Supertramp, then and now

Last night, while my wife was at work, I took the opportunity to watch a Blu-Ray concert video I had ordered recently called Supertramp's Live in Paris. This is a film made during the same concerts that formed the basis of the best-selling live album by the same name, Paris, released back in 1980 on the heels of the huge hit Breakfast in America.  (We forget what a big hit that album was; it was the No. 1 album for four weeks in the U.S. and also topped the charts in several other countries.) Apparently, the film reels were found in the barn of drummer Bob Sienbenberg a few years back, and it took quite a while to convince the current band leader Rick Davies to allow them to be released. 

I realize liking Supertramp has become a mark of shame in recent years, at best a guilty pleasure, since this once-progressive band had ended up one of the biggest radio-friendly bands by the late 1970s. For whatever reason, this mostly faceless band has become a convenient symbolic punching bag for everything that was wrong with AOR rock at the time; one critic even said Supertramp epitomized the need for punk to come along and shake things up.  Supertramp has been the butt of a few jokes on "The Simpsons," mostly standing in as a convenient example of a hopelessly dated rock band from the 1970s.

I don't see the need to defend Supertramp, which has always been dismissed by certain critics and ridiculed by others.  I can tell you that I hear "Take the Long Way Home" almost any time I listen to the classic-rock station in the car for more than a few minutes, and it always gets my fingers tapping.  "Give a Little Bit" has become a universally recognized tune that almost isn't associated with the band anymore. The Goo Goo Dolls remade the song, and it has been appropriated for TV spots for products such as Coca Cola and The Gap.  Commercialized? Yes, but there's something enduring or resonant in a song that continues to be so accessible after almost 40 years.

Watching the concert video was an amazing experience, and I recommend it to anyone who's interested. The film (original shot on true celluloid) and sound quality are quite good, with lots of close-ups and interesting angles.  I'm surprised at the level of quality considering it was sitting in someone's barn for several decades.  More importantly, it's just an astonishing experience of cultural time-travel to watch the classic line-up perform, especially for someone like me who only had the chance to see the Rick Davies-led version of the band tour in 1985 for its album Brother Where You Bound (which I very much liked on its own terms).

It's gratifying to see this band working together (albeit only in the past) in such a cohesive and tight fashion, especially given the unending disputes between the two main songwriters and singers, Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson.   These feuds make the press in Europe, where the group is still very popular (they continue to play to large crowds in France, Germany, and Spain in particular), although we don't hear much these spats in the United States.

The linked article (with plenty more where that came from) details the source of these ongoing tensions, which mostly have to do with the band continuing to play Roger Hodgson's songs.  I understand his frustration, since solo stardom has eluded him, but we can also point out that plenty of old bands (like Journey, Yes, and Fleetwood Mac, to name a few) have continued to play their biggest hits even after key band members or songwriters have left. It's just not that unusual, and the public seems to be willing to ignore the semi-fraud in order to have fun at a concert. (I even have one friend who said he thought the new singer in Journey sounded better than Steve Perry.)  It isn't so much that people are being fooled as that they are agreeing to be fooled. Whether Rick Davies agreed not to play these songs or not (and I remember him telling the press in the 1980s that they didn't plan to play them), he gave into fan pressure and has kept a lot of musicians and other folks employed as a result. 

Hodgson's side is also a bit hard to swallow because he and his fans have continually downplayed the importance of the other band members.  He has basically insinuated that since he wrote and sang most of the group's biggest hits, he is essentially the most important member of the band, its visionary and artistic leader. Without him, he has all but suggested, the group should not exist.  He has even called the Rick Davies-led Supertramp a kind of solo project that has very little connection with the classic band. His fans insist he *is* Supertramp.

All of these claims, besides sounding petty, undervalue the importance of the group dynamic and ignore the important contributions of the other members in creating the group sound. Davies's rougher blues tendencies tended to keep Hodgson's more ethereal qualities in check, just as Hodgson's musical leanings helped make Davies's music more appealing and palatable.  This give-and-take approach is especially apparent on Crime of the Century, as many have noted, but it's also quite apparent on the more pop-oriented Breakfast in America, which is built around a kind of tense dialogue between the two singer-songwriters.  Not only did Hodgson and Davies manage to work around their artistic differences, but the artistic differences were essentially what made the group work.  I'm sure that's true of many bands, but Hodgson for one continues to ignore the importance of the dynamic, at least in more recent interviews.  (All one really needs to do in order to gauge the importance of the band dynamic in this case is to look at the solo and Supertramp records released after Hodgson left the group; all have been lackluster at best.) 

This concert video showcases Davies in particular as a virtuoso piano player and multi-instrumentalist (he plays the harmonica on "Take the Long Way Home," for instance); he also stands out as the obvious leader of the band at least in live performance, as can be seen conducting and orchestrating the various elements. All of this is to say nothing of the contributions of the other band members, all outstanding instrumentalists in their own right who helped to put their own stamp on this music when it was first put to record.  It may sound obvious, but bands exist because together, these musicians are able to do things that they cannot do alone.  Live in Paris reminds us of the legacy of one often-overlooked band, but it also reminds us of the importance of artistic tension and the special musical chemistry that results when certain talented musicians combine their efforts.