April 12, 1975 Interview: Supertramp

 


Buffalo was one of the places that fell in love early with this delightful British band, which is why they turned up here to do promo prior to their concert. I didn’t review the show (freelancer Jim Bisco got the nod), but I got to talk to the guys at a radio station, most likely the old 97 Rock studios on Franklin Street. 

April 12, 1975 

Silly Name, Serious Aim 

          On the eve of their first big tour of the U.S., four of the five-man British rock group Supertramp slump into chairs in a stuffy radio station production studio, bushed but happy.

          They’ve been on the go since the previous day in New York City, catching one of their favorite jazz artists in Greenwich Village, partying late, bidding farewells to their American drummer – Bob Behberg, who’s off to Los Angeles for a few days.

          Now they’re winding down after making the promotional rounds in Buffalo, one of the big cities where their “Crime of the Century” album and “Bloody Well Right” single are getting enthusiastic reception, the sort that makes them into a sensation.

          Later they’re flying back to New York, where they’re still unknown, to start a series of dates that will bring them back to Buffalo for a concert in Kleinhans Music Hall (Friday at 8:30). What happens in America may well be a rerun of what happened in England.

          “We’ve been touring since September,” says horn player John Anthony Helliwell. “We did a good tour of England. When the album first came out, we played half halls, but by the time we got to London the album was Number One and the halls were full.”

          “Then,” says keyboard man Richard Davies, “we went to Europe and it was back to the bottom again.”

* * *

THE GROUP attributes their album’s thematic unity (class oppression, the dashing of hopes) more to their desire to see the record flow rather than a conscious effort to develop a concept.

          “When Rick wrote ‘Crime of the Century’ three years ago, we thought it was an incredible idea, really, and an incredible title,” says Helliwell. “But we weren’t trying to be specific.”

          “It’s what you make of it,” explains Davies, who wrote it. “It’s a thought provoker.”

          “We see the album for what it is,” guitarist Roger Hodgson says, “eight songs written at eight different times. We’ve gotten incredibly diverse influences.”

          “Rick and I like jazz more than the others,” says Helliwell. “Rick likes Horace Silver and Ellington. I’m more for Weather Report and Return to Forever. There’s been a lapse of excitement in rock and it seems there’s more happening in jazz.”

* * *

THEY HAVE praise for their producer, Ken Scott, who was nominated for a Grammy Award for “Crime of the Century.”

          “We spent a long time on the album,” Davies says. “A lot of that was Ken. He’s a perfectionist.”

          “We fancied working with him,” says Helliwell. “We approached him and he didn’t like our tapes.”

          “Well, we sent him like home tapes, really scrappy things,” bassist Dougie Thomson puts in. “We’d done a single, ‘Land Ho,’ which started out badly and faded away and we really needed an engineer to work things out.”

          “We went off to a farm in the country,” says Helliwell. “We really only needed a month, but we were waiting for the producer and we wound up there for three months. We spent five months recording the album and we rehearsed the stage act for a month after that.”

* * *

ON STAGE they dip lightly into “Crime” and surround it with some of the 40 songs they left off the album. Good songs, they say, but they didn’t fit. Lights flash from tune to tune and instruments are swapped.

          “We make it look smooth now,” says Davies, “but the first time we did it, it was chaos. I lost my guitar twice.”

          “This is a really fragile band,” says Thomson. “It really takes everyone being perfect to really work. We’re all in it for the songs. Anything that’s done is done for the tunes.”

          “Our name?” Helliwell snorts. “It’s very ordinary. It was thought up by the guitarist in our first band. He had a BA in English lit and he’d read W. H. Davies’ ‘Autobiography of a Supertramp.’ It’s about an English guy that came to America and bummed around.”

          “To us,” Davies says, “America’s like a mountain. There’s so many people here. Also it’s taken us years to get here. I’ve been waiting for 10 years.”

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTO: The band at another promo stop in Chicago in 1975.

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