Obituary
What a wonderful band. The opening of their Crime Of Century tour still bivid in my memory. As it happened I had planned a couple of their songs for my next radio show. From Even In The Quietest Moments which was where I jumped ship.
Didn’t know he owned all the song rights.
From Wikipedia
Davies owned the Rick Davies Productions which is the copyright holder of Supertramp’s recordings.
Davies was diagnosed with multiple myeloma and cancelled the band’s 2015 tour.
Davies died on 6 September 2025 after a long battle with cancer.
I’m glad someone posted this one, it’s a lovely piece with no hint of sarcasm or satire. I don’t really know much of their stuff beyond this one and the hits, I have been investigating this last couple of days.
Cannonball is an absolute banger. Never heard it before this week.
That’s very sad. Pity they never got back together. I liked that group a lot.
The end of Child Of Vision has one of my favourite piano solos.
You’ll all have no doubt read Giles Smith’s “Lost In Music”, wherein he explains that in one’s developing years one can embrace or disparage musical entities for the most gossamer of reasons. I was take-it-or-leave-it about Supertramp until one of my best high school chums completely dismissed my own musical preferences while championing Supertramp. They have been dead to me ever since. Same goes for America.
Postie delivered half-speed-mastered LPs of Crime… and Crisis… to my house last week. I haven’t played them yet as I’m away at the coast.
I have just had a listen to Famous Last Words the last Supertramp album with Rick and Roger. It’s ok.
There’s a track co written by them according to Tidal.
It’s raining again
Too bad I’ve lost a friend.
. https://youtu.be/HY_W_Df50wU?si=P4CWfAPUvzaeQR8V
Erratum – apparently they mainly wrote separately but used both their names on the albums.
Researching this I came across this funny anecdote from their Roadie Russell Pope quoted in Wikipedia.
days:
“I joined on December 28th 1970. Rick and Roger shared a moth eaten flat in Maida Vale, West London, no furniture, just a couple of beds. Richard Palmer had just left, reasons unknown to me. Bob Millar quit soon afterwards, the first of many ‘Spinal Tap’ moments to come. I have a vague memory of David O’List being mentioned by Rick in some scathing way, but if he was involved it must have been for about five minutes. Richard Palmer was already gone when I arrived. There was no guitarist. The band was a four piece: Roger Hodgson on bass, Rick Davies on organ mostly, Dave Winthrop on sax and flute and Bob Millar on drums. Dave was pretty much the lead singer, Roger sang about a third of the set. Rick didn’t sing at all. Very strange line up for a rock band but it worked, although the music had no relevance to who they became in later incarnations. I joined Supertramp as an extra pair of hands to load and unload the van. No more, no less. I was broke, freezing and about to be homeless and somebody said ‘Does anyone want to go to Norway with some band or other for ten pounds a week’? It was a fortune to me at that time. I volunteered. Who knew? The infamous Norway expedition started on the 28th of December 1970. We took the ferry from Newcastle to Bergen and the first gig was on December 30th on top of a mountain and the audience mostly arrived on skis. At the end of the show they were all screaming drunk and commenced beating the crap out of each other with chairs. The van stayed on that mountain until the spring of 1971 as it expired after getting up the steep climb. The expedition lasted about ten days in a new rented van, ferries and icy roads with 1,000 feet drops into the fjiords. Beautiful, terrifying. All I could think was ‘What the hell have I done’?
Maybe a few years later, but Scott Gorham of Thin Lizzy had originally travelled to the UK as he had a relative in Supertramp (drummer?) and was chasing the vacant guitar spot.
Friend of Bob Siebenberg the drummer but I don’t think they were related.
They were actually brothers in law. Scott Gorham also contributed some backing vocals on Hide in your Shell.
I really wish my head was full of more useful information!
I feel your pain.
I followed Supertramp all the way from the first album as far as Breakfast In America, but then for some reason their well ran dry for me. Can anyone here who knows their later work well recommend some highlights worth investigating that came after that initial run?
I think the last album with both Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson, “Famous Last Words” (the one after Breakfast) is fairly weak. It has “It’s Raining Again” on it, but the rest are not that memorable.
However, the following album – Brother Where You Bound – which is Rick Davies led is superb – it’s very different and almost a prog epic (the title track is about 15 minutes long). Well worth a listen.
Title track….
For some reason I’m very fond of Some Things Never Change – it has it’s flaws and the attempt to replace RH with a sound-a-likee doesn’t always work. But good production and arrangments.
I really dislike It’s Raining Again. I liked the singles from Breakfast in America especially The Logical Song, saw Roger Hodgson live once and it was fine. I knew there was some bad blood between the main 2 protagonists
Just listened to that one. Maybe not as enthusiastic as you @Chrisf but worthy of another listen, certainly.
The last track had me paying more attention.
Supertramp are one of those Greatest Hits artists for me, like ELO, where they have enough good tunes to fill most of a compilation but any further exploration is disappointing. I remember reading an interview with one of them some years ago which revealed how bloodless and clinical their formation and working relationship was, and maybe that has tainted my listening.
I do love belting out the falsetto in Goodbye Stranger when driving, and for that alone I owe Rick Davies something.
I do challenge that. The album Even in the Quietest Moments outsold the single Give A Little Bit. Roger Hodgson tended to write the poppier stuff better represented on a Greatest Hits whereas Rick had a bit more grit with his jazz blues roots.
Hide in your shell alone ensures their legendary status in my house.
Crime and Crisis are the ones that are essential, the rest of their catalogue a bit more hit and miss.
This. COTC and CWC were massive for my teenage self. Sorry to see him go.
In a slightly Hoffmanesque manner, I would add that COTC is one of the best sounding albums ever.
Yes, indeed!
Yes agree! Sounds sonically superb!
Here’s an oddity of sorts…
I believe he shared accommodation with Ray O’Sullivan back in the day. They were in a band together for a short while and Rick showed Ray a few piano tricks. Ray later changed his performing name to Gilbert O’Sullivan. Here’s a song by GOS that certainly nods in the direction of Supertramp, CWC or EITQM era, though maybe it would suit Roger Hodgson’s voice rather than Rick’s… I think it’s pretty decent
I’m crazy, me.
Black and White by the Stranglers is my favourite all time album but Crime of the Century runs it close.
It may be shallow, or even illogical, but I took against the ‘tramp because of the opening lyrics of BIA. They’re supposedly satirical, but I just perceived them as sneeringly misogynist and frankly in pot-meet-kettle territory. That aside, I just found these plodding longhairs incredibly dull and incongruous amongst the thriving post-punk and new wave scene.
I didn’t like them because a girlfriend had tickets and went with the ex who had invited her. More than enough to despise their snidey saccharine confections..
Saw them once, mind, at Reading, 1975. Apparently.
Well, that’s the view of the contemporaneous inkies covered – twice! “Plodding longhairs”, “Snidey saccharine confections” – I can almost smell the NME’s ink on my fingers! 😉
ABBA fans…
Sad news but have to say that I’m a Supertramp hater (me and Archie V agree so it must be Right).
I admired the elegant turn of phrase as much as anything – period detail!
Period attitudes.
Who? The girlfriend and her ex?
She’s the only one he’s got…
I wish they’d patched up their differences and done another gig. Davies’ sardonic outlook balanced Hodgson’s more hullo-clouds-hullo-sky approach and they weren’t the same apart. When they were on (Crime of the Century, Logical Song, Take the long Way Home, Fool’s Overture) they were a force to be reckoned with. RIP Rick.
That sardonic humour lost them a couple of listeners it seems.
I don’t love Supertramp, but I love Supertramp’s music.
They were never the sort of band that you want to know more about, but they wrote a lot of brilliant songs.
That is an interesting comment. I was heavily into COTC, CWC and EITQM and usually I delve into a band’s personalities , their history when I get into them.
Never bothered with Supertramp.
That is so true.
I didn’t follow them exhaustively but we all loved COTC and bits of the following ones. I learned to play the harmonica because I was in a revue which played “The long way home” and the MD asked me to do that part. “But I can’t play it” I said. “You’ve got one, so learn” he said. So I did!
I was sorry to read of Rick Davies’s death.
When I was a teenager, I was a big fan of “Crime of Century” and “Even in the Quietest Moments”.
But the Supertramp recording I listened to most was a Radio One cassette home recording of the band Live at Queen Mary College, London in 1977. Good stuff.
[audio src="https://archive.org/details/supertramp-london-uk-bbc-rock-hour-1977/02+-+Give+a+Little+Bit.flac" /]
Oh, I say, well played Sir!
Ok so what am I supposed to do now to access the @duco01 boot?
Copy The Duke’s link, paste it into your browser and, gosh and a golly, there she blows!
Fuck me !
It worked !
People say you are technically illiterate – you proved them Wrong!
Literally technically illiterate
Ah, forgot you were the guy that burned down a radio station …..