Supertramp Part 3: Quiet Moments and Breakfast

Supertramp hits the big time with Even in the Quietest Moments and Breakfast in America

By Robin Platts

Following the Crisis? What Crisis album and tour, Supertramp set to work on a follow-up LP. The group recorded their next album, 1977’s Even in the Quietest Moments, at producer James Guercio’s Caribou Ranch studio in Colorado. “I think Roger wanted to get out of LA to make the record,” Davies says. “He wanted to get up into the mountains and be inspired by that sort of thing.”

“Being at Caribou ranch was an amazing experience in the Rockies,” Helliwell recalls. “It was difficult getting oxygen at those heights. It snowed. Beautiful scenery.”

In fact, the snow and the scenery were utilized to great effect on the album’s sleeve photo of a snow-covered piano, which was shot during the group’s stay at Caribou.

Despite the beautiful natural setting, there was tension. “Rick and Roger weren’t getting along very well,” Helliwell recalls, “and Rick disappeared for a few days with his wife, Sue, who subsequently became our manager, in true ‘Spinal Tap’ fashion.”

“Rick wasn’t really happy to be there, nor was Sue,” Hodgson recalls. “Rick had just met Sue, whom he later married, and was needing to give energy to her, so often he wasn’t even in the studio. My creative energy was stronger on that album than Rick’s with songs like ‘Fools Overture,’ ‘Even in the Quietest Moments’ and ‘Give a Little Bit.’ It was a powerful time of discovery for me as my spiritual life was very strong and I think what came through in the album reflected that.”

The album was Top 20 hit on both sides of the Atlantic, its sales boosted by the chart success of its single, Hodgson’s tuneful, 12-string-driven “Give a Little Bit,” a Top 20 hit in the U.S.

Hodgson had actually written the song several years earlier.

“One of the things that inspired my music and creativity early on was the Beatles,” Hodgson recalls. “I was about 13 when they came along and they showed me what music could do for the world. I saw how their music put out the message of love and hope and joy to the world and brought about a lot of positive change. Looking back, I think their song ‘All You Need is Love’ helped inspire me to write ‘Give a Little Bit.’ Even at that unwizened age – I was about 19 when I wrote it – I saw that the world needed love, I needed love and that came out in ‘Give a Little Bit’.”

In 1978, Supertramp found themselves back in Los Angeles, toiling away at the Village Recorders on Breakfast in America, the album that would push them to international superstardom.

Rehearsal and recording spanned the better part of the year, due in part to Hodgson’s perfectionism.

“With Breakfast, I knew we had a strong collection of songs,” says Hodgson. “My songs – ‘Breakfast in America,’ ‘Logical Song’ and ‘Take the Long Way Home’ – all became hits, as well as Rick’s song ‘Goodbye Stranger.’ While we were making it, I felt it could be a big album if we got it right and I fought hard to get it right and it drove the other guys crazy.”

The time put into the album was clearly time well spent. The band constructed their most cohesive effort since Crime of the Century.

Although no one could have predicted the album’s massive success, a buzz was starting about the new Supertramp album even before it was finished.

“The longer the thing was delayed, the more advance orders would come,” Davies recalls. “Perhaps there were rumors coming from the studio… It was our time, I guess. We actually started touring about two or three weeks ahead of it, so we were right there as it was released, and it was such a perfect piece of timing. Plus there were a number of songs that made it as singles, so you always had something on the radio.”

Although there was no shortage of solid new material, the new record’s title track was another song that Hodgson had penned many years earlier.

“Rick didn't like ‘Breakfast in America,’ didn’t want it on the album and even wanted me to change the lyrics,” Hodgson recalls. “I liked it and the other guys all liked it, so we went with it the way I wrote it.”

Although as accomplished in its own way as Crime of the Century, Breakfast in America was a very different album, its warm sound and sunny melodies reflecting Supertramp’s West Coast home.

Once again, the interplay between Davies’ and Hodgson’s personalities and styles was used to great effect. Davies’ “Casual Conservations” may have been aimed at Hodgson, with whom he was communicating less and less, and Hodgson’s “Child of Vision” might have been aimed at Davies, its Coca-Cola drinking protagonist having tried to “commit the perfect crime” but now “busy going nowhere, just lying in the sun.”

“I’m drinking Coca-Cola right now!” Davies says with a laugh, when the subject is raised. “I mean, in a general sense, there was a dialog going on. Not specifically to each other all the time; we hoped it related to the audience also, and they could find lines that would strike a chord in them.”

“Over the years, the main place of communication Rick and I had was musical and, as we developed as people in our private lives, we kind of went in different directions,” Hodgson says. “And that estranged us even more. I don’t believe I wrote ‘Child of Vision’ to Rick, but I do think that ‘Casual Conversations’ may have been Rick’s song to me.”

“Rick was more down to earth and conventional,” says Hodgson, “and I always was a dreamer and a seeker and was always looking for new ideas and adventures and a deeper meaning to life.”

Helliwell’s characterization of the duo: “Rick – steak, jazz and blues, big house, big city. Roger – brown rice, Beatles, a yurt, mountains.”

The band spent the summer of 1979 on the road, undertaking their most extensive North American tour yet, and the album topped the American charts for six weeks, with the aid of no less than three hit singles – “The Logical Song,” “Goodbye Stranger” and “Take the Long Way Home.”