Original subtitles

Thank you.

Instrumentally, no one was quite like Supertramp.

It's sort of thinking man's rock.

If the British press didn't see the stress of these guys, well, that was

their loss.

Zeppelin was music for the boys.

Purple was music for the boys.

Supertramp was certainly music for the boys trying to get the girls.

They were not a sex, drugs and rock and roll band.

Led Zeppelin were, Supertramp weren't.

For

many

people, Dreamer is still the Supertramp song.

It was their first hit, it was a big hit.

And it also had all the elements of their sound that perhaps they tried to

clone a little bit too much in the passing years.

Dreamer really personified everything that Supertramp represented.

And the sound, that whole kind of Roland keyboard, electric piano sound, really

had been taken from people like Joe Sample and had more of a jazz vibe to

it, but it was put in a pop setting.

And I don't think people had really heard that in mainstream terms before.

They were creating a new band sound, and Dreamers, the example on the record of

their ability to pen a brilliant pop song that was clever, the lyrics are

great, and a keyboard sound that works excellently with Roger Hodgson's voice.

You can clearly hear he's very, very clever.

No one else was actually singing falsetto.

Most of the other singers of the day.

was singing high but in full voice so he just took it into falsetto almost like a

choir boy thing but over this sort of strange electric piano part which was

very insistent again it's a Quaver's notes part so

quite unusual and no one had done that. It's a wonderful, it's a very light kind

of summery colour is the song Dream, you know, and it does have like a very

English whimsical kind of element to it, you know, and it's just very successful,

very hooky, very instant for the consumer really, you know, just straight

in there.

Dreamer is actually one of my favourite Supertramp songs, but it's got that

electric piano, that Rhodes electric piano rhythmical kind of attacked sound

that drives the song.

And as soon as those first few notes are heard, it's unmistakably Dreamer by

Supertramp. So you get this.

it couldn't be anything else that's the only song it can be and then we get this

fantastic shift

so

playing around with time moving across the beat and then the the chorus part um

again it shifts shifts again from we finished the um the verse with f and

g And then we move down to F minor, up to B flat,

G minor, then C.

And we end on C, so that when we go back to the verse, which is in D, we get that

fantastic shift where you think you're ending on chord 1, but actually that's

chord 7. We move up to the verse.

So I'll demonstrate.

You have to remember, this was in the days of the Moog synthesizer, and an

electric piano was considered to be a little bit basic.

But the combination of that, Bob Siebenberg's percussion, the backing

vocals, and also the production, Ken Scott, who produced Ziggy Stardust for

David Bowie, he's often forgotten about, but it was his production, I think, that

really helped make Dreamer the hit it was. With Dreamer, it was definitely one

of the...

The driving, the driving Rhodes keyboards, something Supertramp do all

the time is they drive you with just a keyboard like the Rhodes and that is a

classic example of a really compact song which is a perfect single. It's a

brilliant, brilliant pop song because up until this point on the record the songs

have been complex, experimental, mixing elements

of prog, jazz.

heavy rock and tinges of pop, but Dreamer's pure pop and it's all the

better for it.

The first two

Supertramp records were, to be brutally honest, somewhat lumpenprog rock and

they introduced a much stronger pop element to

their sound with Crime of the Century.

It's a fantastic album. It's definitely the album that broke Supertramp in the

first place. That was the one that really made people stop and, wow, who is

this?

Crime of the Century, whichever way you look at it, was one of the best British

rock albums of its era.

It's kind of a very atmospheric opening, you've got the harmonica and in 30

seconds you've got the atmosphere of the album there and Rodgers Hodgson's kind

of desperate but beautiful sort of vocals which are very provocative and

the song building behind the intro, which they're very good at Supertramp,

they're very good at that, they'll kind of bring the intro and the rhythms up

from underneath.

Before you know it, the song is really kind of rocketing along.

School was one of several tracks on Crime of the Century where dynamics were

very important.

The tempo and the intensity would increase, decrease, bringing you into

the song, leaving you there, bringing you back up again at the end. And that

really was part of the charm of Supertramp at that stage.

School's experimental.

It's got those quirky rhythm changes where it's sort of building up, and yet

it'll break out of one rhythm and into something that's a bit more up-tempo.

During the song School we get this riff that kind of starts to fade out.

And then we get this sort of a marimba sound going, building up, intensifying.

We've got, I think, a vocal...

on the offbeat and also a kind of wailing guitar high, high at the top end

of the guitar.

The drums come in, the bass starts to move in, it all sort of builds up and

then we go into this massive sort of piano solo.

So in the piano solo, we're moving between this kind of free blues sort of

jamming improvisation sort of technique and also the very structured melody sort

of, I suppose it's to do with the idea of being at school. Sometimes, you know,

the blues bit would be maybe the kids messing around, having fun, and the

regimented sort of you shall do your work bit.

So we get this very...

sort of structured and very unstructured sound moving between the two sections,

but always kind of planned and not just free-for-all.

There's never a dull moment. As soon as something did stop, the bass would often

drop out and then come back in to a stunning effect.

And when you thought that really nothing else was going to happen, Heliwell's

saxophone solo would come in sort of big and proud and mixed very loud. And

again, it was another sort of gear change. And it'd be very hard to lose

interest. The changes in the tempo and rhythm of School, I think, were, if it

was the first album you ever listened to as Supertramp, it was indicative of the

way the rest of it was going to follow. The tempo changes.

are interesting but they sort of really let you know that they had progrug

roots. So, although it's interesting, some of it sounds a bit dated today.

Bloody Well Right really encapsulates everything Supertramp represented,

sonically and lyrically.

And I wouldn't really call it a heavy rock song, but in Supertramp's world, it

was about as heavy as they got.

Bloody Well certainly isn't a heavy rock song.

I don't think any Supertramp track could ever be classed as a heavy rock song.

Bloody Well Right is not just a heavy rock song.

Again, it's got pop chorus.

Quite right, you're bloody well right.

It's got that sort of... The lyrics aren't pompous. They attain to a sort of

cleverness that critics of the band certainly at the time didn't like. It

got up their noses.

Bloody Well Right starts with a portentous guitar solo, which makes

heavy use of the wah-wah pedal, but that actually stops it from being too

pretentious.

The verses...

are quite heavy and aggressive, reflecting the kind of frustration at

the English public school system, which was something that Supertramp seemed to

have in common with Pink Floyd at that time. They were obviously listening to a

lot of rock themselves, amongst other things.

But again, with using their sort of recording techniques, and the producer,

Ken Scott, who was a very, very accomplished producer and engineer, he

got just great sounds on the guitar.

The guitar and bass make things very heavy and very menacing and is a great

sort of perfect foil for that kind of slightly pretentious pseudo, well it's a

trademark keyboard sound.

Bloody Well Right was an interesting song in as much as it's a very English

expression, something that the rest of the world didn't necessarily know how to

react to.

Supergiant took that to an extreme on stage where John Helliwell, who was the

master of ceremonies as well as the sax player, had a megaphone and he'd go

around shouting, encouraging the audience to join in. We'd play our Pink

Floyd at the end of the night, you know, with our head between the speakers, and

you'd play your Zeppelin, but...

Bloody Well Right was one of those ones where you all got together and you had

your arms around each other, bombed out of your brains on the drink you

shouldn't have been drinking, singing, right, right, you're bloody well right.

You're bloody well right, you got the bloody right to sing.

Right, you're bloody well right, you know you got the right to sing.

Maybe it was our little way of having a dig at your parents and things like

that.

This is a great song. This is also a great example how technically competent

Supertramp are and how subtle they are because even in the piano introduction

we're playing around with a lot of different time signatures. It starts

with a few bars of 4-4, then there's 5-4, back to 4-4, 6, even 7. This is

even before the song's begun so it's quite unsettling and quite technically

challenging.

The song itself then begins in the A minor, which is the relative minor

to C. He's just slightly, subtly shifted the palette to give himself that extra

room. And it comes across gorgeously.

Having established this gentle introduction to the song, we then want

to add an element of tension and aggression, and that comes through a

very choppy piano motif, which is actually introduced in B-flat major.

So this is the first time we see the key change, and the vocal follows with,

well, it's not as though he's fat. We've got this real choppy rhythm which is

introduced, and at the same time we shift key.

As the rhythm begins to build and the tension begins to build, we have another

wonderfully constructed shift, which again is very subtle. We're going

from B flat major.

into D flat major. So we're introducing another three flats at the same time as

we're beginning to raise the urgency.

We're beginning to go into a key which is slightly more unresolved, so it's

asking questions.

It's a lot more uncertain than that gentle introduction we had. Again, very

subtle. It's not obvious, but it's part of the fabric of the song. We get this

wonderful shift, and this is our third key we've introduced into the song.

We're now in this very flat key. It also gives a more of a kind of sense of

grandeur to the melody. It's asking bigger questions.

And then we have this wonderful shift from D flat

major to B minor.

And the reason for that is it helps to establish this extra sense of urgency

we're actually moving from five flats to two sharps and it gives the whole music

an extra level of urgency and this nice subtle shift under there

we're

kind of raising the stakes and the questions we ask and the music is also

raising mistakes.

We're introduced to this, you better do it now and that's what they achieve

wonderfully with this shift of key just at that point.

So we're now in B minor, we've only got the two sharps, we're asked the

question, we've built the whole tempo and we've developed this very great

sense of urgency and what the band want to do now of course is to bring us down

and to resolve the song.

So what they do, again very subtly, is to move key back to the A minor that

we started the song with.

And we have this very gradual play out and it's a wonderful way to resolve a

song which is taking you through five different keys and a number of different

tempos and rhythms.

but done it all very subtly and in a very, very natural way, and that's what

Supertramp largely are all about.

Rudy is the album's tour de force, with Rick questioning whether he's

made the right choices and sort of seeking approval for this, although

actually you know he's not going to get it.

Rudy has a classic sort of...

adult orientated rock sound and the tempo changes at the time were

interesting and quite kind of unique but i'm not sure it translates all these

years later they almost sound like they're a bit noodling and trying to be

a bit too clever for their own good they were masters of the tempo change and

nine times out of ten on a super tramp record um their tempo changes worked for

me this doesn't particularly work i think they'd already got into a format

where we know this works and it's going to work and they were maybe just being a

bit sort of overconfident about it.

Rudy was a song that took a motif.

the kind of railway, the railroad motif that's been going ever since Chuck

Berry, and gave it a bit of a new twist.

Once you put that into Supertramp's blender and you brought in tempo

changes, dynamics, a little bit of taped sound effect, you really had something

that was quite unique to them. So although the driving rhythm gave Bob

Siebenberg a chance to stretch out, and I don't think he's ever really been

given the credit that he deserves.

Funny enough, he's American, so anybody who thinks that perhaps there's American

sound, maybe that's where it comes from.

I wouldn't say it's Americanized as more sort of it's got hints of Las Vegas

and it's the orchestra, it's the strings are very very cheesy and very syrupy.

Even though it's a very good string arrangement, I think this makes it too

cheesy, too Las Vegas, too kind of Showtime. There's like a little wah-wah

guitar, kind of whack-whack-whack-whack that comes in as well, which also makes

it incredibly cheesy and it actually starts to turn me off slightly.

Rudy's another Rick Davis song and just like Asylum, it employs his favourite

styles of jazz and R&B.

And therefore, of course, it's going to have a slight American feel to it, but

never... Is it too American? Because Supertramp just never sounded American.

Supertramp had obviously seen where their market was going to be highly

successful, or at least suspected it.

And they went for the throat. They went for the American market, and good on

them. They succeeded where many, many other bands didn't or couldn't. So I

don't think you can turn around and say that Rudy was too American.

Supertramp were a band that America took on board.

and took on board, you know, open-heartedly.

Sometimes Roger Hodgson has been compared with Steve Winwood, and hide in

your shell, you could very much hear Steve Winwood perhaps writing and

singing. And interestingly, it was a song that came together when the band

were routining Crime of the Century in an old farmhouse in Somerset. That was

one of the later songs to come together, but it's one that's proved very

enduring.

Hiding Your Shell is something of a hidden gem but for many super trap

aficionados it's actually their favourite track.

It's a brilliantly constructed song by Roger Hodgson which brings out something

of his darker side as he's pining for some misguided object of affection we

don't really know what.

It kind of opens with the desperate angle, the very comforting desperate

angle of his vocals.

And the song is building and there's a real drama in the chorus, a real sense

of sadness.

And the song is always building towards the end where it kind of explodes with

the end section. It's just waiting, it holds back and then it just lets go

completely and it goes in a straight line.

Hiding Your Shell is a wonderful example of Roger Hodgson's songwriting, almost

melancholic in a way.

But not the sort of song that all ended up in the doldrums. But there was just

that hint of melancholy to it.

Especially in his voice, very distinctive voice, wonderful voice.

Yeah, it's not my favourite song. It's very English, very cute, very English.

Almost boarding on self-indulgent, but not quite.

Lyrically, it's as...

as strange as any other Supertramp songs, because lyrically, if you read

the lyrics, it's quite hard to sort of understand what they're actually sort of

saying. Somehow it hangs together and it's slightly humorous without being

kind of frivolous.

Again, very good track, you know, on a good album.

Hiding Your Shell is a perfect example of Roger Hutchins' songwriting. It's got

everything that he... kind of represented as a writer and the sax solo

makes a perfect counterpoint to the melody and it's a great sax solo

although it does sound like it's played by some American session musician which

maybe doesn't translate quite so well today but it's a great song and a

classic Roger Hudson song.

This

song

is perhaps the first time we see John Heliwell's impact on the band's sound

with his saxophone.

It brings an extra dimension to the band.

The saxophone, the way that Supertramp uses it, is almost a bridge between the

two styles of music that you've got going on there. You've got this very

raw, bluesy, kind of jazzy feel, and then you've got this very sort of...

English kind of poetic, you know, very sort of sincere, serious sound, really.

John Halliwell on the saxophone provides this wonderful supportive role where we

get a vocal melody and then the gaps that the vocal melody leaves he fills

with this very simple yet wonderful counterpoint.

So we get this... ..from the vocal, and then the saxophone comes in

with... ..and then we have the repeat.

His sax breaks were fantastic in every Supertramp song.

But because of the melancholy feel of the vocal phrasing on

Hiding Your Shell, I think that when I say that the

song offers hope, that's come from the sax sound.

Hayley Wall was never liked by other sax players.

He wasn't a jazz saxophonist. He had the ability to really make something

very commercial without it sounding trite. He seemed to have an innate

ability to know exactly what was needed at any one time, particularly as they

developed. And on the later albums, he was particularly smart at knowing just

what they needed and providing that and nothing more.

Asylum is a Rick Davis composition, as we know.

It was one that he had a big problem getting right. It was perhaps the song

that was most rehearsed of Crime of the Century.

Perhaps it was a question of the other guys getting his drift, but certainly

once they did, it was a song that proved very enduring for Supertramp.

Asylum is as good an example of the way Rick Davis approached his music as

Heidi Nichelle is to Roger Hodgson's approach.

It's complex, but never forgetting that it needs a hook to draw

in the listener.

Asylum is more of a trademark Davis song but it really in this day and age

it sounds very much like progressive rock and it also sounds very much like

an American pastiche really.

I don't think it sounds too American.

Supertramp never really sounded American until Roger Hodgson left, which would

have been when Rick Davis' influence really sort of, well, just basically

took over the band.

Davis has a very R&B kind of voice, and he's very much, jazz music

very much appeals to him. Those are two very American musical styles, and

they're bound to come through in what he does.

Silent being a perfect example of that

The

actors

and jesters are here The stage is in darkness and clear

If Everyone Was Listening is another song of loneliness and frustration by

Roger Hodson.

Unlike most of the songs on this album, it's piano-based, which...

It makes it a little meandering at times, but in fact it's saved by a

Beatles vibe that Roger brings to it. But then Roger was always a great

Beatles fan.

If Everyone Was Listening was perhaps not the greatest song on Crime Of The

Century, but it was a little bit of a lull before the storm. You can't have

the same amount of intensity all the way through.

And I think perhaps that's where Saving Grace lies.

It's a song that asks a question.

Can we save the world perhaps?

Some say, some detect a sort of a romantic edge to the song. I never saw

it as that. I always thought it was more a kind of introvert protest song.

More that the world, which at the time it was written, the world was starting

to move towards kind of higher tech places.

kind of communications where suddenly, you know, satellites were being put up,

etc. And I think it's more of a protest song against the world maybe getting too

worldly for its own good.

is if everybody was listening a romantic song, as romantic as Supertramp probably

got. I think it was Hodgson's voice that would always convey that better than

anything in the music and the lyrics. It was the pitch and the feel of his voice

on some of the best tracks that gets that across that, yeah, Supertramp could

be romantic, I suppose, if the mood took them and if no-one was paying too much

attention to it at the time.

I think...

The vast majority of Supertramp songs, when you actually got down to it, were

actually quite romantic, which is why the band, in a way, had the not

-so-cool image amongst us guys in the 70s. It was a little bit too much lovey

-dovey for some of us to admit to.

If any song of Crime of the Century solidifies or exemplifies what

Supertramp wanted to be about at that particular moment in time, it's got to

be the title track itself.

It harks back to the sort of music that they were trying to create on the first

two albums, but weren't necessarily succeeding, whether that was down to the

personnel at the time or whatever, I don't know. But for a lot of people,

Supertramp's musical evolution starts with Crime of the Century.

In the song Crime of the Century, there's a guitar solo, and then things

die down, and out of the ashes come this little pattern on the piano.

So not only do we get very simple harmony, but we get a very wonderful

melody that's running through that, and because it's a constant, it's something

that you can concentrate on, and then leave, and there's other instruments

coming, the strings, for example, and then the guitars and drums.

the mind wanders onto different things and with great bands you can really pick

what you want to listen to and this is the case in Crime of the Century.

It's very sophisticated.

There's a lot of complex, very, very efficient string orchestral work.

and they on this song they avoid the trap of the orchestra making it sound

too kind of quasi-orchestral it actually is a brilliant arrangement and it works

really well the album's title track crime of the century is also its climax

as it sums up in a nutshell really what the album is all about revolt and

revolution and builds with great passion and intensity towards the end of the

song which finally finishes with perhaps one of the most haunting fade-outs on

any record anywhere, and a gorgeous sax solo from John Heliwell.

For me, it's the best song on the record, even though Dream is a wonderful

little pop song, and School, I think, is a great way to open the record.

Yeah, it's got epic written all over it. And it's personal taste, but when

Supertramp did Epic, I loved it.

The title track isn't really the musical highlight of Crime of the Century. It's

not as catchy or as accessible as Bloody Well Right and School and Dreamer, which

are the standout tracks on the album.

But it still sounds good today.

It shows the band at their full force, their full power. All very competent

musicians.

you know, being driven by two songwriters that were very educated,

good songwriters, had traditional songwriting skills, but also were

listening to a lot of rock, a lot of modern music. They were, you know, had

their finger on the pulse.

When Supertramp came off the Crime of the Century tour, they had to get a new

album together straight away.

They hadn't really had time to do it. For Crime of the Century, they had three

months to put the album together.

With Crisis What Crisis, they'd only really had a month when they'd been off

the road, I think due to Roger breaking his hand.

So they really had to look at what they'd done and say, well, how can we do

this a little bit different?

So Sister Moonshine with its acoustic guitar figure was one way.

of layering the Supertramp vocals, the Ken Scott production and all the

ingredients, but putting it on a slightly different base.

So really what they were trying to do was say, we can still do this, but we

can do it differently and it's just as good.

Sister Moonshine is definitely a Roger Hodgson-led acoustic.

It's the 12-string, the classic 12-string, the way he plays it. Very

rhythmical, very driving.

And he drives the song for a certain length of time and then the whole band

comes in on the underneath of it, like with a lot of their other songs. You

don't hear the rhythm coming, it's just there all of a sudden, halfway through

the song. And they have an ability to carry a song with just an acoustic

guitar for, say, a minute and a half, two minutes.

and you don't miss any other instruments because it's so driving and so positive

and so well arranged.

The guitar is actually doing a similar kind of job as the keyboard does in

Dreamer and other songs.

It's leading the rhythmic side of it so that you don't necessarily need to have

a drum beat in from the start of the song which is great because when the

drums do come in you get that lift.

There's always a quirk, always somewhere on the Superdome track, and this is the

kind of song where there's no quirk at all, but then suddenly on the outro,

just the last minute or so, there's a very mad Desk Gap Recorder solo that,

why, you know, how did they think of doing that?

Surely the other guys in the band when he suggested it.

went, what, are you crazy? But they went with it and it's actually very, very

effective. Yeah, so it's interesting to hear and it's nice to hear a Supertramp

track without Hodgson's works chugging away ever-present and loud in the mix.

It's quite nice to hear acoustic guitars instead of providing the main rhythmic

backing.

Crisis What Crisis was a classic cover.

I mean, you know, sitting in his seat, lying on his bed, in the middle of a

trash heap, or the world was a trash heap.

Very good cover.

When it comes to the artwork of Supertramp albums, they're always quite

a statement, really. You know, you've got this crisis, what crisis, and you've

got this guy sat there amongst the wreckage, just sipping his cola, by the

looks of it.

And yeah, it's kind of a tongue-in-cheekness about it really as

well. It's like we might be serious at times but almost gives like a bit of a,

I don't know, slight comedy element to it. It sort of depicts the contrasts

that are going on within the music as well, you know.

Sort of a serious thing going on and then there's a touch of humour with it

on top.

If Crisis What Crisis isn't regarded as a great Supertramp album, then Just a

Normal Day might be a good example of why.

It's actually a very beautiful song.

But it kind of lacks the hook

that would draw people in with their best known songs.

With the lineup that Supertramp had, a song like Just a Normal Day could

possibly sound a little middle of the road.

Part of the problem was obviously finding John Halliwell something to do

with his saxophone.

So if you didn't have something that was cutting edge, then it could be perceived

to be a little bit sugar-coated.

But Supertramp were clever enough to realise that this would get them a wider

audience than otherwise they would have.

And certainly when they made their first two albums as a progressive rock group,

they really, they couldn't get arrested.

So when it came down to sweetening the pill and maybe getting a few of the

older listeners listening, they weren't averse to that.

Just a Normal Day is a ballad by Rick in which he enters into a dialogue with

Roger on the vocals.

Rick is the seeker, while Roger plays the part of the skeptical melancholic,

really.

And it's an unusual trait which Supertramp developed very successfully.

And it's not one that you hear other bands doing.

You can't imagine Lennon and McCartney.

doing that. There's a huge contrast between the two vocals within

Supertramp. You know, you've got this really sort of heavy, crunchy, bluesy

sound in Rick Davis, and then you've got this really mellow sort of, I don't

know, very gentle sort of passionate voice in Roger Hodgson, and the contrast

is massive.

I mean, Hodgson's voice was flawed, you know, and Davis' voice was flawed.

They would often sing their songs at a pitch where they couldn't quite get

every note but that was part of the charm it wasn't mainstream it was

definitely left of center left field and i think that's what hooked people in and

they were clever enough to recognize that when they sang their individual

songs those songs were tailored specifically to their own style but it's

testament to the the the talent that was inherent in both men that they could

then meld both of those approaches, and it would come out as something

that was great in itself, which was the supertramp, the defining, I think,

supertramp sound.

I wouldn't say Just a Normal Day was more easy listening than any other

Supertramp song, but it did introduce strings into the sound, which kind of

gave them more of a lush, orchestrated vibe.

And maybe that took them away from what they'd already become known for, which

was sort of pure pop hits at that point. The orchestra, which they use a lot, is

particularly syrupy on this track, and maybe might not be to the sort of prog

rock. fans liking so much.

Strings, well, strings, a lot of bands of super tramps would use strings, and I

don't normally find strings bolster the song, but this is an example of, I

think, maybe...

the success that they'd suddenly had could confuse them and they weren't

quite sure what to do about it. I think this is a good example of that.

Supertramp discovered a formula for themselves and they worked it very, very

well. And some people might say they even milked it.

Well, if they milked it, good on them.

They made themselves extremely rich out of it, both in monetary terms and

musically.

Another Man's Woman was possibly not the most adventurous song on Crisis What

Crisis. It kind of went back to the railroad beat of songs like Rudy.

But then I think we mustn't underestimate Dougie Thompson and Bob

Siebenberg, who certainly on stage and also in the studio were one of the

better rhythm sections of the time.

So it gave them the chance to stretch out, push the band along, maybe take the

focus off the two main headlining guys and really give a bit of drive to

things. Another Man's Woman is a fairly straightforward rocker that doesn't add

a lot to the Supertramp character that we already know.

And the lyrics are also somewhat convoluted in contrast to the more

precise way they were used in Crime of the Century.

I think Another Man's Woman is a good song. It's good lyrically.

It's a fun song, but it deals with a topic that's usually pretty serious to

most of us guys.

No, I don't think it's an adventurous song, but it's not anything particularly

special either.

It doesn't really work for me. It's sort of a bit too cluttered. The guitar part,

which features heavily, is not Poggianetta's best.

And then, okay, they get to the chorus and it's suddenly their classic

supertramp again. So it sounds a little bit uneven. It sounds to me like they've

probably written the song and then revised it.

because it doesn't, you know, if you listen to the verse, it doesn't sound

like Supertramp so much.

Even though there's a couple of trademarks, it could be, it's much more

generic, much more kind of American rock than what you're expecting Supertramp to

do.

It suffers again from Niska Hart. The whole feeling, I think, that runs

through Crisis, what Crisis is for a band, not 100% certain where they were

going. Not what they were doing, but where they were going.

They tasted success with...

Crime in a Century, and everything seemed to have worked superbly there.

I have a feeling that they might have found themselves sat there thinking,

well, that worked really well, but we've got to take it a step further.

But they didn't know what step to take. It's probably the least effective album

of the lot, and this probably shows you why.

Lady is similar in style to Dreamer. In fact, in some ways too similar, which is

perhaps why they didn't release it as a single.

The song is carried along by the characteristic keyboard pulse that

Supertramp were now refining.

But the piano solo in the middle is really not quite strong enough to carry

it.

It's almost like...

a poor cousin's version of Dreamer and I think it's already you can hear Hodgson

is possibly starting to sort of parody himself without knowing it he knows that

this is a winning formula the Wurzel electric piano playing the Quaver Notes

parts we have again the electric piano doing the rhythmic part and this sort of

very attacked very rhythmical and we also have a bass

line that moves underneath it

And that follows the chord. So we start off in B minor.

Move down to A major.

Then F sharp minor.

And back to B minor.

Lady works well.

Is it too similar to Dreamer?

For me, no. I think Supertramp were a band that were very clever at getting

hit singles written and issued, and it was certainly something that was very

catchy. Just as Leonard McCartney used to say, let's ride a swimming pool,

let's ride a car, I think Hodgson and Davis probably felt, well, we've had a

hit, we've managed to end the years of struggle, which they did have, the years

when they couldn't sell records.

I think they clearly felt that...

If an album had to have a hit single, why not write it?

I think what you're hearing is a signature

sound. I think once a band sort of establishes a style, they move around

it. But I think it's very honest that you get something like Lady sounding

like Dreamer. You can see a pattern forming.

And I'm sure it would be more...

contrived for them to say, this sounds a bit like Dreamer, we shouldn't do this.

I think it's a very honest, very natural kind of thing for them to have another

song sounding like that. Dreamer was kind of a more lighter, kind of a

lighter version of a single, whereas Lady was heavier.

Personally,

I think Dreamer was a much better construction for a single, if I can use

them terms.

Whereas Lady was kind of, it sounded to me more like an album track, but it had

the same driving keyboard lines.

different to dream a different vibe i think a little bit darker i feel

give

a little bit works so well because it's just a joyously

uplifting simple little song like many songs it's It's absolutely simple. It's

so simple that a lot of songwriters think that's too easy.

Do A Little Bit is one of those classic songs that became the favourite of

buskers everywhere.

It was a lot more radio-friendly than most of the rest of the album.

I don't think you can fail to put a smile on your face.

So send a smile and show that you care.

Give a Little Bit has been criticised for being lightweight, but any

Supertramp fan will tell you that their albums build from the beginning.

There's a real dynamic there. They don't put out all their goods on show from the

off. So Give a Little Bit was a good way to open an album.

And I think also you can hear perhaps an appeal.

A lot of Supertramp songs observe.

rather than engage and give a little bit is asking you to give a little bit of

your love so they're really bringing you in to the album to their song to their

life and so i think it was a twist on a theme perhaps that supertramp hadn't

often used

The unusual element to a song like Give a Little Bit with Acoustic Guitar, you

start to see like a folky kind of fusion coming into the music as well, which is

something that we see sort of carrying on into Roger Hodgson's solo stuff. So

it's something that's obviously very honest to him, something very close to

him, and it's just the way he writes. You know, some days he writes on a

keyboard and some days he writes on acoustic guitar.

But again, provides a wonderful contrast.

On this, there's very little production. They stripped it back down. There's no

orchestra.

The acoustic guitar parts are used very well, and I think Hodgson sings it

superbly. I think it's a really, really great track.

Give a little

bit. Well, it

works well, as much as anything, because of the lyrics.

that very typical of the period Supertramp intelligent lyric. It dealt

with a topic that, you know, for the record-buying public, and often the

people buying it were sort of between 14 and 20 years old, it was a lesson in

life, and I think a lot of Supertramp's music was.

Lyrically, the song is really a plea for mutual respect and affection, and...

to look behind the superficial image, to see what's below.

You could see they're getting back on track here.

Even in the quietest moments, it's certainly a better record than Crisis,

Swap Crisis, but they still seem to be feeling their way in places, but this

isn't one of them. This is where you can see that they're getting it right.

There's almost a feeling on the song that that happiness,

you almost wonder whether that's because they kind of know that, you know, like,

ah, hang on, it's coming back.

From now on is another good example of how technically aware this band are.

It's written in F major and that introduces the mood of the song but

halfway through we want to introduce this kind of cocktail jazz feel so we

very subtly shift key.

we modulate into B-flat major and that introduces this kind of jazzy, smoky

quality into the music. Very widely used key in jazz circles and that helps to do

it.

But we have to remember with this band, we're actually a rock band. We've

introduced the jazz element. We now need to say, hang on, that was an interlude,

we're super tramp. So again, they shift key back into F major and the song is

resolved in F major. But it's very subtly done and very stylishly done. And

that's the essence of super tramp.

From Now On is one of Supertramp's more optimistic songs.

It tells about an ordinary person who kind of has a fantasy life, and it's

almost as if Rick Davis was playing the fantasy life of a pop star.

I say that because it's a song that actually dated back quite a number of

years. It had been kicking around when John Helliwell had been auditioning for

the band.

So you might say either that Rick didn't have the time with Supertramp's

gruelling tour schedule to write new songs, or he saw something in that song

that particularly intrigued him.

Obviously, it was worth resuscitating, but maybe he had a little bit of a laugh

at the lyric.

From Now On is a really optimistic Supertramp song, both lyrically and

melodically. It also features one of the best sax solos on a Supertramp album

that is actually memorable rather than most sax solos, I would say, are kind

of... not memorable at all, whereas this one you can actually hum along with it.

Supertramp would use a melancholy feel in a very uplifting way and if there was

an element of desolation to the lyrics of some of their songs, toying with

themes of madness and things like that.

A song like From Now On is a perfect example of the way the song slowly

builds up and you end up full of hope.

Even if, and I'm not saying they do it on this particular track, but they have

done on others, they can start out leaving you thinking, oh, this is a bit,

you know, and then...

that hope grows as the song develops.

What is it about lyrically? I have no idea.

Babaji is dedicated to an Eastern guru and Roger creates a mystical

feel to the song and he sings the words with a sensuous romantic

feel that's unlike most Supertramp songs.

I don't think Roger Hodgson would deny that he's a bit of a hippie and there's

certainly elements of that to this but it's certainly not one of my favourites.

super trance songs and I've really never spent much time trying to figure out

what the lyrics meant.

You've got to bear in mind at the time it was quite fashionable. The Beatles

had spent a few weeks, a few years previously, with a Maharishi.

It was fashionable to adopt an Eastern sort of influence, kind of mysticism or

outright religion.

So I think he's sort of basically questioning, you know, should he be

there in that mansion?

drinking that Jack Daniels, snorting those Class A drugs with babies in the

swimming pool outside, or should he be in an ashram on a higher level, a higher

spiritual level? I think that's what the song is about.

So musically, it's a very unusual Supertramp song.

It's got plenty of production on it, but you don't really notice the production,

which is nice.

The drums are far less fiddly than on most Supertramp tracks. They're quite

linear, they're quite straight, you don't really notice them.

Again, the bass is anonymous in a good way.

And there's no jagged edges, which you're used to in a Supertramp song,

just as you'd think they're coasting along.

bush there's a whole new section and it's like a little kind of pump rock or

prog rock type of thing that happens and it's really interesting but there's none

of that it's much more like he's just speaking to the listener and it's it's

from the heart the solo in the middle has roger's guitar and john halliwell's

saxophone playing the same notes in unison which gives it an intriguing

quality

If you want to know what Babbagee's about, you'd really have to go and speak

to Roger Hodgson.

Because Rick Davis, who theoretically was the co-writer of songs, hadn't

collaborated with Roger since Crime of the Century.

Although it's a bit like Lennon and McCartney. They'd written the early

songs together, but once they got the hang of it, they'd do their own thing,

no matter what the credit happened to be on the sleeve.

So Roger was looking for some kind of inner truth, some kind of motivation.

And it's said that Babaji, or he's said that Babaji, is some kind of Indian guru

or guiding spirit.

He's not always answered the question particularly seriously, but then that's

his way of laughing things off a little bit, not letting you kind of get too

close. But it's interesting that when Rick was asked, basically his answer

was, you better ask Roger.

The album comes to an epic finale with Fool's Overture, which is nearly 11

minutes long and is a classic progressive rock piece.

Fool's Overture is without doubt the highlight of even the quietest moments.

Musically, it flies all over the place, but then some of the greatest

progressive rock did.

It's complex, odd time changes, different musical styles all wrapped up

within one lengthy piece of music. And what a great title.

Fool's Overture.

It's one of Supertramp's more magical moments for me.

Fool's Overture starts smoothly and then breaks out into this bombastic...

drum and keyboard-driven section.

The drumming must be mentioned here.

Superb.

Again, it's very fiddly, very quirky.

All the trademarks of Supertramp.

And in Nine Times Out of Ten and other bands, it just wouldn't work. Bob

Siebenberg, I think, is drumming on this track. I mean, there's elements where

it'll be quite standard, but also elements, I'm sure, where he's actually

improvising as well. And I think it's a pretty good show from him all round.

I wouldn't say the drumming works too well because I think it's trying to do

too many things and be too clever.

Again, this is very much a disparity between what was cool then and what's

cool now.

It just sounds a bit too rhythmically ambitious and there's a bit too much

going on. If they'd have kept a more basic beat, I think it would have worked

better and stood the test of time far better than it does.

It's a bit pretentious to be honest, and having reviewed the lyrics in these

modern days, they're not really about so much.

It was a song that they used to call the string machine epic for reasons that are

obvious when you hear it.

But it's also a song that served them very well on a number of occasions.

Even as the relationship between Roger Hodgson and Rick Davies was starting to

disintegrate, they could still come up with a genial song like The Logical

Song. The Logical Song is one of a handful of Supertramp songs that are

truly remembered today, all these years later, and it encapsulated everything

they represented.

I don't think Supertramp get much better than this.

There's a neat balance of wry humour and cynicism in The Logical Soul and Roger

rattles out the lyrics in time with the instrumental rhythms with a panache that

recalls Ray Davis of The Kinks at his finest.

Similar to Give a Little Bit, quite simple on one level and much more

mainstream than Supertramp.

often were very accessible by the general public and made a huge huge song

around the world especially in north america you still hear it on the radio

it also very importantly won them an iva novello award which really gave them

some much needed credibility that up until that point they really had been

lacking if you look back they they kind of been following themselves ever since

crime the century they'd been they didn't quite match it with crisis what

crisis

Even in the quietest moments was getting there and then all of a sudden

everything clicks into place with with Breakfast in America and the logical

song gives them another one of those classic piano led pop songs

Is the Logical song Supertramp's finest moment?

It's one of them. I personally don't think it is. Maybe the whole of the

Breakfast in America album, as a collection of songs, is their finest

moment. And Logical's song certainly stands up as one of the best.

I think as far as sales were concerned, the whole of Breakfast in America was

the band's finest moment.

Musically, not so much for me. I mean, I like the album. I still play it. It's a

very inoffensive album.

And it's a good, fun album to listen to.

The Logical song almost epitomised what people liked and didn't like about

Supertramp. Naggingly infectious, had the dreamer quality to it. But it was

also a song that, once you'd heard it two or three times, I feel you couldn't

really get that much more out of.

And the fact that in the 2000s there was a disco remake of it almost confirmed

the fact that you really felt that, although the general public latched on

to this song... it was one that many Supertramp fans really hated.

The album's title track lies

at the heart of the breakup relationship between Roger Hodgson and Rick Davis.

Roger wrote the track when he was 19 and Rick didn't really like it then.

He didn't like it now and he particularly didn't want it to be the

album's title.

A great song and a great track.

Really highly unusual.

I'll always remember the first time I heard it. I knew it was Supertramp, of

course, but I was like, what the hell is that about?

It's great. It's sort of very self-effacing, you know. Take a look at

my girlfriend. She's the only one I got, you know. The saxophone is wonderful.

And throughout, the bass and the saxophone play this strange kind of

almost vaudevillian type of thing, whereas...

It's like, huh? But hang on, they're a rock band. What are they doing? And I

was kind of almost up in arms the first time I heard it. Well, they can't do

that. But then third listening, I just loved it. I thought, this is brilliant.

It's just so unusual.

It is a lot of fun. It's not

taking themselves seriously, whereas Supertramp, on the whole, are quite a

serious band.

Is Breakfast in America a fun song?

yeah it's the the frivolous nature of the lyrics i think the tempo it again

it's one of those songs that puts a smile on your face but you're kind of

smiling or laughing along with the band because of you know could we have

kippers for breakfast mommy did you know we've got to have them in texas because

everyone's a millionaire it's just they're taking a piss um and it's it's

it's fun breakfast in america is great fun actually it's also one of the tracks

that is most remembered from that album, which sold 18 million copies.

Now, you don't sell 18 million copies of an album without it being good, and that

album really personified everything that the band represented, and that's why it

was huge all over the world.

This song was recorded around 1979 and by this time I think that you can hear

clearly that Hodgson is starting to question his own worth as a human being.

It's almost like the more money he'd made, the more success he'd achieved, he

was starting to not hate himself but starting to despise himself.

I think this is what this song is about. He's asking the question, is he a worthy

human being? And it must be said, you know, I hate to hear myself say it.

He's got his trademark wireless electric piano sound going on it, and it's really

wearing thin by now. It's like, I really wish he hadn't done it, put it on this

song, because it's actually quite a nice lyric and quite a nice song.

But it almost sounds like a parody. It sounds like a Supertramp copy band

that are trying to write in the vein of Supertramp.

Child of Vision really harks back to Supertramp's prog rock roots.

It's quite an excessive sounding song in this day and age.

And after Breakfast in America, really things started to go downhill from a

creative and commercial point of view. I think that Child of Vision has elements

of prog rock in it.

But to say it's a real progressive rock song, I don't think you can.

I don't think you can with a lot of Supertramp's music. It was highly

successful commercial pop music.

I think by the time Supertramp recorded Child of Vision, they weren't really

looking at being a progressive band. They were a popular band. They'd found

their niche.

They'd proved that they were number one in the field of one. I don't think

people were really looking for progress as such.

But of course, when that happens, there's always somebody who feels that

they're not really satisfying their own internal needs.

And of course, as we now know, it was Roger Hodgson who was looking for other

fields. And perhaps he was the one who felt that...

He wanted to progress, but he wanted to progress on his own terms.

Obviously, if you've made the money to live a reasonable lifestyle by that

time, you've got the freedom to say that.

In reflection, they should probably have stopped at that point.

Roger certainly thinks they should have done.

But in the event, they went on and recorded 1982's Famous Last Words, which

by then, sadly, weren't quite so famous.

All the sort of classic Supertramp frameworks, the piano sounds.

The drums are great, the bass works fantastically on this song.

Yeah, it's good.

You can't listen to a band like Supertramp and go, you know, that is a

big sounding rock song. They used the instruments in clever,

almost delicate ways, and vocals were used in a similar fashion.

Clever music, but it wasn't overly clever.

crisis what crisis crime century and breakfast in america i think those were

the for me were the highlights really i think then it moved to something else to

another area um i prefer the early stuff which was around the first two albums

well the first three albums that you know where superchamp were kind of first

recognized after that i feel you know that probably more of the rick davis

angle was coming through i don't know they still came out with a couple of

good songs on famous lost words but things

was starting to go awry by that point. Roger Hodgson would leave, Rick Davis

would take the band off in a more jazzy direction eventually.

So no, there was still something left in the can. It wasn't a complete album's

worth of great material.

The partnership between Roger Hodgson and Rick Davis was awesome. There was

obviously tension there. I think that they would probably argue about who got

which songs and which albums.

But similar to Lennon and McCartney, I think that they needed each other. It

was clear.

Roger Hodgson was much more of the kind of neat, pop-orientated songwriter in

the band, whereas Davis was really more of a rocker. Because of the two writers

and the two vocalists, you get that constant swing in the contrast.

of the different styles of music that they're touching on. Well, Roger Hodgson

and Rick Davis are two extremely talented songwriters, two fantastic

musical talents, and just to have them in one band, I think was quite

astonishing.

Supertramp's success was based on a team effort.

Obviously, the Hodgson and Davis songwriting and vocals was very

important, but the other three guys deserve their credit in really keeping

the whole thing...

up to a standard which really couldn't be ignored, even by the critics.

They may not have written the songs, but certainly on stage where you'd get guys

filling in for each other on keyboards, you'd get John Halliwell, who was the

master of ceremonies, always communicating with the audience,

creating a bond.

They all worked very, very hard to produce the final product, and the final

product, as we well know, was world-class.

Come on and dream, dream along.

Come on and dream, dream along.

Come on and dream, dream along.

Come on and dream, dream along.

Come on and dream, dream along.

Can you put your hands on my head? Come on and dream, dream along. Come on and

dream, dream along.

Can you put your hands on my head?