Note: In compiling this index it has come to my attention that I already reviewed this album, and indeed for the same slot! But both are done now so take your pick. It is interesting to see how I approached each review differently... What? It is...
The development of bands has constantly amazed me. How one can start as one thing and metamorphose over time into something totally different, for good or ill. This makes it all the more important to go back and check out these bands' often-struggling and stumbling first efforts, to see how they began and if they maintained that same music style throughout their career, or if they changed radically into another animal altogether. And so we set sail for the first time in a long while (well, since Metal Month II anyway, but a long time before that) on another of our
If you mention the word Supertramp to most people they'll think of “Breakfast in America”, “Take the long way home”, "The Logical Song" or “Dreamer”, or perhaps, if they're a little younger, “It's raining again.” All good decent hits from a band who straddled the often precarious divide between progressive rock/pop and outright commercial AOR/MOR from the seventies to the eighties with a great deal of success. Their albums sold well, some of them going gold or platinum, and when founder member Roger Hodgson jumped ship in 1982 to pursue a solo career, the direction shifted and Supertramp became less of a “happy” band and more a “serious” one, leading to a period that has not, to be fair, been characterised with their best work.
Supertramp --- Supertramp --- 1970 (A&M)
But if you think albums like “Brother where you bound”, “Free as a bird” and “Slow motion” depart pretty radically from the established Supertramp sound, look how they began. Back in 1970 the band were just getting started, and their lineup had not by any means solidified. They were so nervous that superstition ruled the recording of their debut album, the boys believing that there was some secret knowledge of music to be gained by recording in the small hours, and with both Hodgson and Rick Davies, who were later to become the driving force and creative partnership behind the band's rise to fame, both reluctant to write lyrics, leaving it to Richard Palmer. Palmer apparently hated doing this, which is odd when you consider he later found fame with King Crimson and wrote the lyrics for three of their albums, but at the time he seems to have given the impression of having been pushed into it, or doing it because nobody else wanted to or could.
I'd love to say that the album really reflects this, in bland, emotionless songs that give every indication of having been written under duress and protest, but nothing could be further from the truth. Palmer must indeed be a very good songwriter, because even though he didn't want to, he wrote some pretty stunning songs. Yes, the album suffers from a lack of direction and an almost blind wandering around as Supertramp search for their own musical voice, but though this album has been largely forgotten in the wake of titanic successes like “Breakfast in America” and “Crime of the century”, there are some absolute lost gems on it. That's not to say every song is good, and some of them are just downright woeful, but in general the good seem to outweigh the bad.
The album is I think unique in that not only does it open and close with the same song, but though one is merely a snippet of the other, neither are labelled anything like “intro”, “reprise” or even “Part 1”. Both are simply titled “Surely”, and this is how the album introduces Supertramp to a world who, on balance and for another four years, would not care. But it's a delicate and touching opening, as Roger sings the closing lines of the song with nothing more than acoustic guitar and piano, and the whole thing lasts just over thirty seconds before we head into “It's a long road”, which has more of a Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac feel about it, with trumpeting organ from Davies and a steady guitar riff running through it. There's an extended boogie riff which really showcases Hodgson's skill on the bass as well as the drumming talents of Robert Millar, who would not last beyond this album. It also shows the deftness with which Rick Davies handles the keyboard, switching from piano to organ and then electric piano and back.
It's a nice uptempo number and gets things going nicely, then everything slows down at the end with a sort of bluesy riff almost reminiscent of later “School”, with some fine harmonica --- which would become a staple of their music --- from Davies. The whole thing then draws to a close on a rising organ line and then stops abruptly, which does not prepare us for the laidback lushness of “Aubade/ And I am not like other birds of prey”, with its soft harmonica and keyboard opening, almost ethereal, before it's joined by a jaunty, folky acoustic guitar with whooshing drums and a low-key vocal from Hodgson. This reminds me of early Genesis, though they would only have been getting going at this time also. There's touches of early Neil Young in the guitar too, though this then changes into a slower, almost Floydian style as Hodgson's voice gets more earnest and stronger. This is a song I often forget about when playing this album, and it really does deserve some attention.
A nice restrained line in flute comes in, and Hodgson's voice almost sounds like it's echoing, as the flute makes a sort of bird-call, the guitar keeping up its happy tone until percussion hits in powerfully for the bridge, but it ends also quite abruptly. It leads into one of those standouts I spoke of, carried in on a single organ line while Hodgson's vocal is at first very low and distant as “Words unspoken” begins. A lovely guitar passage then slides in before with the cutting in of the drums the vocal coalesces and becomes stronger. The lyric is very poetic and quite hippyish I guess ---
”How all good men try/ Look around and wonder why/ Can they shape this world to please me?” --- but the song really comes into its own on Hodgson's mellifluous and soaring vocal on the chorus. It's all again very low-key and restrained, almost completely acoustic, and very gentle. I do find myself wondering however if Richard Palmer, chafing under the pressure of being the only lyricist, is sending his bandmates a bitter message when he writes
”Follow, and while you watch in wonder/ I'll pull my world asunder/ And show you who I am.”
Although there are uptempo songs here, the one thing that cannot be denied about this debut is that it is very introspective, very brooding, a sense of hopelessness and despair running through it, which I must admit does not say much of a band's aspirations. Just listen to some of the lyrical content:
”Sweet things come and go/ Give me shame I'll give you woe/ To live for love isn't easy” (“Words Unspoken”),
”Oh, a life alone without a home/ Makes a man ask why he travels on/ When hope is gone” (“It's a long road”),
”Many the empty hopes his lips caress/ Sorry to say his days are spent in vain/ Chasing a dream of doom of nights in pain” (“Nothing to show”)
”Only if I lied could I love you/ Nothing of our lives could we share” (“Surely”) But there's a certain indefinable magic here too, as if we're being invited into a secret world and allowed to see things through the eyes of Supertramp, the way only they can perceive things others would either miss or misinterpret.
A very celtic flute opens “Maybe I'm a beggar”, joined by a soft acoustic guitar, then it all stops and a barely audible vocal rises from the depths, this being one of the few songs on which Palmer adds his voice to Hodgson's. It is the latter we hear much more clearly though as he quite frankly takes over the song once he comes in. Some more lovely bass and ticking percussion, and it would seem that Palmer may be a great lyricist but he is no singer. Almost doing a Roger Waters on parts of “The Wall” here, he is barely heard, sort of screeching torturously in the background. Then for I think the first time a hard electric guitar punches in and the song takes on a whole new shape, sort of echoes of Carlos Santana here as Hodgson racks off quite a rocky solo, which comes almost as a shock, given the gentle, mostly acoustic nature of the album up to this point. Palmer screeches in the background I think but is largely unmarked, as Hodgson's guitar blows all before it away. I'm really not sure why they bothered asking Palmer to sing, as he adds nothing to at least this song, and almost in fact detracts from it.
The next shortest track after the opener is “Home again”, just over a minute, a soft electric guitar and a clear vocal from Hodgson with a certain air of Country to it before we move into “Nothing to show”, where the tempo ramps up almost startlingly, the electric guitar screeching out of the gate and the percussion sounding like Millar means business, as Davies's organ grinds away menacingly. This is the first song where Davies joins Hodgson, and the partnership is already looking better. Hodgson still holds court but his keyboard-playing bandmate is not just a passenger and you can really hear his contributions. There's also some fine work from him on the ivories, foreshadowing some of his work on “Fool's overture” seven years later. A jazzy kind of jam then ensues for the next two minutes, and we end as we began, with an abrupt piano chord ushering in superb flute and another standout on the album.
A breezy, gentle piano drives “Shadow song” with a soulful vocal from Hodgson, and you can hear here the beginnings of songs like “Lord is it mine” or “C'est le bon” in Davies's masterful piano work. The flute does its work too, again this is Hodgson playing the instrument, as he tells
” A story of a foolish man/ Who was playing with some twisted plans”, his voice rising like that of an angel in a manner for which he would become renowned in later years. The early Genesis comparisons are impossible to ignore here, but since, as I said, both bands were recording what would essentially be their debut albums (I always consider “Trespass” the first real Genesis album) I can only think it was coincidence, unless they happened to associate together, which I have not heard to be the case.
Although it's the penultimate track, for me this is where the album loses its way a little. A twelve-minute boogie/psychedelic-inspired track following all this pastoral, acoustic material is more than a little jarring, and I know it stretched my patience the first time I heard it. Which is not to say that “Try again” is not a good song, but it's way too long. Some lovely organ work from Davies again and a fine vocal from Hodgson, though here again Palmer decides to add his voice to proceedings, and while it's slightly better and more effective this time, I still don't see the need for it. There's a certain feel of The Alan Parsons Project in the tempo and rhythm here in places, and I think a balaika is utilised, which gives a very strange, eerie flavour to the song. An extended organ solo takes up over four minutes of the song and does seem to be that old bugbear of progressive rock, pointless noodling just to show off. There's no way this song needs to be this long.
About halfway through it kicks into a kind of boogie blues as Hodgson breaks out the electric guitar, and it does pump some life into the tune, but even this runs for another two minutes, whereupon the organ comes back in, which takes us to the eighth minute before Hodgson brings things back under control as he comes back in with the vocal. Even then, though, it literally stops for a second and then picks up again and this time we get frankly ridiculous messing about with experimental noises, a confused jam that goes nowhere and further extends a song that has no business being twelve minutes long. Thankfully, they did eventually learn their lesson, although you can hear a little of this farting around in the midsection of “Fool's overture”.
Happily the album ends very well, with the full version of “Surely”, which begins almost the same as it did in the opener, except for one extra verse. Then, when you think it's stopped, it fades back in on Davies's muscular organ before Hodgson adds the final flourish with an emotional guitar solo, joining with Davies's keys to bring the thing to a trumpeting and triumphant close.
TRACKLISTING
1. Surely
2. It's a long road
3. Aubade/And I am not like other birds of prey
4. Words unspoken
5. Maybe I'm a beggar
6. Home again
7. Nothing to show
8. Shadow song
9. Try again
10. Surely
On one hand, it's not hard to see why this didn't exactly set the charts alight or have radio DJs reaching for the turntable in ecstasy. It's a very restrained, almost muted album in many ways, and does pretty much everything it can to stay hidden and out of the way, almost as if it doesn't want to be noticed. And yet there are some truly magnificent moments of utter beauty on this neglected debut, moments when the true talent and almost magnetic personalities of Roger Hodgson and Rick Davies shine through, and though it would be a seer indeed who would have predicted these guys would go on to be so successful and conquer both sides of the Atlantic, when you listen to the first Supertramp album now you can hear flashes of brilliance, hints of the glory that was to come and you can begin to see images, snapshots of what they could be, what they could, and would, rise to.
Lyrically it's quite a compelling album, almost as I said earlier poetic in style, and that's surely a tribute to the man who did not want to write the lyrics, but yet did a great job on them, proving I guess that no matter what you do, you can't keep a good wordsmith down. But the undoubted stars are Hodgson and Davies, and soon they would take control of the band and shape it into the powerhouse that would go on to sell millions of albums and provide us with anthems and hit singles, and forever cement their place in music history. It's interesting to note that this is the first, and only, Supertramp album not to use what would become one of their trademark sounds, the saxophone, and you can see points in the album where the songs would definitely have benefitted from one.
Oddly enough, after the lukewarm reception their brand of “hippy blues” received --- let's be honest: it crashed and burned, didn't it? --- Supertramp, though minus Palmer and Millar, went on to record a second album that was, if anything , less attractive than their debut. It would be four more years before the dynamic duo would finally sort themselves out, get over their fear of writing lyrics (they would pen “Indelibly stamped” between them, but it was again a flop and suffered from some pretty pedestrian songs) hire musicians who would share their vision and create a record that would go gold for them and give them a hit single. After that, it would be pretty much plain sailing for the Supertramp ship.
But this tentative, quiet and almost apologetic whisper of an album, which would develop into an exuberant and confident and joyous shout over the next ten years or more, is where it all started, and though it was somewhat at odds with the kind of music they would eventually become famous for, it deserves recognition as the album that set that mighty vessel afloat and on course for a glittering career in music.