Song of the Day 9/9: Supertramp, “Just Another Nervous Wreck”

Supertramp was a band that couldn’t survive success. The band was founded by organist Rick Davies and guitarist Roger Hodgson, who shared lead vocals and songwriting duties. They began drifting apart after the success of “Breakfast in America,” the 1979 album that spawned four Billboard hit singles and went quadruple platinum, and Hodgson left in 1983. Davies, who died last week at age 81, kept the name, but neither one could capture the magic of the early ’80s songs that still play on classic rock radio.

Though they had a couple of earlier hits, most Americans were only vaguely aware of Supertramp before “Breakfast in America.” The band formed in London when Hodgson answered Davies’ ad in a music magazine. They released their first LP in 1970, when the prog rock scene in England was growing rapidly, and first two albums were typical of the movement: The music was complex, the reviews generally positive and the sales abysmal. Without the backing of a Dutch millionaire they would have gone broke, and after he withdrew his support they nearly did.

In 1974 Davies and Hodgson re-emerged with new personnel and a more commercial sound. They scored their first Top 40 hits when the Hodgson-penned “Dreamer” reached No. 13 in the UK and the B-side, Davies’ “Bloody Well Right,” charted at No. 35 in the U.S. This 1975 clip from “Midnight Special” is unfortunately marred by the producer’s love affair with the Xray effect.

Though the duo split the songwriting evenly (like Lennon and McCartney, they stopped writing together pretty early on), Hodgson was responsible for more of the hits. Of the four on “Breakfast in America,” only “Goodbye Stranger” was by Davies. I prefer this Davies composition, placed near the end of the album, to any of them.