And then our venues got changed to bigger places. Along the way we noticed that lots more people were coming to the shows. We started touring the album before it came out, so we just hit the road on schedule. “We felt we had made a good record and now it was time to go promote. We knew we had been up and coming over the last few years, so we understood the game,” drummer Siebenberg recalled via email. The tactic worked as Supertramp hit Number One in America for six weeks, ascending the same heights Pink Floyd ( The Wall), the Eagles ( The Long Run), and Led Zeppelin ( In Through The Out Door) did with their own massively successful albums released in ‘79. With Breakfast, the group turned more introspective as co-vocalists and lyricists Hodgson and Davies offered poignant tracks from the existential (“The Logical Song”) to the wistful (“Take the Long Way Home”). Noted tracks like “Dreamer,” “Bloody Well Right,” and “Give a Little Bit” gave the band momentum as it built up its worldwide fanbase. Supertramp’s fame up until 40 years ago resembled a slow-burning flame, beginning with 1974’s loose concept Crime Of T he Century album through 1977’s Even In The Quietest Moments…. “We were almost overwhelmed by the phenomenal success – it seemed that all the pieces of the rock and roll jigsaw puzzle had fallen into place!”
We had worked hard on it,” Helliwell, the band’s saxophonist and woodwindist, told me recently. “We knew that we had a great album with Breakfast In America. She serves as the love interest in Gym Class Heroes’ 2005 track “Cupid’s Chokehold,” which heavily samples Breakfast’s own title track, sans its reference to “kippers.” Unfortunately, no other Supertramp album would come close to replicating this kind of multi-million-selling success stateside. The group’s sixth studio album Breakfast In America was THE album on turntables at that time, spitting out four hit singles, drumming up multiple Grammy nominations, and adding the group to entertainment’s eternal lexicon (with forthcoming references on The Simpsons, The Office, and the film High Fidelity to boot).Ī pre-fame Katy Perry would also inadvertently introduce the band to a new audience. Yet we can’t forget a moment in time – 1979 to 1980 to be exact - when Roger Hodgson, Rick Davies, Dougie Thomson, John Helliwell, and Bob Siebenberg dominated the American airwaves. Their lyrics, sound, look – all of it has seemingly been up for grabs at one time or another.
Regardless of its commercial stature, Supertramp is one those unique rock bands that never seemed to get a break – enduring its fair share of unfair pot shots over several decades.
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