Why Breakfast In America Stands as a High Point in the Career of Supertramp
How the band endured interpersonal tension to create their greatest album
Sometimes, an album can be both the wished-for breakthrough and the beginning of the end.
Such is the case for Supertramp’s Breakfast in America, which was released 45 years ago today.
The band was five albums in, with some degree of success, both critically (1974’s Crime of the Century) and commercially (“Give a Little Bit” off 1977’s Even in the Quietest Moments…). But the bigger success A&M Records had envisioned for them had proven elusive.
Supertramp were not a group that went back to high school. Their origins were in a failed band funded by wealthy Dutch benefactor Sam Miesegaes. When that group, The Joint, flopped, Miesgaes supplied startup money for a group featuring The Joint’s keyboardist Rick Davies.
That group was Supertramp, which released its first album in 1970. By 1973, its peak era lineup, which ran 10 years, was in place. It included three men from different parts of England — Singer / keyboardist Davies, singer / guitarist / keyboardist Roger Hodgson and saxophonist John Helliwell, Scottish bassist Dougie Thomson and Californian drummer Bob Siegenberg.
The core was the songwriting pair of Davies and Hodgson. This was not a classic songwriting team. Even with songs credited to both, they’d each write songs individually before bringing them to the band.
The pair‘s differing personalities would have made writing together a challenge, as well as their output. Davies tended to be more jammy with his blues and jazz background while Hodgson infused his material with a poppier bent.
Supertramp had become an English band that connected more with American audiences. They’d shifted their recording accordingly.
Even In The Quietest Moments… started at Caribou Ranch in Colorado, a place where Chicago, Elton John and Joe Walsh had recorded successfully.
Supertramp found the conditions a little more challenging, not being acclimated to the higher altitude. They decamped to the Record Plant in Los Angeles to finish.
By the time they started work on what became Breakfast in America, all five members of the band lived in California. Hodgson had been the first. As he told the Arizona Republic in 2016: “I loved America as a whole but when I landed in California, I thought I’d died and gone to Heaven. I was raised in England. I’d been in England for 23 years. And I was really a young, confused man who really needed to kind of reinvent himself.”
Hodgson had become vegetarian and lived in a California commune for a bit, forming a mindset rather different than Davies.
“Rick was pretty down to earth whereas Roger was a bit more mentally… not a higher plane, but spacey – he had spiritual yearnings,” Helliwell told Prog in 2013.
The songs came together in two periods of demo recordings, first by Davies and Hodgson individually at their homes on piano, then as a band at Southcombe Studios at Burbank in the spring of 1978.
Some, like Helliwell and producer Peter Henderson (who co-produced with the band), said the sessions at Village Recorders in L.A. from May to December of that year carried an air of good spirits.
That was true, but only to a point. Hodgson said years later that Davies wasn’t fond of all of the songs he’d come up with, but grudgingly realized he held a minority opinion on that within the band.
“If I look at a song of Roger’s and I think it’s wrong, I’ve got to be really 100 percent there to fight that,” Davies told NME at the time. “Usually I just don’t have the energy to, because I see it blowing up into a huge misunderstanding.”
Hodgson said years later that Davies wasn’t as prolific as he was. He picked songs of his that he felt matched his counterparts, in one case digging way back.
VIDEO: Supertramp “Breakfast in America”
“Breakfast in America” dated back to the ’60s. Its evolution from the song Hodgson had in his back pocket to one that gave the album its title surprised him.
“Yeah, I never expected that,” he told the Arizona Republic. “But it wouldn’t have worked on Crime of the Century. It might have worked on Crisis? What Crisis? Even in the Quietest Moments …? Definitely not. But I think Breakfast in America, the songs had an accessibility, a lightness and a fun-ness about them to where the humorous element of the song ‘Breakfast in America’ worked.”
The album was originally going to be called Hello Stranger, after a song Davies had written. The focus was going to be on the relationship between the two writers, a sort of back-and-forth conversation. But they opted to scrap the concept and eventually the title (which Davies had to be convinced about).
Despite any personal tensions between Davies and Hodgson, they made it work on the album. “We’re both oddballs, and we’ve never been able to communicate too much on a verbal level,” Hodgson told Melody Maker. “There’s a very deep bond, but it’s definitely mostly on a musical level. When there’s just the two of us playing together, there’s an incredible empathy. His down-to-earth way of writing, which is very rock ‘n’ roll, balances out my lighter, melodic style.”
Despite the sessions being of the kind where days could be spent trying to get a particular drum sound right, the tensions didn’t turn into any major blowups.
“There have never been fisticuffs in this band, just tense silences,” Helliwell told Prog.
Supertramp ultimately knew they had something that worked, a view shared by their label heads. Henderson later recalled, “Jerry (Moss) came down to the studio and said something about Peter Frampton – who was also on A&M – and us being likely to repeat his success. Basically, he said, ‘I think you guys are going to be next.’”
Part of the reason for that confidence was that the group had come up with more potential singles than before. They’d been an album band to that point, with just one Top 20 hit in the U.S (“Give a Little Bit”) and the U.K. (1974’s “Dreamer”).
This time, they’d manage multiple hits, starting with Hodgson’s “The Logical Song.”
VIDEO: Supertramp “The Logical Song”
The song was inspired by his years in boarding school, where he experienced a particularly rigid by-the-book approach to education.
“It’s very basically saying that what they teach us in schools is all very fine, but what about what they don’t teach us in schools that creates so much confusion in our being,” Hodgson told Songfacts in 2012. “I mean, they don’t really prepare us for life in terms of teaching us who we are on the inside. They teach us how to function on the outside and to be very intellectual, but they don’t tell us how to act with our intuition or our heart or really give us a real plausible explanation of what life’s about.”
He’d composed it on a Wurlitzer, which remained an insistent presence on the finished track. Hodgson took his lyrics into turns both melodic and insistently rock, memorably so. There were plenty of accenting touches like Helliwell’s sax solos and Davies’ answer vocal on the second verse .
Oh, and the sound effect when Hodgson stutters out the word “digital” on the outro? That came courtesy of something familiar to kids of the late ’70s– a Mattel handheld football game owned by producer/engineer Richard Digby-Smith, who was working in the next room.
The song was understandably a hit across the globe.
“Breakfast in America” was a different story when it followed. It only peaked at No. 62 in the U.S., but would get some album rock airplay. It reached the Top 10 in England, however.
The song was unmistakably Supertramp while reflecting a bit of Beatles influence, like Davies Lennonesque interjection of “What’s she got? Not a lot” later in the song.
Hodgson’s lyrics were a stream-of-consciousness outsider’s view of a U.S. he hadn’t been to yet, suffused with humor (“Could we have kippers for breakfast/Mummy dear, Mummy dear/They got to have ’em in Texas/’Cos everyone’s a millionaire”).
As easy as it is to paint Hodgson as the pop guy in Supertramp, Davies wasn’t above trying for hits as the group tried to reach more commercial terrain in the latter half of the decade. He had respect for the craft, telling RAM Magazine in 1979, “In a way, it’s easier to write minor-key opuses than a really good catchy pop song.That’s not easy at all.”
Davies got his biggest hit with the third single, a reworked version of the song he’d intended to give the album its title.
Instead of being about the differences between him and Hodgson, he turned it into a portrait of a freewheeling life on the road, with no particular place or person to anchor them.
VIDEO: Supertramp “Goodbye Stranger”
This was already well-trodden turf. In the ’70s alone, Rod Stewart wanted a woman to stay with him, but be gone before he woke up, Ronnie Van Zant was a free bird who could not change and Don Brewer was engaged in hotel shenanigans with, as he put it, “four young chiquitas.”
Davies’ tone is lighter — the drifters’ life more important than the sexual conquest, although the protagonist is hardly chaste. As Hodgson sings as part of the chorus, “Goodbye, Mary/Goodbye Jane.”
The opening isn’t a guitar riff, but rather a Wurlitzer part. As with “The Logical Song,” his Hammond organ imparts some crucial backing. And rather than end with the chorus fading, we get an extended guitar solo from Hodgson.
There’s even a bit of the lyrics that feel like a holdover from where Davies was originally going (“Now I believe in what you say/Is the undisputed truth/But I have to have things my own way/To keep me in my youth”).
“Goodbye Stranger” would peak at No. 15 in the United States. The fourth and final single would get Supertramp back in the Top 10. It was also the last song completed for the album.
Nine of Breakfast in America’s ten songs were arranged before they’d set foot in Village Recorders. The tenth was Hodgson’s “Take The Long Way Home.”
The song could be read literally, about wanting to get back home to the one you love after being on the road. Supertramp were no strangers to touring and Hodgson was in love, as he’d get married days before the album’s release.
But for the writer, he intended a deeper meaning. “‘Take The Long Way Home’ is a metaphor for the universal journey of self-discovery,” he told Louder Sound last year. “The song is a vehicle for reflection in which the sometimes disappointing realities in our grown up lives can reflect in a not so positive way on the hopeful idealism of our youth.”
Musically, the song has a spritely step to it, the joyful feel contrasting against the lyrics. Hodgson likewise keeps his vocals light, getting a boost from Davies’ atmospheric keyboard work. Throw in the soloing interplay between Helliwell’s clarinet and Davies’ harmonica and the result was an infectious, melodic hit.
There were no 12-minute songs or pieces with multiple suites on Breakfast in America, but their prog past made appearances, just incorporated into pop rock songwriting.
The mocking “Gone Hollywood” has elements like the piano fading in at the start and the sax solo that could easily have been extended, but even at over five minutes, the song feels tightly constructed.
Davies and Hodgson swap vocals on the verses, contrasting his grittier blues-influenced tone with the latter’s higher harmonics. Although they both convey the desperation through most of the song, as when Davies sings “So many creeps in Hollywood,” before Hodgson sweetly adds, “I’m in this dumb motel near the Taco Bell/Without a hope in hell/I can’t believe that I’m still around.”
“Just Another Nervous Wreck” could have easily been another Davies single from the album. While not a soundalike, it definitely follows the “Goodbye Stranger” blueprint to a degree–the Wurlitzer intro, the anthemic chorus (though no Hodgson this time). It’s the average everyperson’s getting through the day as put-the-top-down driving song.
If “Goodbye Stranger” is “love ’em and leave ’em,” Davies’ “Oh Darling” is “love you, I’m staying.” The pleasantly midtempo song glides along nicely.
Hodgson’s spiritual yearning was a source of irritation for Davies, as with “Babaji” off Even in the Quietest Moments…. “Lord Is It Mine” is a lovely ballad with surging moments, switching deities from the previous album.
“Casual Conversations” clearly sounds like a holdover from the album’s original concept as Davies starts it off singing “It doesn’t matter what I say/You never listen, anyway/Just don’t know what you’re looking for/Imagination’s all I have/But even then, you say it’s bad/Just can’t see why we disagree.”
Its mellow nature makes it sound like he’s incapable of working up too much anger, or any other emotion, about the situation.
“Child of Vision,” a critique of consumerism, clearly has Hodgson clearly wanting the listener to remember that Wurlitzer on the verses. It’s almost a perfect way to end the album, but the ending drifts for too long without really taking off. It’s a surprise, given the chemistry of the players on display throughout the album, that they couldn’t work up something.
The band and Henderson (who also engineered) struggled with Breakfast in America’s sound. They wanted to get things where they wanted before recording, which took a couple of weeks. Even then, getting the completed in the mixing stage, it never sounded quite finished to their ears. At the end, up against a deadline, they had to go with what they had.
All these years, it’s puzzling to ponder what they were struggling with, as the album sounds great all these years later — state of the art for the time without sounding dated.
It picked up a Grammy the following year for Best Engineered Non-Classical Album.
The album’s other Grammy came for Best Album Package, which wasn’t a surprise. Mike Doud, whose resume also included art direction and/or design for the likes of Physical Graffiti, Working Class Dog and Beauty and the Beat, handled both duties for Breakfast in America with Mick Haggerty. who’d go on to work on album covers for the likes of Bowie, Hall and Oates and the Go-Gos (getting a Grammy nomination for the latter’s Vacation).
The POV was of a plane approaching New York from the south. Smiling actress Kate Murtagh stood in for the Statue of Liberty, replacing the tablet in her left hand with a menu and the torch in her right with a glass of orange juice.
Lower Manhattan’s visible points were replaced with a loaded breakfast plate and various diner items (coffee cups, ketchup and mustard bottles, cereal boxes, etc.) spray-painted white.
Murtagh reappeared on the back cover, serving coffee to the band, all with breakfasts in front of them, their hometown newspapers in hand. The shot was taken at a small cafe called Bert’s Mad House, which sat at the corner of La Brea and Waring, six blocks south of where A&M Records was located.
Arriving as it did at a point where disco was still all over the pop charts, Breakfast in America found an audience. It went quadruple platinum. Only three albums released that year outsold it — Pink Floyd’s The Wall, The Bee Gees’ Spirits Having Flown and Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall.
Breakfast in America’s massive success, which included pretty much touring straight through the rest of the year after its release, proved to be Supertramp’s undoing. Everyone was pretty much burned out by 1979’s end.
A live album was released as a stopgap as the group wasn’t ready to go back into the studio.
“I think we’re going to have to use the time a little more creatively than just endless tours, because that will kill us in the end,” Davies told Melody Maker. “The five songs that I did on Breakfast are the only things that I’ve done in three years. I can’t think straight when we’re on the road. I’m just thinking about where we’re going next. … It’s down to, can we survive without being around each other so much? Can we all exist within our own little worlds and then come back together as Supertramp?”
When they reconvened for the follow-up, 1982’s …Famous Last Words…, it was clear that the answer would ultimately be “No.”
The gap between Davies and Hodgson had grown. Hodgson felt a growing need to walk away and Davies, perhaps tired of being outvoted, wasn’t broken up about the prospect.
The title was indeed intended to foreshadow the breakup. The album itself disappointed critically and commercially.
Hodgson couldn’t repeat his old group’s success as a solo artist, leaving 1984’s In The Eye of the Storm and 2000’s Open the Door as underrated gems.
A fall at his home broke his wrists in 1987. At first, doctors were concerned he wouldn’t be able to play again. He eventually recovered, but adesire to be around his growing children, led to the 13-year-gap before Open the Door’s release.
He hasn’t released one since that third album (Open The Door), preferring instead to tour. Most of that’s been solo, but in 2001, he did join Ian Hunter, Greg Lake, Howard Jones and Sheila E. for that year’s Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band tour.
Davies kept Supertramp going through the ’80s, then brought it back in 1996, but none of the albums without Hodgson reached the quality of the group at their ’70s peak.
There was a brief attempt to reunite the partnership in 1993, but the two soon disagreed over management and called things off.
There were murmurings that Hodgson, who was also touring, would appear at select Supertramp shows in 2010-11. He made overtures, but was declined.
“I know there are some fans out there who would like that to happen,” Davies said. “There was a time when I had hoped for that too. But the recent past makes that impossible. In order to play a great show for our fans, you need harmony, both musically and personally. Unfortunately that doesn’t exist between us anymore and I would rather not destroy memories of more harmonious times between all of us.”
Thus, Breakfast in America stands as a highlight in Supertramp’s catalog as well as a portrait of the last time its key players could hold it together.
Crime of the Century has a strong case for the band’s best album, but so does Breakfast in America. One of the best studio pop-rock albums of the period, it’s where the warring instincts of Davies and Hodgson were perfectly balanced. Combined with their peak commercial songcraft, it’s the album where they achieved their goals.
If it accelerated the inevitable breakup, so be it. With results like this, it’s hard to argue it wasn’t worth it.
What they got? Quite a lot.
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