Supertramp

From the Dorset farmhouse to Breakfast in America

Supertramp formed in London in 1970 around two songwriters, Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson, funded by a Dutch millionaire, Stanley Sam Miesegaes, who had stopped backing Davies's earlier band The Joint. The name came from W. H. Davies's book The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp. Two commercial failures followed, Supertramp (August 14, 1970) and Indelibly Stamped (June 25, 1971); in October 1972 Miesegaes withdrew his funding, and the classic line-up of Davies, Hodgson, bassist Dougie Thomson, drummer Bob Siebenberg and saxophonist John Helliwell was complete by summer 1973. In early 1974 A&M sent them to a farmhouse in west Dorset to rehearse; about forty-two demos were made, and eight reached Crime of the Century.

Crime of the Century came out on October 25, 1974, reaching 4 in the UK and 38 in the US, and Even in the Quietest Moments... followed on April 8, 1977 (UK 12, US 16) after the band relocated to the US. Breakfast in America (March 16, 1979) went to number one in the US and Canada and 3 in the UK, and the live Paris (September 26, 1980) came from the Pavillon de Paris on November 29, 1979. ...Famous Last Words... (October 29, 1982) was the last with Hodgson, who left during that tour, which ended in September 1983. Davies led the band through Brother Where You Bound (1985) and Free as a Bird (1987), then re-formed it in 1996, with Some Things Never Change (1997) and Slow Motion (2002).

The last Supertramp concert was in Madrid on November 15, 2012. Rick Davies died on September 6, 2025, aged 81, and the band's statement called him the voice and pianist behind its most iconic songs. Hodgson, born March 21, 1950, made In the Eye of the Storm (1984) and toured with Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band in 2001. Wikipedia puts the band's sales above sixty million as of 2007.