Supertramp

THE SKY OF POP

by Fabio Russo

And when you’re up on the stage

it’s so unbelievable

…unforgettable…

This review is a lover's delirium, it's the story of an obsession.

August 1992, I walked into the record store, and finding nothing new I started rummaging around at random. I spotted the name Supertramp, which I'd already heard of - there was the album "Breakfast In America". I asked the clerk what it was like, and he said "you're kidding, right… Breakfast In America!"… Sure, what a cover. I bought it.

I put it on at home. Well, that was the moment I experienced my greatest, most sudden musical happiness. Love at first listen, the kind you can't believe, the kind that makes you say no, this is impossible, let's play it again right from the start, it must be a mirage.

Hope and unease sparked to life, and track after track I found myself rooting for it, hoping the impossible would happen and the spell wouldn't break, that the bad song would never come.

And the bad song never came. But above all, what a run of stunning tracks in a row, what an astonishing, mysterious sequence.

I must have been stunned right from the opening by that thunderous mass of instruments, a storm of strings, the electric piano that appears out of nowhere, out of silence, and pours into "Gone Hollywood". Impossible not to be thrown right into the middle of it, to identify with the story wrapped in those gusts of perceptual-emotional unease.

"It was a heartbreaking…". I immediately noticed the closeness between Hodgson's voice and the feverish Bee Gees, but this was something more. A blazing instrumental ache spread everywhere, paroxysm from the very start, a sad, penetrating saudade, then the unexpected halt: "Ain't nothing new/ In my life today"; the silences do the talking, thoughts, nocturnal instruments, a muted focus centred on waiting.

Then another reversal, an emotional dialogue, a heartrending Wilsonian drift dragged along by yet another blazing tangle of instruments. A picturesque, encouraging bacchanal, the first of ten, a vortex that blurs and engulfs everything, every adventure, stars and wretches all made equal, hotel rooms and limousines in deep turquoise abysses.

I think back to the surprise of "The Logical Song" blossoming into being. "When I was young it seemed that life was so wonderful"… I'd already heard this song somewhere before! As that miraculous flow of ineffable joys and anguishes unfolded, flowing through choral hues like the course of a river, I still find myself asking today: how was such a balance woven together? That perfect incipit, or that overflowing sax cry, almost an allegory of an alienated condition. And then the ending, between saxophone, frantic drumming, digital effects mixed with Wurlitzer and hysterical trills. "The Logical Song" is in fact the song loved even by those who don't care for the band. What stays with you is that dark, emotional focus; the bitter, despondent lyrics set against instrumental tones that are, by contrast, clear and transparent, crisp and clean, a quality that runs through the entire album's tracklist.

By the way, every track on the record is inseparable from its context. Otherwise the alchemy falls apart. Beware of all compilations.

But what really drove me to distraction, and revealed to me forever the uniqueness of this material, its sheer marvel, was the chorus of "Goodbye Stranger". Maddening, enough to make you die of longing and lovesick torment. A sublime, enveloping passage, an indelible romantic peak of bass, falsetto voice, drums… perhaps the most beautiful "pop" moment of all time for me, the ideal I'd always sought in a song ever since my Beatles-induced traumas in my tender years. Even better is how the anticipation is set up before that absolute zenith: brief, menacing hard-rock guitar riffs, notes from a diaphanous keyboard, and then the lulling, heart-rending piano-acoustic instrumental alcove. The way the piano sets up the chorus is emotionally ravishing. And when the keyboard renews its ardour, in that perfect, fleeting, celestial whistling, something exceptional happens, something vainly chased across thousands of other song collections. A place of captivating languor and cynicism at once, after love comes affliction and regret. Tenderness and visceral passion like never before, transcending the lyrics in the strictest sense and skimming away just above the water's surface. What a thrill of seduction, too, in the carnivalesque fantasy of the coda, wandering off into a lucid madness, the excitement conveyed in Hodgson's guitar solo, a magical flow.

The title track is track four. A memorable little march, "Not much of a girlfriend/ never seems to get a lot/ Take a jumbo cross the water/ like to see America/ See the girls in California". What enchantment, and how much humanity in those eddies, that undertow of high-pitched harmonies, before the carousel starts up again and moves on to "Oh Darling". Already the fifth track, "Oh Darling" is a rethinking, an affectionate reversal of "Goodbye Stranger". After a piano modulation the vocal comes in, and on "well you know, I'm gonna… be around you, all about you, always by your side", a breathtaking interweaving of voices rises up. After a magnetic, desperate chorus, the harmonies sink away, a flood in fade-out.

"Take The Long Way Home", with its broad openings of strings and woodwind, opens the second side in an unsettling, mysterious way, setting up another stunning, searing refrain around "…and when you're up on the stage, it's so unbelievable, unforgettable, how they adore you…", and then down comes another burst of harmonies, a flowery interlude before the farewell. This side is more meditative, offering an evening-like pathos that almost balances out the earlier morning mood, and so: "Lord Is It Mine", an invocation that opens with a classical piano line, the star of the track alongside Hodgson's solo vocal, more Wilson-like than ever. "So give us an answer, would you/we know what we have to do"… The chorus is built up with rattles, keyboard, and then a resounding, wrenching drum imprint sharpens the register even further: another eye-searing moment.

A couple of repetitions, which nonetheless benefit the overall flow: the massive uproar of "Just Another Nervous Wreck" (in the mould of "Gone Hollywood") and the closing dance, hysterical and shattered, entrusted to the visions and hallucinations of a pure, uncorrupted being: "Child Of Vision", capable of redeeming and resurrecting sinners.

"Casual Conversations", as an antechamber, offered up a scenic melody, gentle and diaphanous, that tempers the more sustained airs and breaks the tension between the two titans above it.

In the stories of this record there throbs a vital, tormented humanity, stirred by the weight of a choice, moved by regret, in an endless carousel of thrills and unease. A mercurial dialectic of light and shadow, joys and bitterness, met head-on by an untamed drive, arriving at new shores, at other Americas.

For years and years, listening to "Breakfast In America" has affected me, swayed me, changed me. Devotion and symbiosis, but it also devours me, consumes me, wounds and heals.

Through these tracks time slows down, comes to a halt, marking different hours, in a peripheral, artificial realm, burning and symbolic, tragic and steeped in vivid, heightened colours. A dizzying work that touches the sky of pop — indeed, that is itself the sky of pop — reaching the peak of an already priceless career for everything achieved throughout the '70s, but one that risked fading out leaving barely a trace, dying down quietly within itself, without fanfare: the rock circus had turned its spotlights elsewhere, toward punk and wave of every kind; it took a powerful pull, a masterstroke, or the whole thing would have imploded.

"Breakfast In America", mystification, evocation, Eldorado, Grail. An unexpected bullseye among thousands of possible, uncertain routes. America as a decisive journey, a journey of discovery and light, a scorching journey: bringing rebirth and decline together.

An inevitable short circuit for the band, given that from the pop-prog poisoned at its heart-of-darkness concept in "Crime Of The Century" (1974) — the noir-pop piece par excellence, as well as a masterpiece with no equal — came two decidedly good albums that diluted its alienated singular vision into a nomadic, disoriented, burning ironic streak.

Here, though, after "Child Of Vision" everything inevitably freezes over and turns to stone on contact with the atmosphere. Supertramp's creative vein above all, which they would atone for with their breakup, first mesmerising with the quintessential live double album — "Paris" — which, beyond being a delightful recap, stoked a great eagerness to hear the "American" tracks, the shimmering, enchanted ones, in the setlist; and then with "…Famous Last Words…", back in the studio: a different story altogether, a reversal, an explicit and passive reaction. After a slight, faint resistance ("It's Raining Again", "Put On Your Old Brown Shoes", "C'est Le Bon"), it marked within itself the emblematic surrender, the end of the line.

For some, Supertramp told their story for the last time on "Fool's Overture" (1977), a suite of untold expressive richness, their "hard and pure" masterpiece. It is indeed the summation of everything shown in their career up to that point. Then came the inexplicable shift, the metamorphosis.

So a band that lived twice? How to explain the difference between the earlier albums, which gave no hint of what was to come, and that "Breakfast in America"?

Or perhaps it was the same skin from the very start? Were "Rose Had Everything Planned", "Asylum", "Dreamer", "School", "Ain't Nobody But Me", "Sister Moonshine", "Lady", "Give A Little Bit" concrete approaches toward the other side of the ocean all along?

Who knows. "Breakfast In America" remains the whirlwind it has always been, a pact with the devil to throw open the gates of the Garden of Eden.

***

THE BANNER OF AN ATYPICAL BAND

by Marco Simonetti

"Breakfast In America" is a pop record as pop as pop can get. It's the quintessence of pop. It's a record that for an entire year utterly dominated - beyond the charts and the radio - the musical imagination of a world far removed from punk anarchy or new wave exploration, as much as from the lights of Saturday Night Fever or nascent metal, but made up of countless simple men, ordinary men and women, perhaps musically naive, certainly common. That's what "Breakfast In America" is: the record of ordinary people, assuming such people really exist. Simple and direct on the surface, but with a complexity greater than what's immediately apparent.

It's easy listening, but perfectly arranged and produced, with sounds and mixes that foreshadowed the "easy" decade par excellence about to begin. So in a way it's also a record ahead of its time.

A record out of step with its time, in an era of so much musical ferment? If anything, a record "outside of time", that is, eternal or made eternal, frozen in a kind of pop "limbo" both at the moment of its release and for the years to come. The classic record for all seasons and all generations. An old record that's aged badly? Well... old for sure, you can hear it, but not badly aged. It's like a good wine: set aside and revisited many times over the years, it always proves a pleasant listen, never embarrassing even for the most jaded listener. Indeed, it's precisely that listener, the one who goes beyond what the casual listener perceives at first blush, who can grasp this album's merits.

So, really, why is "Breakfast In America" a landmark? Because it's the very embodiment of the pop record archetype, just as, in those years, the Bee Gees, Donna Summer or Earth Wind & Fire were producing on other fronts. Because, as noted, for a year you practically heard nothing else, everywhere and in every way, and so it managed to reach one of the highest peaks pop can aspire to. Which, mind you, isn't mere commercial success - though that's certainly a component or an important driver - but becoming an "icon" known to everyone. Because inside it there's a fistful of damned popular "classics", and at least one song that ranks among the most unassailable pop anthems in history.

Supertramp were a band with a strange history. English, formed at the end of the '60s, for a long time they literally couldn't get anything together, changing lineup repeatedly, remaining in total obscurity and surviving only thanks to the generosity of a millionaire who had fallen for their music. Managing to keep going that way, they were able to put out several records and at a certain point even find some commercial success, producing at least a couple of good albums: "Crime Of The Century" (1974) and "Crisis? What Crisis?" (1975), poised between pop, blues and progressive leanings.

Yet in the mid-'70s the band at a certain point felt the need to move and work in the United States, according to their own statements: "Because we couldn't stand living in a place where even being vegetarian was looked on with suspicion" - in reality simply chasing commercial success in the world's biggest record market, in other words looking for the big score. Mission accomplished. With fourteen million copies sold worldwide.

The second album in the series produced overseas was precisely "Breakfast In America", from its very title the band's true American album and largely (though also, as we'll see, only on the surface) built around the American dream and its rhetoric: hence "Gone Hollywood", the success that always smiles on those who never give up; "Goodbye Stranger", the decision to drop everything and go see the land where everything is larger than life; "Breakfast In America", the dream of the great country of infinite possibilities; "Take The Long Way Home", with the thousand glittering lights of showbiz.

Put like that, it sounds like yet another record of hymns to platitudes for the gullible. But looking past the surface, you immediately pick up on a bitterness and disillusionment that's typically European - indeed typically English - hidden beneath a veneer of stock optimism. The dramatic intensity of certain arrangements, which in places can even be called bleak, helps make clear we're a long way from certain carefree, optimistic pop stereotypes.

The opening "Gone Hollywood" then becomes not a programmatic celebration but a caricature of the "American dream", and its protagonist - the aspiring actor who has doors slammed in his face by everyone but doesn't give up until he makes it, and in the end flaunts his "big fine car" as the classic symbol of success, ready in turn to slam the door on beggars - is just a sad cartoon figure.

The indictment of the machinery of false myths is glaringly evident in the pop masterpiece "The Logical Song", where "the simple man", faced with life's thousand obligations and thousand cruelties, asks himself questions that "run too fast" and wonders: "What have we learned"? All of it delivered in a composition and arrangement that are timeless in their perfection, amid unmistakable, tightly rhythmic keyboards, plenty of sound effects and a spine-tingling sax solo. If these are pop ditties meant to be forgotten in a flash, bring them on. This is a track to take to a desert island alongside far more celebrated rock must-haves.

"Goodbye Stranger" becomes the restlessness of the everyman who doesn't just fantasize but works up the courage to actually make his move, doing what in ordinary pop songs is only dreamed of: dropping everything, saying goodbye and leaving. And the chorus's refrain, with Hodgson's sky-high falsetto, might raise a smile today (and makes everyone smile), but let's see who doesn't know it. And staying in the collective imagination, in pop, for thirty years is an undeniable achievement.

The blaring trombones that punctuate the little march of "Breakfast In America" are an amused dig at the American myth as seen through European eyes, from "California girls" to the implausible riches of Texas.

The squandering of one's personal life in pursuit of success is the true heart of "Take The Long Way Home" ("Don't you notice your life becoming a catastrophe?"), reaffirmed also in "Just Another Nervous Wreck", where one falls from the altar of success into the dust ("I threw it all away/ Could have made a fortune/ Lost the will for fame"). The city lights that in "Downtown" (cf. Betty Curtis) were openly meant to soothe frustration, and thus perpetuate the deception, are here exposed for what they are: the pitiful attempt to hide one's failures through consumerism.

Success, success, success. This is the obsession, the true underlying theme of an album that America itself embodies to perfection, for better and for worse.

Then there are the love songs, of course. "Oh Darling", "Lord Is It Mine?", "Casual Conversations", where love is restless, difficult, in crisis or already over. Simple songs for simple people, indeed — but isn't that exactly what rock 'n' roll is? So why hold it against the refined, well-crafted pop of these five guys? After all, "they're just little songs"! It's pop, and it's not fair to ask for anything more or less than a personal statement, clearly recognizable and far from the clichés so easy to fall into for anyone playing within this vast "super-genre".

Davies and Hodgson split the music and lyrics duties across the whole album. The "chopped" Wurlitzer electric piano style that makes a Supertramp song instantly recognizable finds its ultimate glorification/consecration on "Breakfast In America". Davies writes sprawling, crystalline melodies. Hodgson's guitar moves between torrential, clearly jazz-derived solos and sharp, precise flourishes. The unmistakable influences of the Beach Boys and the Beatles are distilled here at their best and without artifice, after years of career.

Having finally reached the worldwide fame they had long chased, the pair produced nothing for three years, and even when, after releasing "Paris" — a live album/summary of their past work put out to ride the giant wave carrying them to the top — they returned to the studio with their bandmates for the follow-up "Famous Last Words", nothing was the same anymore. The inspiration was gone, the will to work together was gone, as if "Breakfast In America" had permanently drained the two of them of their ability to write simple songs for "simple men". Hodgson would leave, the band would carry on with Davies alone as leader, calling in top-tier session men (David Gilmour) to fill the guitarist's role left vacant, gradually fading into general indifference. All just like so many other well-worn music biographies.

This record, however, remains proof of how pop music, almost by chance, even through a group as far from revolutionary as Supertramp, can produce timeless albums, truly worth listening to.

Ride the wave of great music

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04/02/2007