You might want to pop this one in the CD player while you eat your Wheaties and OJ…Supertramp’s Breakfast In America was released this day in 1979. With it, yet another of those British prog-rock bands whose name everyone knew but whose music was a mystery (Genesis, King Crimson, EL&P) became everyday AM radio heroes in the country named in the title.
Breakfast In America was the band’s 6th studio effort and bookended the decade- their debut came out in early 1970. The group had formed as “Daddy” in London in 1969, and was throughout the decade the brain child of bassist/singer Roger Hodgson and keyboardist Rick Davies; both were reasonably well-established musicians by the time they created this entity. Hodgson had actually been in the band Argosy with another musician who went on to fame and fortune – a young Reginald Dwight (or Elton John as we know him!). The name Supertramp was taken from a 1908 autobiography of Welsh writer W.H. Davies, The Autobiography of a Super Tramp.
The band’s rather self-indulgent mixes of classical music, pop resulted in typically long, artsy pieces (with a few exceptions like “Give A Little Bit”) til this point, and while they had a following in the US and their homeland, it wasn’t particularly large. Until this album.
They convened in L.A. and had a general idea for the record. Contrary to popular opinion, it wasn’t especially written about the U.S.A. Hodgson says it was about him and Davies, and the space between. “Two people talking to each other, or at each other,” was the theme, he explained, “Our ways of life are so different, but I love him. That contrast is what makes the world go ’round.” Whether it was that theme, a musical maturing or the Southern California sun and influence of neighbors like the Eagles and Jackson Browne there, the result was an album of memorable, radio-friendly pop/rock songs that resonated far and wide. The lead single, “The Logical Song” became their first top 10 single in both the US and UK and remains one of the most played singles of the ’70s on retro-themed radio stations. “Goodbye Stranger” and “Take the Long Way Home” nearly matched the success.
Critics were of mixed opinions at the time. Rolling Stone said it was an “improvement” over past “meandering Genesis-like esoterica” and was a “textbook perfect album of post-Beatles, keyboard-centred English art rock.” The Village Voice graded it an average “C”, disliking its “Glib lyrics” and “lack of vocal personality.”
Regardless of their opinions, the public adored it. It hit #3 in the UK (their best showing), #1 in the US where they’d not had a top 20 prior and #1 in France where it remains one of the 5 biggest-selling albums of all-time, at over 3 million copies. Overall it moved some 20 million copies, making it the second best-ever for A&M Records, behind only Tapestry.
As well as it did in those places, the land that loved it best was Canada. For some reason, Supertramp really resonated north of the 49th. It was the only country in which their debut had gone gold and in fact, by the time Breakfast… came out, all five of their previous records were gold or better there. It continued that trend, being the #1 album of ’79, giving them their first #1 single in “The Logical Song” and soon earning them a diamond award for 10X platinum . As Roger Hodgson told the Ottawa Citizen a couple of years back, “one in 20 Canadians had both Breakfast In America and Crime of the Century, which I thought was a staggering statistic.”
It was! Maybe they should’ve had breakfast in Canada instead. Needless to say, they never soared as high again and by 1983, Hodgson had quit the band. It’s soldiered on at times since, but to little notice.
A Sound Day 