photomontage by Aaron Rapoport showing a rosy-cheeked, smiling waitress in orange against the backdrop of a Manhattan painted in melancholy blue tones. And a sense of loneliness, if not sadness, pervades the autobiographical "Take The Long Way Home", the flip side of success: after the lights and adrenaline of the show, the return home has a bitter taste: “When lonely days turn to lonely nights/ you take a trip to the city lights/ And take the long way home… Does it feel that you life’s become a catastrophe?/ Oh, it has to be for you to grow, boy”. Pessimistic lyrics set to apparently festive music (a recurring Supertramp trait): opened and closed by the country-blues moods of the harmonica, the track alternates dense instrumental dialogues (organ and guitar setting the rhythm, piano and clarinet weaving in) and soars on falsetto choruses, buoyed by a robust string section. The peak of this creeping melancholy comes in the almost gospel vibrations of "Lord Is It Mine", a classy piano ballad boasting a delightful sax solo and a coda gently rippled by Thomson's bass lines.

The other single, "Goodbye Stranger", flaunts Bee Gees-style falsettos and the repetition of a hook that's both catchy and saccharine, but really takes flight in a vibrant guitar solo. All the "supporting" tracks work too, from the opening "Gone Hollywood", bitter in its lyrics, which throws open the windows onto the waking metropolis, to the pensive ballad "Oh Darling", with yet another Davies-Hodgson duet, down to the muted blues of "Casual Conversation" and the rock vigor of "Just Another Nervous Wreck". But the real coup de théâtre comes at the close, with the prophetic suite "Child Of Vision", which, surprisingly, dusts off the instrumental grandeur of "Crime Of The Century": a taut piano intro, a brief drum solo, post-prog atmospheres, electric keyboards, vocal interplay and a long jazz piano solo into which Helliwell's sax insinuates itself.

Uncle Sam's former vagabonds have suddenly become world stars. The excellent double live album Paris (1980) celebrates their glory and the special rapport with the French audience that had always loved them. The live rendition of many songs is so compelling that it manages to surpass the studio versions ("School", "Fool's Overture", "Hide In Your Shell", "A Soapbox Opera"). And the rock exuberance of the Paris concert casts new light on the music of a band that had often been accused of excessive sappiness. Supertramp's arc had reached its definitive peak.

Famous Last Words

The long-awaited new studio album, in fact, largely disappoints expectations. Even the cover of …Famous Last Words… (1982) seems like a prophecy of doom: a hand is about to cut an acrobat's rope; almost an admission that the band's magical compositional balance is about to be severed. Already during the Breakfast In America sessions, the first frictions between Davies and Hodgson had surfaced. And the new record, recorded at Hodgson's own Unicorn Studios in Nevada City, California, fails to mask an internal tension that has by now become overt.

Still, a handful of classy tracks remain, even if always a notch below their peaks. The single "It's Raining Again" attempts to revive that blend of rhythm and melody that had made "The Logical Song" a hit: the same piano-driven harmonic base accompanies verse and refrain, with sporadic sax inserts leading up to the final chorus of children celebrating. "My Kind Of Lady" does even better, a slow 50s-style number complete with backing vocals and a closing sax solo. There's no shortage of the classic slender, intimate Hodgson song, the sweet "Know Who You Are", built around guitar lines. And the more vigorous "C'Est La Bonne" is another well-crafted ballad. The rest of the album, however, gets lost in a vain chase after the catchy hook and a fairly soporific bluesy revival.

It's the prelude to the end of the "real" Supertramp. Dissatisfied with the blues turn championed by Davies, Roger Hodgson, the band's unmistakable voice and melodic soul, decides to leave his bandmates, attempting a solo venture that will prove as sincere as it is unlucky. On his debut record In The Eye Of The Storm (1984), Hodgson does practically everything himself: he writes, sings, plays, arranges and produces seven tracks, with decent results. The prog legacy is felt above all in the length of the songs, five of which run past six minutes, while for the rest Hodgson confirms himself a fine writer of melodic pop, crafting a brilliant single like "Had A Dream (Sleeping With the Enemy)", with its elegant piano-guitar dialogue over an aggressive vocal, and catchy tracks like the obsessive shuffle of "In Jeopardy", the soft ballad "Lovers In The Wind", finely arranged and performed, the exuberant ode "Give Me Love, Give Me Life" and the Pink Floyd-esque instrumental "Only Because Of You".

The following Hai Hai (1987) marks the definitive break with the past: with the help of exceptional session men, such as Toto drummer Jeff Porcaro, Hodgson embarks on a clumsy attempt to blend together the genres most in vogue in the decade, from synth-pop to dance to reggae. What results is a confused, soulless bricolage of sounds: betting everything on technology and a heavily electro production, Hodgson tries to make up for the drying up of his melodic vein and the embarrassing poverty of lyrics like those of "Who's Afraid" or "My Magazine". There's no shortage of flashes of the old minstrel behind "The Logical Song" ("London", "You Make Me Love You"), but the record's high point remains "Land Ho", already written together with Davies back in 1974 and bearing the typical Supertramp flavor.

Afterward, Hodgson fractures both arms in a fall and is sidelined for several years. From the 90s on, only scattered signs of life emerge: writing a few songs for the Yes album "Talk" (1994) and a live solo record, Rites Of Passage, which also features his son Andrew. In 2000 comes a return to a new studio album, Open the Door, in collaboration with Breton musician Alan Simon. The record is influenced by French atmospheres (it's recorded at Les Sorinières) and shaped by an acoustic folk-pop sound that reflects the ongoing "ethno" revival (the instrumentation ranges from the famous Wurlitzer electric piano to the lute, from the harpsichord to the organ, from the Irish tin whistle to the banjo and Bulgarian voices). Despite a few moments of real intensity (the Celtic ballad "Along Came Mary", the touching "The Garden" and the melodious "The More I Look", co-written with Yes's Trevor Rabin), the record will go unnoticed: Roger Hodgson is by now out of fashion, like the music of his former band.

If the story of the "real" Supertramp had ended in 1982 with …Famous Last Words…, that of the survivors, tenaciously led by Rick Davies, would carry on in the shadows for almost twenty years, never managing to climb back up from an inexorable decline. Brother Where You Bound (1985), with the insipid single "Cannonball", and Free As A Bird (1987), with the minor hit (!) "I'm Begging You", are two dreadfully dull albums. The latter doesn't even crack the top 100 in America (though this time Davies presumably hadn't placed any bets...). Deprived of Hodgson's melodies and piercing voice, the band's sound bogs down in a formulaic blues-jazz-pop, utterly incapable of producing "songs" worthy of the name and rendered even more anonymous by Davies's singing, by now entirely one-note. The failure of Live 88 does nothing but underscore the decline of a band that by now had nothing left to say.

But Rick Davies is stubborn and refuses to give in to the obvious. So in 1997 he gets back in touch with John Helliwell, pulling him away from the music college he had enrolled in, and with Mark Hart (ex-Crowded House), with whom he'd already worked in the past, releasing yet another lackluster album under the Supertramp name, Some Things Never Change, whose content fatally betrays the illusion of its title: things have changed, and perhaps for good. Then comes the paean to slowness that is Slow Motion (2002), which tries to settle into a "classic" Steely Dan-style sound (the bluesy jam of "Dead Man's Blues"), with a few concessions to the romanticism of times gone by ("Over You"). But the spell has already been broken by now. Also because, in the meantime, Supertramp have become a para-progressive band for the oldest fans, a nostalgic souvenir of middle-school parties for the generation in between, and a mouldy relic for the younger ones...

The death of Rick Davies, on September 5, 2025, after a long battle against the multiple myeloma he had been diagnosed with in 2015, definitively closes a memorable chapter in music history. The founder of Supertramp passed away at his home in Long Island, New York, at the age of 81. What remains is the immeasurable legacy of his songs and of the work of one of the most original and creative bands of all time.

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