The story of Supertramp

A drummer from Swindon and a millionaire's offer

Rick Davies was born in Swindon, Wiltshire, on the twenty second of July 1944. His mother Betty ran a hairdressing salon and his father Dick was a merchant seaman. When Rick was eight, his parents gave him a second hand radiogram that came with a few old records, among them Gene Krupa's Drummin' Man. He said it hit him like a thunderbolt, and he played it thousands of times. A family friend built him a makeshift drum kit from a biscuit tin, and at twelve he joined a railway staff brass band as a snare drummer. By 1962, while studying art at Swindon College, he led his own group, Rick's Blues, and had switched to electric piano. For a while its drummer was a young Gilbert O'Sullivan, who later said Rick had taught him everything he knew about music.[1] [2] [3] [4]

When his father fell ill, Rick broke up the band, left college and took a job as a welder at a factory in Swindon. For a while music was on hold. In 1966 he joined a group called the Lonely Ones as their organist, and later confessed he had lied to get the job, because he could not actually play the organ yet. The band renamed itself the Joint and spent time in Germany, recording music for films. In Munich, Rick met a Dutch millionaire named Stanley August Miesegaes, known to his friends as Sam. Sam had been funding the Joint but was disappointed with them. He felt Rick's talent was being held back by the group, so he made him an offer. Start a band of your own, he said, and I will pay for it.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The man who would become Rick's partner came from a very different world. Charles Roger Pomfret Hodgson was born in Portsmouth on the twenty first of March 1950 and grew up in Oxford. When he was twelve his parents divorced, and his father left his guitar behind. Roger took it to boarding school, where it became what he called his lifeline and his best friend. A teacher showed him three chords, he began writing songs almost at once, and at thirteen he gave a school concert made up entirely of his own material. He went on to Stowe School. After leaving, he sang on a one off single by a studio group called Argosy, whose pianist was a young Reginald Dwight, soon to be known to the world as Elton John.[1] [2]

In August 1969 Rick placed an advert in the music paper Melody Maker. Roger answered it and auditioned as the guitarist, but when Richard Palmer turned up the next day for the same job, Roger agreed to play bass instead. On paper the two leaders had nothing in common. Rick was working class and devoted to blues and jazz, while Roger had gone straight from private school into music and loved pop. Yet they hit it off at once and started writing together. With drummer Keith Baker, the new band rehearsed at a country house in Kent and then flew to Munich to play the P N Club, under the name Daddy. In January 1970, to avoid confusion with a band called Daddy Longlegs, Palmer suggested a new name, taken from a 1908 memoir by the Welsh poet W H Davies, The Autobiography of a Super Tramp.[1] [2] [3] [4]

False starts and a band that kept falling apart

Supertramp were one of the first acts signed to the new British branch of A&M Records. Their debut album, simply called Supertramp, came out on the fourteenth of August 1970. Palmer wrote every lyric, because nobody else in the band wanted to, and he later said it felt like doing homework. The music was written by Rick and Roger together. They recorded at Morgan Studios from midnight until six in the morning, convinced there was some magic in night sessions because they had heard that Traffic worked that way. Roger remembered the engineer falling asleep on them, and a lot of arguing with Palmer. On the twenty seventh of August they played the Isle of Wight Festival. Critics were kind, but hardly anyone bought the record, and it was not even released in America until 1977.[1] [2]

The line up soon began to crumble. Keith Baker had already been replaced on drums by Robert Millar, a former stage actor, and Dave Winthrop had joined on saxophone and flute, singing much of the set. Palmer left in December 1970, and in January 1971 Millar quit after suffering a nervous breakdown. The former Nice guitarist David O'List lasted a single gig. A South African named Russel Pope joined as a roadie for ten pounds a week and later became their sound man. He remembered a freezing winter tour of Norway. The first show was on top of a mountain, and most of the audience arrived on skis, got very drunk and ended the night fighting each other with chairs. The band's van gave up after the climb and stayed on that mountain until spring.[1]

For the second album, Indelibly Stamped, released in June 1971, bassist Frank Farrell and drummer Kevin Currie joined, and Roger moved over to guitar. Rick now sang as much as Roger did, and from this record on the two wrote separately, each singing his own songs. The cover showed the tattooed torso of a topless woman, a model named Marion Hollier, who was reportedly paid forty five pounds. Some Australian record shops refused to stock it, and others sold it in a brown paper sleeve. Roger later called it a survival album, made to get back into their backer's good books, with no theme and the band floundering. It sold even fewer copies than the debut.[1] [2]

By 1972 the band was falling apart again. Farrell left in the spring, and one by one the others drifted away until only Rick and Roger were left. In October 1972 Sam Miesegaes finally withdrew his financial support. It looked like the end. But the pair kept going. A bassist from Glasgow, Dougie Thomson, came in during 1972, first as a stand in, and stayed. Thomson had played in the Alan Bown Set, and he persuaded a fellow Alan Bown veteran, the Yorkshire saxophonist John Helliwell, to join. Then an American drummer, Bob Siebenberg, arrived from the London pub rock band Bees Make Honey. For years the album credits called him Bob C Benberg. By the summer of 1973, the line up that would last a whole decade was in place.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Crime of the Century

Around this time, a young A&M executive named Dave Margereson was asked to review the label's roster. Supertramp's two album deal had achieved little, but he went to see them live several times and loved new songs like Dreamer and Bloody Well Right. Then he watched the old line up break up in front of him. He decided they were worth fighting for, signed them directly to A&M, and within a couple of years became their full time manager. He rented a farmhouse in the West Country called Southcombe for twenty pounds a week, and the whole band, crew, wives and girlfriends moved in to work on the next album. Margereson had come from CBS, and he liked to recall that he tried to bring Queen to A&M, only for the Los Angeles office to turn them down.[1] [2] [3]

Living together at Southcombe, Rick and Roger both said, was when communication inside the band was at its peak. They demoed around forty two songs and picked just eight. The album was recorded at Trident Studios and at the Who's Ramport Studios with co producer Ken Scott, who had engineered for the Beatles and co produced David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust. Scott said the two writers were very different personalities, and that the difference was exactly what made the music sound the way it did. Rick wrote Asylum, Rudy and Bloody Well Right. Roger wrote Hide in Your Shell and If Everyone Was Listening. Dreamer, School and the title track were joint efforts. The train heard in Rudy was recorded at Paddington station, and the crowd noise in Leicester Square.[1] [2] [3]

Roger had written Dreamer years before, at nineteen, the first time he got his hands on a Wurlitzer electric piano, set up at his mother's house. He recorded a demo on the spot, singing the harmonies himself and banging on cardboard boxes and lampshades for percussion. When the band tried to record it properly, they could not recapture the magic, so they put the old demo on the multitrack tape and played along with it. Crime of the Century came out in the autumn of 1974 and reached number four in Britain. Dreamer became their first hit single early in 1975, reaching number thirteen. In America, radio preferred the B side, Rick's Bloody Well Right, which became their first American top forty hit.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The cover, a pair of hands gripping prison bars that float in a starry sky, was the first album sleeve by photographer Paul Wakefield. The hands belonged to his twin brother, whitened with stage make up. The album was dedicated simply To Sam, for the millionaire who had kept them alive. In Canada it stayed on the chart for more than two years and was eventually certified diamond, for sales of over a million copies. Rick deliberately linked the opening track School to Bloody Well Right with a line about schooling, which led many listeners to treat the record as a concept album, though the band always said it was not. Decades later Rolling Stone named it one of the greatest progressive rock albums of all time.[1] [2] [3]

Crisis, then America

Success brought pressure. A&M wanted a follow up quickly, and it had to be squeezed in between two tours. Early in 1975, on the North American leg, Roger injured his hand and some shows were cancelled, which at least gave the band time to work. Even so, they went into the studio short of songs, relying on leftovers from Crime of the Century and earlier. Crisis? What Crisis? was recorded in London and Los Angeles, their first time in American studios, again with Ken Scott. Roger called it a patch up job and said they learned how not to make an album. Its singles flopped, yet it still made the British top twenty, and years later Roger named it his personal favourite Supertramp record.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The cover, dreamed up by Rick, showed a man lounging in a deckchair under a beach umbrella in the middle of an industrial wasteland, with the background shot in the Welsh mining valleys. Rick's songs on the record, like Ain't Nobody But Me and Another Man's Woman, showed off his bluesy, sardonic side. Meanwhile Dave Margereson pulled off what he called his greatest management coup. For their first real American tour he wanted Supertramp headlining theatres rather than opening for other acts. So radio stations that normally gave away six tickets secretly gave away hundreds, and every winner thought they were one of a lucky few. The theatres filled. It cost A&M money, but people who came went home as fans.[1] [2] [3]

By 1977 the band had moved permanently to Los Angeles. Roger loved it. For a young Englishman, he said, arriving in California felt like dying and going to heaven. They recorded Even in the Quietest Moments at Caribou Ranch in the Colorado mountains, but the thin air made their voices sound strange and made it hard for Helliwell to play saxophone, so they finished the album at the Record Plant in Los Angeles. It was their first record with engineer Peter Henderson, a protege of the Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick. The cover showed a real grand piano, gutted, left out overnight in fresh snow at a ski resort. The sheet music on it is labelled Fool's Overture, but it is actually The Star Spangled Banner.[1] [2] [3]

The album opened with Give a Little Bit, a song Roger had written at nineteen or twenty, inspired by the Beatles' All You Need Is Love. It had waited five or six years for the band to record it. Siebenberg remembered hearing it on a little tape in hotel rooms, and gave it a beat like a train, played only on snare and bass drum. It reached number fifteen in America, and within months the album became their first gold record there, while in Canada it went to number one. The record also held Roger's Fool's Overture, a long collage stitched from three pieces of music he had carried around for years, with a recording of Winston Churchill's 1940 speech and a reading of William Blake's Jerusalem.[1] [2] [3]

Breakfast in America

For their next album, Rick and Roger first imagined a record about their own clashing outlooks, a musical conversation between the two of them called Hello Stranger. That idea gave way to an album of fun songs, and Roger talked Rick into a new title, Breakfast in America. Demos were made in the spring of 1978 at a rehearsal space in Burbank that the band nicknamed Southcombe, after the old farmhouse. Recording then moved to the Village Recorder in West Los Angeles, a studio housed in a Masonic temple. On the very first day, Peter Henderson, now co producing, failed to show up. He and his new wife had been hit head on by a drunk driver. Nobody was badly hurt, and he arrived later with two enormous black eyes.[1] [2] [3]

The work was painstaking. The band spent a week just finding the right sound, even trying out three different grand pianos. They worked from two in the afternoon to eleven at night, Monday to Friday, for about nine months, seven of them on overdubs. Helliwell's saxophone had to be recorded in the only space left, the toilet. Henderson said he moaned about it but secretly enjoyed it. Helliwell in turn was convinced that an air ionizer Roger kept in the studio was giving him headaches, so he kept switching it off, and Roger kept switching it back on. There were never any fist fights in this band, Helliwell said, just tense silences. The final mix ran right up to the deadline in February 1979, with the team working through the last night.[1] [2] [3]

Roger's The Logical Song grew out of a chord pattern he had been playing with for months. One day he heard a melody over it, and with it a single word, then a whole string of words that rhymed with it. He said it was the only time he ever used a dictionary to write a lyric. The song drew on his ten years at boarding school, and on what childhood teaches us and what it leaves out. Rick added an answering vocal in the second chorus, and Helliwell supplied the heavy breathing in the intro. It became one of the fastest breaking singles in A&M's history, reaching number six in America, number seven in Britain and number one in Canada. Paul McCartney named it his favourite song of the year, and it won an Ivor Novello award.[1] [2] [3]

The album came out on the sixteenth of March 1979, reached number one on the Billboard chart in May and stayed there for six weeks. It also topped the charts in Canada, Australia, France, West Germany and several other countries. Alongside The Logical Song came three more hits: Rick's Goodbye Stranger, Roger's Take the Long Way Home, the last song written for the album, and in Britain the title track. Roger had written that one as a teenager on a harmonium he bought from an elderly woman in an English village for twenty four pounds, and he still owns it. At the 1980 Grammys the album was nominated for Album of the Year and won awards for its packaging and for Henderson's engineering.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

The tour that followed was huge and punishing. Roger later said they played about a hundred and twenty shows in nine months and almost killed themselves, and killed the band as well. Dougie Thomson remembered that by the end, the five of them were only together for the two hours they spent on stage. Roger travelled separately in a camper with his partner. To buy time before a new studio album, they released Paris, a double live album recorded mostly on the twenty ninth of November 1979 at the Pavillon de Paris, a venue that had once been a slaughterhouse. It reached number eight in America, and a live version of Dreamer went to number one in Canada and number fifteen in the United States, where the original had never charted.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Famous last words

Roger's life was pulling him somewhere else. Helliwell recalled that around this time Roger became involved with a spiritual community in northern California led by a teacher called Swami Kriyananda. In 1981 Roger moved his family from Los Angeles into the mountains near Nevada City, where he built a home and a studio, while the rest of the band stayed in Los Angeles. There was little open feuding, but the distance widened the gap. Dougie Thomson described the two leaders as polar opposites. Rick was pragmatic and cynical, a meat eater from a working class home. Roger was a vegetarian idealist on a spiritual quest. Rick reportedly objected to the spiritual tone of Roger's song Lord Is It Mine, and lost that argument.[1] [2] [3]

For the next album, the two writers had separate visions for the first time. Roger wanted another pop record in the style of Breakfast in America. Rick wanted something heavier, built around a ten minute epic of his called Brother Where You Bound. Siebenberg remembered wars over where to record, because Roger did not want to come to Los Angeles and Rick did not want to go up into the mountains. In the end most of it was made at Roger's Unicorn Studios, so he could stay close to his wife, his two year old daughter and his newborn son, while Rick recorded his parts at his home studio in Encino. Brother Where You Bound was left off as too heavy. Siebenberg said the result was a diluted version of what it set out to be.[1] [2]

Famous Last Words came out in October 1982, with each song's lyrics printed in the sleeve in a colour that showed who wrote it, a telling detail. It reached number five in America and number six in Britain. Roger's It's Raining Again, written on a rainy day in England when he was grieving the loss of a friend, entered the Billboard chart at number thirty one, one of the highest debuts of the year, but peaked at eleven. Rick's My Kind of Lady also made the top forty. In the video for It's Raining Again all five members played small parts, with Rick and Siebenberg as a pair of pranksters in a pickup truck. Roger later said he regretted the album, calling it a last ditch attempt after the life had gone out of the band.[1] [2] [3]

A world tour followed in 1983, with Fred Mandel and Scott Page added on stage. Roger told the band, and then audiences, that this would be his last tour with Supertramp. He said he wanted time with his children and freedom to make solo records, and he always denied any real personal problem with Rick. He played his final show with the band in September 1983. Earlier that summer, manager Dave Margereson had resigned after a falling out with the group, and after Roger left, sound man Russel Pope and several of the crew went too. Rick's wife Sue, whom he had married in 1976, took over as manager, a job she would hold for the rest of the band's life.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Rick Davies at the helm

Roger's first solo album, In the Eye of the Storm, came out in 1984. He played most of the instruments himself, and it went platinum in Canada within a month, though it only reached number forty six in America. Rick, meanwhile, decided to carry on with Supertramp as a four piece. In May 1985 they released Brother Where You Bound, a deliberate step back from pop. Journalists heard it first aboard a specially chartered Orient Express from Paris to Venice. The album reached number twenty in Britain and twenty one in America, and Rick's Cannonball became a top thirty hit and a dance club hit as well. He wrote it entirely around a single chord, G minor, he said, simply to see if it could be done.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The title track ran for more than sixteen minutes, a Cold War piece opening with a reading from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four. For the guitar solos Rick wanted someone who could play a bit like David Gilmour, and someone at A&M simply asked Gilmour himself. The Pink Floyd guitarist came to Rick's home studio with all his gear and recorded the solos there. Thin Lizzy's Scott Gorham, then Siebenberg's brother in law, played rhythm guitar. A twenty minute film of the song by director Rene Daalder, shot in the derelict Pan Pacific Auditorium in Los Angeles, caused controversy for its graphic violence. Two years later Helliwell played saxophone on Pink Floyd's A Momentary Lapse of Reason, where his name was misspelled in the credits.[1] [2] [3] [4]

On their first tour without Roger, the band dropped all of his songs from the set to establish an identity of their own. Audiences were not happy. In 1987 came Free as a Bird, an experiment with drum machines and computers that Rick later admitted cost them some of the band spirit. The single I'm Beggin' You went to number one on the American dance chart, but the album stalled at number one hundred and one, breaking a run of seven straight top one hundred albums. On the 1988 tour, which took them to South America for the first time, pressure from fans brought a handful of Roger's hits back into the show. After that, Rick said, they decided to say nothing and simply fade away like an old soldier.[1] [2]

Roger's second solo album, Hai Hai, arrived in 1987, but just before its release he fell from a loft in his home and broke both wrists. He could not promote the record, and doctors told him he would never play again. Within about a year and a half he was playing, but he chose to step away from the music business and spend time with his children as they grew up. In 1990 he turned down an offer to become the lead singer of Yes, although a song he wrote with Trevor Rabin, Walls, ended up on the Yes album Talk. Dougie Thomson, meanwhile, retired from performing and moved into music publishing. He never rejoined Supertramp.[1] [2] [3]

Reunions and rifts

On the fourteenth of April 1993, at a dinner in Beverly Hills honouring A&M co founder Jerry Moss, Rick, Roger and Helliwell played The Logical Song and Goodbye Stranger together. Rick and Roger then started working again and demoed two new songs, You Win, I Lose and And the Light. But disagreements over management split them once more. In 1996 Rick, who had been working on a solo album, re formed Supertramp with Helliwell, Siebenberg and Mark Hart, a singer and guitarist who had toured with them in the eighties and had since played in Crowded House. Some Things Never Change came out in March 1997, recorded with the band playing together in the studio, and both of those demo songs ended up on it without Roger.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The 1997 tour, now with Siebenberg's son Jesse in the band, produced the live album It Was the Best of Times, drawn from shows at the Royal Albert Hall. In April 2002 came Slow Motion, Supertramp's final studio album, sold in North America only by mail order through their website. It included Goldrush, a song from the band's earliest days, co written by Richard Palmer James, that had opened their shows before Crime of the Century but had never been recorded to their satisfaction. The One More for the Road world tour followed, and for the first time the band played Give a Little Bit, sung by Jesse Siebenberg. Roger, meanwhile, had returned to touring in 1997 and released a solo album, Open the Door, in 2000.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Supertramp playing Roger's songs became the sore point. Roger said that when he left in 1983 he and Rick made a verbal agreement that the band would not perform them, though Rick never publicly mentioned any such deal. Roger said that hearing the band play his songs made him feel sick, and that his son, who was with him, started to cry. In 2010 Supertramp announced a fortieth anniversary tour of Europe, the seventy ten tour. Roger, on a world tour of his own, offered to join them for some dates, but Rick's agent declined. Rick said harmony, both musical and personal, no longer existed between them, and he would rather not spoil the memories of happier times.[1] [2] [3]

The 2010 and 2011 tours featured Rick, Helliwell, both Siebenbergs, bassist Cliff Hugo, guitarist Carl Verheyen, horn player Lee Thornburg and singer and keyboard player Gabe Dixon. After the band played London's O2 Arena, Roger complained that the show had been advertised using his songs. Supertramp's last ever concert turned out to be a private event on the fifteenth of November 2012 at the IFEMA fairgrounds in Madrid, a venue that had once used Rick's From Now On in its adverts. Helliwell could not make it, and an American saxophonist, Rob Hardt, stood in. The show lasted about eighty minutes. Roger, meanwhile, took his own Breakfast in America world tour around the globe and was made a knight of France's Order of Arts and Letters.[1] [2] [3]

Illness, lawsuits and a farewell

In 2015 Supertramp announced Supertramp Forever, a twenty five date European tour due to open in Porto in November and close at the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam. On the fourth of August it was cancelled. Rick, then seventy one, had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow, and had begun aggressive treatment. He apologised to the fans and said he needed to focus all of his energy on getting well. By 2018 he said he had largely overcome his health problems and was enjoying playing again, but that Supertramp were unlikely to return as a band. Instead he played small gigs near his home on Long Island with local friends, as Ricky and the Rockets.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Over the years the wider Supertramp family had been shrinking. Frank Farrell, bassist on Indelibly Stamped, who went on to co write Leo Sayer's hit Moonlighting, died in 1997 at the age of fifty, having lived with a moderately heavy drinking habit for most of his adult life. Russel Pope, the sound man Helliwell called underappreciated and who many saw as an unofficial sixth member, died of stomach cancer in August 2017. Robert Millar, the drummer on the first album, died in 2024. Helliwell stayed busy, leading a jazz big band that plays Supertramp tunes without vocals and releasing an album of ballads, Ever Open Door, in 2020. In 2025 he helped present Live in Paris '79, the complete Paris shows from December 1979.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The bitterest fight was about money. In 1977 Rick and Roger had agreed to share part of their songwriting royalties with Thomson, Helliwell and Siebenberg and with their manager, because the band's record royalties were going to pay off label advances and the other three were struggling. Roger said it was meant to keep the band functioning and happy. The payments stopped in 2018, and in 2021 the three sued Roger and Rick. Rick settled out of court in 2023. Roger fought on. At the trial his lawyer called the former bandmates a pack of wolves. Their lawyer pointed at the ageing musicians and asked whether they looked like wolves. In 2024 the jury sided with Roger, deciding that forty one years of sharing had been a reasonable time.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In August 2025 a federal appeals court reversed that verdict. The judges ruled that the 1977 agreement had a natural end point, when the copyrights in the songs expire, and that until then Roger had to keep sharing the royalties. Only weeks later, in September 2025, Rick Davies died at his home on Long Island, a decade after his cancer diagnosis. He was eighty one. The band's statement remembered his warmth, his resilience and his devotion to his wife Sue, with whom he had shared more than five decades, and called his touch on the Wurlitzer the heartbeat of the band's sound. Great songs never die, the statement said. They live on.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

By 2007 Supertramp's album sales had passed sixty million. They were strongest of all in Canada, where Crime of the Century and Breakfast in America both went diamond and where they scored their only number one singles. They never fitted neatly anywhere, too poppy for prog and too arty for pop, and critics often treated them as a guilty pleasure. Yet their songs never went away. Goodbye Stranger turned up in the film Magnolia and in The Office, Scooter turned The Logical Song into a European rave hit, the Goo Goo Dolls covered Give a Little Bit, and Gym Class Heroes built Cupid's Chokehold on Breakfast in America. In March 2026 a new half speed master of Breakfast in America was released, cut at Abbey Road and overseen by Peter Henderson.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

The people around Supertramp

Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson. They met through a Melody Maker advert in 1969 and clicked despite opposite backgrounds, Rick the working class blues man and Roger the private school pop idealist. They soon wrote separately but shared every credit, and their contrast became the Supertramp sound. Distance, lifestyle and spirituality pulled them apart by 1983. Later disputes over Roger's songs and royalties kept them from ever reuniting on stage as Supertramp.[1] [2] [3]

Rick Davies and Stanley August Miesegaes. The Dutch millionaire, known as Sam, met Rick in Munich, felt his talent was being wasted in the Joint, and offered to fund a new band. He bankrolled Supertramp from 1969 until October 1972, when he withdrew his support after two flop albums. The band dedicated Crime of the Century to him with the simple words To Sam.[1] [2] [3]

Rick Davies and Gilbert O'Sullivan. O'Sullivan played drums in Rick's early Swindon band, Rick's Blues. In 1972 he said Rick had taught him to play drums and piano, and everything he knew about music. The friendship lasted: O'Sullivan was best man at Rick's wedding.[1] [2]

Supertramp and Dave Margereson. An A&M executive who saw potential in the band just as it collapsed, Margereson re signed them, rented the Southcombe farmhouse, invented a radio ticket giveaway to fill American theatres and became their manager. He called it the most exhilarating time of his life, like riding a tidal wave. He resigned in July 1983 after a falling out, but later helped oversee reissues.[1] [2]

Supertramp and Ken Scott. The former Abbey Road engineer who had worked with the Beatles and co produced David Bowie co produced Crime of the Century and Crisis? What Crisis? Siebenberg said nobody was better in the studio, and that Scott set the standard for every Supertramp record that followed. Scott's work on Crime of the Century earned a Grammy nomination for engineering.[1] [2] [3]

Supertramp and Peter Henderson. A young engineer trained by Geoff Emerick, Henderson first worked with the band on Even in the Quietest Moments and then co produced Breakfast in America, winning a Grammy for his engineering. He stayed through Famous Last Words, helped remix the Paris concert film, and in 2026 oversaw the half speed master of Breakfast in America.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Rick Davies and Sue Davies. Rick married Suzanne on the ninth of July 1976, and after Roger left and manager Dave Margereson resigned, she took over managing Supertramp from 1984. Some fans and the band's Spanish biographer criticised her management, but the band's farewell statement singled out Rick's devotion to her across more than five decades together.[1] [2] [3]

Roger Hodgson and Dougie Thomson, John Helliwell and Bob Siebenberg. Bandmates for a decade, they ended up in court. Under a 1977 deal the three received part of the songwriting royalties until payments stopped in 2018. They sued in 2021. Roger won at trial in 2024, but an appeals court reversed that in 2025. Helliwell said the hard feelings were a shame, given the great legacy they all shared.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Dougie Thomson and John Helliwell. Both played in the Alan Bown Set, where Thomson briefly worked alongside Helliwell. After Thomson joined Supertramp, he persuaded Helliwell to follow him in 1973, completing the classic line up. Thomson also helped Margereson with the band's business affairs, while Helliwell became the joking master of ceremonies on stage.[1] [2] [3]

Bob Siebenberg and Scott Gorham. Siebenberg and Thin Lizzy guitarist Scott Gorham were brothers in law from 1969 to 2000. Gorham played on Siebenberg's 1985 solo album and on his band Heads Up, and added rhythm guitar to Supertramp's sixteen minute Brother Where You Bound.[1] [2]

Rick Davies and David Gilmour. When Rick wanted Gilmour style solos for Brother Where You Bound, an A&M contact simply asked Gilmour, who came to Rick's home studio with his own gear and was, Rick said, very reasonable. The favour came back around when John Helliwell played saxophone on Pink Floyd's 1987 album A Momentary Lapse of Reason.[1] [2]

Rare facts about Supertramp

• Supertramp's first guitarist went on to write lyrics for King Crimson. Richard Palmer James, who named Supertramp and wrote the lyrics for their debut, later wrote words for King Crimson's Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Starless and Bible Black and Red, and for the 1985 European hit Maria Magdalena by Sandra.[1]
• Palmer James said naming the band was his only lasting contribution to it. He left after about sixteen months, while the name he chose from W H Davies's memoir carried on for four decades. He also co wrote Goldrush, which finally appeared on Slow Motion in 2002.[1] [2]
• The poet whose book named the band shared Rick Davies's surname purely by coincidence. W H Davies was a Welsh tramp turned poet. In 1899, trying to jump a freight train in Ontario, he lost his footing and his leg had to be amputated below the knee.[1] [2]
• As a teenager, Roger Hodgson sang on a single alongside a pianist who would become Elton John. The one off group Argosy included Reginald Dwight, Caleb Quaye and Nigel Olsson. Its 1969 single Mr Boyd and its B side were both written by Roger.[1]
• Rick Davies admitted he lied his way into an early band, claiming he could play organ when he could not. He joined the Lonely Ones as organist in 1966. The group became the Joint, and in Munich he met the millionaire who funded Supertramp.[1]
• Before Supertramp, Rick Davies worked as a welder in a Swindon factory. When his father fell ill, he broke up his band Rick's Blues, left art college and took a job at an industrial controls firm. For a time, his artistic hopes were put on ice.[1]
• Gilbert O'Sullivan was best man at Rick Davies's wedding. O'Sullivan had drummed in Rick's Blues and later said Rick taught him everything he knew about music.[1]
• In Singapore, Supertramp's debut album was released under the title Surely. In Spain it was called Now and Then, and the first British pressing carried a different title printed only on its labels.[1]
• Rosie Had Everything Planned is the only original Supertramp song with no Rick Davies credit. Bassist Frank Farrell co wrote it with Roger Hodgson for Indelibly Stamped. Roger later played it in Birmingham as a tribute to Farrell, who came from that city.[1] [2]
• Supertramp's early bassist Frank Farrell was the first musical director of The Rocky Horror Show. He resigned shortly after its 1973 premiere after falling out with writer Richard O'Brien over the musical style, then joined Leo Sayer and co wrote Moonlighting.[1]
• Indelibly Stamped was the first Supertramp album released in America. Their debut only came out in the United States in late 1977, after the band had become successful, and reached number one hundred and fifty eight.[1] [2]
• In 1977 Crime of the Century became the first pop album reissued by audiophile label Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab. Its clear production made it a favourite for testing hi fi systems. El País noted it is still used that way five decades later.[1] [2]
• On The Old Grey Whistle Test, John Helliwell played the rim of a wine glass for Dreamer. He set the glass on top of his keyboard to get a ringing sound, and the credits list him on glass harp.[1]
• A 1975 TV performance of Bloody Well Right on The Midnight Special was broadcast mostly in negative. The band played the song on the American late night show in June 1975, and the picture went out largely as a photographic negative.[1]
• Crime of the Century's co producer Ken Scott also engineered the famous Coca Cola hilltop advert song. Scott said it was the only advert he ever made, and it won a Clio award.[1]
• For Crime of the Century's fiftieth anniversary, the Guardian ran a cryptic crossword by a setter called Tramp. It was published on the twenty fourth of October 2024.[1]
• Fool's Overture had the working title The String Machine Epic. Helliwell said it grew from melodies Roger worked out on the string synthesiser the band used on stage. Roger took five years to put it together.[1]
• The Breakfast in America waitress, Libby, was played by actress Kate Murtagh. She holds orange juice in place of the torch. The skyline is made of kitchen items, with the Twin Towers as stacks of boxes.[1]
• On the back of Breakfast in America, each member reads his hometown newspaper. The photo was taken at a Hollywood cafe. Dougie Thomson is reading the Glasgow Herald.[1] [2]
• During Breakfast in America, Supertramp played football with Rod Stewart, with Helliwell as referee. Helliwell also said the band preferred darts before shows and an Italian meal afterwards to groupies or wild parties.[1]
• Helliwell became Supertramp's joking on stage host because nobody else wanted the job. Neither Rick nor Roger wanted to front the shows, so they stood at opposite ends of the stage while Helliwell talked to the crowd.[1] [2] [3]
• The lost master tapes of Paris turned up in 2006 in Bob Siebenberg's barn. They were in poor shape in Northern California along with concert film footage, but were rescued and transferred digitally.[1]
• Give a Little Bit was left off the live album Paris because every recorded version sounded bad. Roger said the band were shocked by the tapes. The missing songs later appeared on reissues and on Live in Paris '79.[1] [2]
• Princess Diana loved Give a Little Bit, and Roger sang it at the 2007 Concert for Diana. At Wembley the audience and both princes stood to sing along, which Roger called a magical moment.[1] [2]
• Scooter's 2002 version of The Logical Song reached number two in Britain. It was Scooter's highest charting British single and one of the country's best selling singles of 2002.[1]
• Bob Siebenberg composed the music for the 1989 computer game Space Quest III. He wrote the original score for the Sierra On Line adventure game the same year his band Heads Up released an album.[1]
• John Helliwell once started a music degree, then quit to go back on tour with Supertramp. In the 1990s he studied at the Royal Northern College of Music, but left when the band reunited for Some Things Never Change.[1]
• Brother Where You Bound's Better Days fades out with voices from the 1984 US election. Quotes from Ronald Reagan and George Bush come from one speaker, Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro from the other, under a Helliwell sax solo.[1]
• The Cannonball video features a caveman chasing his partner to a Supertramp rehearsal. Directed by Steve Barron, it ends with him waking in his cave to discover it was all a dream.[1]
• The Free as a Bird cover is a photo of painter Georges Braque painting a bird. The original vinyl came in four colour versions, and the bird was a cut out.[1]
• Roger Hodgson played King Arthur in a French rock opera. He sang on the 1999 concept album Excalibur by Alan Simon, and in 2001 toured in Ringo Starr's All Starr Band.[1]
• Supertramp's reunion singer Mark Hart was also a member of Crowded House. He played on Woodface, became a full member for Together Alone, and appeared at their 1996 farewell concert at the Sydney Opera House.[1]
• The Crisis? What Crisis? cover was partly inspired by a 1968 French comedy film. The backdrop was shot in the Welsh mining valleys and combined with a studio model of a sunbather.[1]
• It's Raining Again ends with the old nursery rhyme It's Raining, It's Pouring. Roger wrote the song on a pump organ while watching rain in England after losing a friend.[1]
• According to El País, the three sidemen won a 2005 court case against Rick Davies over catalogue rights. The newspaper reported that Thomson, Siebenberg and Helliwell sought shared control of the classic era catalogue. Siebenberg and Helliwell still later toured with Rick.[1]
• The back cover of Crime of the Century shows the band in their underwear. They hold dress suits and top hats. The photo was made when the sleeve was planned as a gatefold.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.