By March '75 Supertramp headlined Santa Monica Civic and delivered a state of the art, magical show that lives in my memory. The show was recorded for us to air. Somewhere there is this recording of the show, beautifully mixed by legend, Ken Scott. We were permitted to then play it a week later start to finish and then again a short time later. It's a truly extraordinary recording which deserves to be released if anyone can find it wherever A&M Records or band archives might be hidden away.
PS/ When the CD format debuted, Supertramp's "Crime of the Century" was my first purchase.
Joni Mitchell "Blue" the second.
Jim McKeon
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Bob, I caught the Crime of the Century tour at the Santa Monica Civic in 1975. Everybody played the Civic in those days. Everybody. The album came out of nowhere and I ran to the Wherehouse in Westwood to pick up the vinyl. Then I saw it was produced by Ken Scott and it gave this band I never heard of before immediate cred to this stoner kid immersed in fusion and prog. You are spot on that this music could never register in another era, but 50 years ago was wide open. It was crisp, it was fresh, it was smart. The Civic show was a meticulous note for note recreation of the record. They didn't stray and it wasn't adventurous, but it was sparkling.
Jim Brock
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.. top 10 shows of all time .. Miami Jai Alai Fronton .. 04/11/79 .. they blew everyone away .. !
Jordan Zucker
Infirst Promotion
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Back in 1981, my college friends and I would go to Stereo Sound in Chapel Hill on slow Fridays. If it was a slow sales day, our buddy who worked there would usher us into the high end room with the $800 amps, $1000 turntables, and the giant speakers. He would play side one of "Crime of the Century" at full blast.
Ever since then, "School" is my go-to song for audio testing any piece of sound equipment.
Steven Leventhal
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I saw them at Madison Square Garden for the Breakfast in America in 1979. They were magnificent live. One of my top five concerts of all time. A very underrated group.
Harlan Coben
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Yes, Roger still has it. And the songs still resonate.
Had the pleasure of working with them in their heyday and nearly broke "Bloody Well Right" Top 40 (flipped the stillborn A-side, "Dreamer") abetted by WB's David Cahn and the rest of the local Buffalo promo guys plus the inestimable Barry Lyons.
And "Crisis? What Crisis" is basically "Crime Pt. 2," with "Sister Moonshine" and "Another Man's Woman." Ken Scott, whoah!
Great stuff. Priceless memories.
Richard Pachter
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Saw Supertramp twice in Buffalo. Which was only fitting since the band was HUGE in Western NewYork. The 1978 show was better than the 1983. The visuals were excellent as well. When we went to the 1983 it was my last show in Buffalo as I was transferred to KC. While it to was also outstanding it was also also the show I believe Rodger announced that this was the last tour for him as he would be leaving band. There was a strange moment where no one knew how to react. Cheer him to show appreciation? Silence? Yell no?
I remember for a long time after many of us
were in the "He will be back probably just taking a break"
Jeff Appleton
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When i was in college in Washington, DC in the early 1970s, i worked for a concert promoter and one of our venues was a great little theater at Georgetown University called Gaston Hall. We did some great shows there including Bruce Springsteen (pre Born In The USA), National Lampoon's Lemmings with all of the early Saturday Night Live cast members, a great double bill of Jackson Browne and Linda Ronstadt, and many others. In 1975 we received a call from A&M Records telling us they had a new band they had just signed called Supertramp who had made a great album called Crime of the Century and they were going to put them on a tour where the label would 4 wall all the venues with no risk to the promoter. Over the next few weeks we received boxes of posters and other promotional materials to try and ensure a full house. Absolutely old school artist development record business which both A&M and Warner Brothers were most famous for in that era. The venue was full and the band performed Crime of the Century in its entirety and it was breathtaking. Even though he wasn't one of the two lead vocalists, sax player John Helliwell was definitely the focus of the show as he played with an electric lit jacket and did the majority of the talking. That night i became a lifelong Supertramp fan and years later got to know bassist Dougie Thomson when he was a consultant for Warner Chappel Music in Chicago. While they obviously had many hits that followed, i still feel that Crime of the Century is one of the best produced albums of the era and still holds up today.
Larry Mazer
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As a kid we Listened to super tramp on the way up to the ski hill. Whistler in April. Bloody well right. Goodbye stranger. On the way to a ski race. Sunshine. Spring skiing. Those memories seared in my head forever. My parents knew what to play!
James Rose
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Thank you for saying all this out loud, as it were. For some reason, as a senior in high school, I lived off this music. It had the rebellion and questioning you need at that age, along with the ability to feel sophisticated as you tried to figure out who you were. Roger and Rick are who I wanted to be. All the albums were easy to get lost in, but "Live" in Paris brought it all together nightly for me, hiding from my parents and sister in my room doing my homework.
Joe Fusco
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Thank you for sharing this. I was seventeen, in high school, when Crime of the Century came out. I still remember that opening with the harmonica wailing. It gives me chills even today. Growing up in Toronto school, was rote learning designed to get a job. I hated it. Music was my lifeline. I was alienated too as I didn't fit into the right box. I saw Supertramp live in 1977 when they were at the peak of their career. Can't say I remember much of it, but this video brought every note and lyric back to me.
Elbows Out, Canada Strong
Ellen Worling
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I was a bíg Supertramp fan back in the day, but never catch them in a live concert.
But some 20 years ago I saw Roger playing a small theater in Buenos Aires, him alone with a local sax player.
He blew my mind, one of the best concerts I've ever been to.
Today my 22 y.o. son listens Supertramp in awe. It seems we're a family of alienated music fans indeed.
Thanks for the memories.
Aldo Blardone
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Supertramp's virtuosity still thrills me all these decades later.
Tom Guarriello
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Crime of the Century is criminally underrated because it was too prog for wide commercial acceptance, yet too commercial for prog. Fifty-plus years later, the concert I saw in support of Crime remains one of the best shows I've ever seen. And I'll die on the hill that while not as vaunted as Fleetwood and McVie, Supertramp's rhythm section of Bob Siebenberg on drums and Dougie Thomson on bass was as rock-solid as any in the business. By Breakfast in America, Supertramp had ditched most of the prog trappings that made Crime of the Century so special and were merely a great commercial rock band.
Chris White
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Nice reminder of how wonderful Supertramp was. They created unique songs with interesting lyrics. Roger Hodgson toured quite a bit prior to Covid, and my wife and I were lucky to see him multiple times in small venues. His voice was still in excellent form, and he is one of the best at connecting with his audience. To me, he was the driving force behind the music of Supertramp.
I will never understand why this band is not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Absurd!
Don Weis
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Supertramp not ever being nominated tor the Hall of Fame is a Mystery????
Mike McGinley
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My family just love Supertramp. My late father was the best man at their band managers, Charlie Prevost, 2nd wedding back in Southern Ontario back in the early 70's. Charlie was an AR guy for A & M records and I remember as a snot nosed kid we heard an early sampling of their music on an old reel to reel tape player. He told my father that he wanted to or was offered to manage the band and he ended up doing exactly that. I had the privilege of seeing the Crisis What Crisis tour when the played at the fabulous Queen Elizabeth Theater in Vancouver BC when I was about 12 years old with both my parents. Amazing show where they played both albums seamlessly intertwined. It still brings a tear to my eye remembering the magic, joy and how their music really impacted my life. To this day I am forever thankful that my father, along with people like Mr. Prevost, taught me about what real and meaningful music is all about. Years later both my parents went to a Summer Sunday show at the old Empire stadium by the PNE fair grounds in Burnaby BC for the Breakfast in America tour as guest of Charlies and it was shortly after that he left as their manager and Roger Hodgson quit the band. The rest, as we know, is now history.
Thanks for sharing your story and sending us a reminders of the greats in a time where music was had a soul and not cold, technical and digital as we know today.
Mission Mike
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I grew up in Fresno. To pay for my drone-flying and skiing habits, I got a paper route in 1969.
A guy on my route lived with his mother in a triplex apartment. Unlike my friends and I, this older kid had really long hair. When I went to collect, he would often answer the door. These were bohemian types, which I never saw as a kid.
A couple of years later, music migrated to KFIG, and this kid was now a DJ on it. The top DJ in Fresno – Ray Appleton. He also had a band that opened for Montrose, Slade, etc. in town.
A few years after that, Crime of the Century came out. I'm pretty sure it was Ray that barricaded himself in the studio and played it repeatedly for a day, letting his bosses' calls to shut it down ring off the hook. This generated a ton of good PR in California.
The band hired him as a road manager and promoter, so effective was he at getting this band widely known and played, he left town for a while to work for them.
I left Fresno in 1976, but I heard that when Supertramp band members would come to town, he would be invited to play with them. It's often said – no Fresno, no Supertramp success. Who knows?
BTW, Ray has been a right-wing talk show host for decades. MAGA these days, etc. But one of those that seems to still have hippie ethics.
Gary Lang
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I saw Supertramp at the Technical High School in Ottawa (about a 300 cap pocket theatre) on the Crime of the Century tour in the spring of 1975. I'd owned the album since the previous fall when it came out and listened to it incessantly. I even hand-painted the cover on t-shirts and sold dozen of them to friends. Sic months or so later, the album had hit in Canada and I saw them again, this time at the city's largest venue, the Civic Centre with about 13,000 other people. They were fantastic live.
Also managed to see Split Enz in a smallish venue in Toronto on the tour for the Dyzrythmia album in 1979 and a couple more times when they opened for Tom Petty's Damn The Torpedoes tour when True Colours was a hit.They gave Petty a run for his money. Neil. And Tim Finn were a great team until young Neil emerged as obviously the best singer and songwriter in the group.
I was working for MuchMusic in the mid 80s when Neil's new band, Crowded House, found themselves stuck in Toronto when Bruce Hornsby, who they were opening for at the time, got sick and had to postpone some shows. The band came to the station every day just to hang around because they had nothing to do. Much was a live service and one day we just just gave drummer Paul Hester a microphone and had a cameraman follow him as he roamed the building, talking to anyone and everyone. One of the funniest days of television in our history I'd say. A more personable, talented bunch of guys as you'd ever care to meet.
Canada loved and embraced all those bands.
Mike Campbell
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Growing up in Montreal in the 70's, Supertramp, Genesis and Styx were my salvation.
Every week my best pal Micheal Korman would escape to his basement and play that Supertramp record over and over at the highest possible volume in his really superior Technics stereo system and Boston speakers.
We didn't know anything about music but somehow we appreciated the complex orchestration and brilliant layering of vocals and music. The record spoke to us and took us somewhere else than a faux wood paneled office.
I was fortunate that my parents had a very solid and eclectic record collection so I appreciated everything from Latin to jazz but somehow Supertramp was something completely different, elevated rock music as brilliant as opera and defined as classical music.
Barry Avrich
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Great read, Bob. So many of Supertramp's songs are part of the soundtrack to my life. I remember when MTV got behind them in 1985 after Hodgson left, a full special for Brother Where You Bound in a longform video with sax player John Helliwell. 'Cannonball" was an MTV exclusive, heavy rotation, followed by the superior "Better Days", their political statement at the time (still holds up), but this effort should have been poured into Hodgson's solo album the year prior. "Had A Dream (Sleeping With The Enemy)" quietly entered medium rotation, but the follow up "In Jeopardy" was relegated to "request" status on Nickelodeon's Nick Rocks, a program we were led to believe was youngsters writing in requesting such good music. On occasion, Sirius plays tracks from both of these albums, but I credit KCDX 103 out of Phoenix for having "In Jeopardy" as a cut in rotation as recent as 2015.
Kevin Andrusia
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Thank you for sharing, that is a remarkable performance...almost too good!
Supertramp songs were always packed with ironic, insightful lyrics that ring as true today as they did then -- "The Logical Song", "Bloody Well Right", "Breakfast in America", "Take the Long Way Home" and more. While all very agreeable FM radio sounds, they contained veiled critiques of class, culture and government rule that were (and remain) spot on.
Like Meat Loaf, Gerry Rafferty and many more, I discovered Supertramp through my sister's 8-tracks when I was a kid. So I'll admit there is a sentimental resonance in my Supertramp journey, but the lyrics and varied song compositions are unique and meaningful. "Take the Long Way Home" speaks to every broken marriage from "Mad Men" to "American Beauty" and beyond.
David Toner
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Long time fan of Supertramp from when "Crime of the Century" was released in 1974 during my senior year at the University of Vermont. The entire album was put into heavy rotation by the Live Earl Jive on CHOM-FM, Montreal's legendary rock music station that we picked up a hundred miles to the south in Burlington.
In June 1977, Supertramp played a concert at Burlington's Memorial Auditorium, a 2,500-seat venue that was more suited for basketball and wrestling than music. An unruly concert a few months prior by Styx already had the mayor and city council contemplating a ban on rock concerts. The same promoters, not taking the hint, once again elected to go with general admission tickets. As expected, there was a large surge forward when the doors were about to open. No one was hurt, but many without tickets attempted to gain access thru the windows. The mayor, Gordon Paquette, along with the police chief and fire marshal were called away from the city's annual retirement dinner and upon inspecting the scene they concluded that the venue had been oversold by 1,000 tickets, which the local promoter, Alan Abair, vehemently denied. Wasting no time, the city's Finance Board banned rock concerts from the auditorium a few days later.
A couple footnotes. Four years later, in March 1981, Bernie Sanders defeated Paquette, the still incumbent mayor, by ten votes in an upset no one saw coming. Rock music was subsequently restored to the Auditorium and the City of Burlington's Youth Office, which Bernie started, opened a club called 242 Main in the building's basement. With programming driven by teens, it became America's longest-running all-ages punk rock venue, and a sanctuary anchored in the hearts of thousands. Unfortunately, in 2016, after decades of deferred maintenance and neglect, the city closed the doors to the auditorium and 242 Main, declaring the structure too unsafe to occupy. Redevelopment plans have since come and gone without anything yet moving forward.
Second footnote: The day after the Supertramp show, Susan Green, the Burlington Free Press' music critic, interviewed Hodgson and asked him about the very lines from "School" that you excerpted. He thought for a moment and then replied, "There are two different types of revolutionary Iyrics. One that just incites listeners to stand up and start shouting 'This is wrong. This is wrong.' And one that suggests they become aware of what's really happening and change themselves and bring about a change. The world needs that now," he said.
That was 48 years ago. Hodgson's words still resonate today.
Chico Lager
I remember years ago reading an interview with Paul McCartney where he was asked who he was listening to, and he said Supertramp. I thought, what? That band? Aren't they a little fluffy? Then he said his favorite song of that year was "The Logical Song". So this spurred me to quickly give them a deeper and broader listen, and yes, they are great. I didn't catch it at first. What's the theme of "Logical", what's the main question? "Please tell me who I am". So, to your point, they asked, they thought, they considered how to fit, what to do about it. You described it all perfectly.
Preston Bealle
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Two of my favourite bands and 'Message' and 'Hide' are my all time favourites from each.
Supertramp used to have their 'choir', aka their roadies, come onstage and sing the final part refrain "So watcha gonna"…etc, onstage after the epic HIYS live performances, and it was always a hoot!
I remember the 2000 world NYE concerts and watching to see if any would be disrupted by the Y2K bug, the first was from the first nation to ring in the new millenium, New Zealand and the band was Split Enz doing 'Message' with the line 'no more new year's resolutions, it's more than that', the soon to shut down band were in fine form and Neil Finn was on song, after that Y2K trepidations dissolved and good cheer was here, if for a millisecond!
Tony Barnes
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As I wrote in a review I just did of the expanded, 3LP edition of Supertramp's 1980 live album Paris, I probably listened to the Supertramp records in my collection growing up in the late '70s as much as, if not more than, those I had by Led Zeppelin and Yes. And I had 'em all -- even Supertramp's 1970 self-titled "Flowerhead" debut LP, with great lost songs like "Surely," "It's a Long Road," "Aubade (and I am not like other birds of prey)," and "Try Again." Supertramp spoke directly to me for all the reasons you cited -- in essence, they let you know that you -- the internalized individual with the searching/questioning the status quo mind -- was not alone, even if it felt that way sometimes. Crime of the Century remains one of my Top 10 albums, well, ever, and Breakfast in America continues to resonate (though its production values were a tad slicker by then). And "Fool's Overture," the big 11-minute epic that closed out 1977's Even in the Quietest Moments..., was an amazing history lesson of postwar Britain -- listening to it now evokes that gnawing sense of "the more things change" that we're all going through today.
1982's ...famous last words... (don't forget those double ellipses!) was a bit of a letdown, to say the least, but Hodgson's 1984 solo album In the Eye of the Storm remains a favorite (the title track especially!), and I also love the Davies-led Supertramp's 1985 LP Brother Where You Bound, with that epic 16-and-a-half-minute title track and the sniping hit "Cannonball."
As an inveterate lover of B-sides, I knew every word of "Just Another Nervous Wreck," the Rick Davies-penned album cut that backed Roger Hodgson's "The Logical Song." Speaking of "The Logical Song," kids of that era, like me, absolutely loved that they included the double-pumped Mattel Electronics' Electronic Football "punting" sound effect -- which appears right after Hodgson stutter-sings the word "digital" -- something any handheld gameplayer of that age/era knew instantly. (Still got mine, of course, even if I haven't played it in decades.)
I've seen Hodgson live twice (interviewed him twice too -- a lovely and thoughtful chap!) and his voice remains as sound and inspiring as ever. Saw the Davies-led Supertramp once, at the Beacon in NYC for their Slow Motion tour in September 2002, and was glad I did so that I could hear him sing many of his songs from their repertoire. Bloody well right, indeed.
I'll leave you with these key lines from a track on Side 2 of Crime of the Century: "If everyone was listening, you know / There'd be a chance that we could save the show..."
Mike Mettler
Editor, Analog Planet
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First concert ever! Back in mid-70's or so. Hide in You Shell always brought me to tears. Even in the Quietest Moments was another great "deep cut" (even as the title song). Another great one about alienation by Roger was Sister Moonshine from Crisis What Crisis ("I'm a stranger to everyone"). It got a fair amount of FM airplay.
I do think the band's finest moment was Bloody Well Right from Crime. So many styles, and the buildup is great. I can listen to that song on loop.
Rick and Roger came to the band from such different tastes (Rick blues, Roger more pop), but they made it work. And sadly, they had the typical nasty band breakup involving animus and multiple lawsuits. They weren't allowed to touch each other's songs in performances. I'm not sure if they ever mended fences but I hope so.
Best,
Mitchell Brook
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"How Supertramp's $100 Million Album DESTROYED The Band"
youtu.be/iiS5J2J-QF0?si=3YXH5BO0nAm8q_-d
Mitchell Sussman
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Howdy Bob,
Coincidentally, Breakfast In America was released on this day (March 16) in 1979.
Your friend and mine,
West Anthony.
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You recent missive about the band brought back a memory. In 1977/78 we were touring Europe including stops in Portugal and Spain. During a press session in Madrid, the local press were on Roger's case about what the Crime of the century was. They were convinced it was about the late Franco and nothing we said could convince them otherwise. We were the first major UK band to play Spain after Franco died. It was wild, really wild at those gigs.
Charly Prevost
Mismanagement
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