If one were to look back at the pantheon of hallowed rock and roll albums, a perceptible element would very quickly make itself roundly obvious among the qualifying bands’ work: friction. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s corridors are littered with groups that, frankly, didn’t like each other very much. Productive tensions have been a fundamental part of creative greatness for as long as people have gotten together to make music. The give and take, push and pull. The Ying, the Yang. And if it wasn’t intra-band tensions, then there was some driving spite (against a rival artist/group, label dissatisfaction, previous reception, etc.), contempt (for the state of the music industry, tastes, the world at large), or at the very least a chip-on-the-shoulder attitude of spurned recognition of glory, be it real or simply perceived. It’s almost unheard of for a marquee group to create something indelible in a time of relative peace. The Beatles never quite found nirvana, and Nirvana sure as hell didn’t. The Stones were always in the throes of illicit substance abuse, as were The Beach Boys, The Doors, Black Sabbath, The Stooges, Stone Temple Pilots, Grateful Dead, Aerosmith, etc., but that’s not what this article is about.
This article is about Supertramp, and how vibes — good vibes, mind you — played a central role in the creation of Breakfast In America, an album that stands apart from a pack of similarly legendary rock albums because the process of its creation was, honestly, pretty chill.
To be clear, no album recording has ever been completely free of turmoil. Creative differences and differing priorities are as integral to most music as instruments and microphones are. But turmoil is a sliding scale, and Supertramp can proudly claim to sit on the more docile end (for reference, at the opposite end would be, let’s say, Fleetwood Mac, who’s best music was effectively just a vehicle to vent their frustrations with each other). For their previous albums, Supertramp convened (along with friends, family and even their pet animals) in the idyllic rural English county of Somerset, where — according to reports — everyone got along swimmingly. Nothing of note there, it sounded delightful. For Breakfast In America, after a critical and commercial film with more pressure on their shoulders than at any other point in their careers, the antipathy between chief songwriters Roger Hodgson and Rick Davies reached such levels of toxicity that, according to reports, they…still regularly played extracurricular footy matches together? Shocking behaviour. Reprehensible, truly.
In a 2013 interview with Prog Magazine, saxophonist John Helliwell alluded to the subtle differences that had, if not slida wedge between the bandleaders, then at least introduced a new dynamic to the group. For example: “Roger had this ionizer that he thought helped the air. I was convinced the fucking thing was giving me headaches so I kept turning it off, and he’d turn it back on. There were a few funny things like that. There have never been fisticuffs in this band, just tense silences...” If this is your biggest drama at work, you’re in a good place.
By this point in their partnership, Hodgson and Davies had become very different people. That doesn’t mean they couldn’t exist copacetically, just that the ways they went about their lives differed more than ever, and that the bridges they had to build to connect artistically (which they did, seemingly maturely and without fallout) were long. Throughout Supertramp’s successes, Rick Davies had maintained a blue-collar attitude and had stayed very true to his Swindon upbringing. But in the lead-up to Breakfast In America, Roger Hodgson, on the other hand, had fallen into a religious commune headed by a certain Swami Kriyananda (née Donald Walters) and had let his newfound spirituality seep into most aspects of his life, not the least of which was a semi-arranged marriage. Still, the common ground between the two — their shared intention to make lasting music — was fertile enough to seed.
In many ways, the relatively laissez-faire atmosphere of Breakfast In America pulled some serious weight, proving that the difference between pop- and prog-rock is only a letter. It was released in the golden age of disco, and despite its breadth, only clocks in at 46 minutes — paltry, by the standards set half a decade earlier by their prog-genitors. Even more ironically, Breakfast In America was originally intended to be “Hello Stranger,” a concept album about the differences between Davies and Hodgson, before the pair opted instead to record a collection of ‘fun’ songs. Especially when compared to their other career highlight, 1974’s Crime of the Century, Breakfast in America comes off as a ‘fun album,’ a denomination generally seen as foreign to the entire prog- apparatus. It’s goofy, from its satirical cover to the self-deprecating humour that litters the album to the general air of humour that strings together songs crafted with radioplay in clear sight.
The prog-to-pop pipeline isn’t particularly populated, because distilling the expansive ideas that define prog-rock into something more digestible is an art. “In a way, it’s easier to write minor-key opuses than a really good catchy pop song,” said Davies in the year of Breakfast In America’s release. “That’s not easy at all.” And for as prideful a crop of musicians as prog-rockers are, the optics of ‘dumbing down’ the music could be hard to swallow. But with all respect due to Stereolab, if you’re hoping for a fun time, prog- is not likely to be what you reach for. And the results speak for themselves.
You would be hard pressed to find a rock fan that can’t hum the world-beating melody of “The Logical Song,” or who hasn’t had “Take The Long Way Home” stuck in their ear-cannals for weeks at a time. Show me someone who can’t complete the lyric ‘Take a look at my girlfriend / ______________,’ and I’ll show you a liar. Supertramp’s baser instincts were always prevalent, and as a band rooted in the more experimental side of rock, they never could quite relinquish their tendencies to indulge themselves. And ultimately, they never had to; they just needed to relax a bit. And in that relaxation, ironically, they discovered their best work. Breakfast In America still stands as one of the finest prog-rock albums of the genre’s waning golden years, and an insistently fun record front to back — something no amount of technical virtuosity, complex structures, or long song length could replicate.