Album title: Crime of the Century
Artiste: Supertramp
Genre: Progressive Rock
Year: 1974
Label: A&M
Producer: Ken Scott, Supertramp
Chronological position: Third album
Notes: Although credited as "Bob C. Benberg" here, the drummer's actual name is Bob Siebenberg, and he would use this spelling on future albums.
Album chart position: 4 (UK) 38 (US)
Singles: “Dreamer”, “Bloody well right”
Lineup: Rick Davies: Vocals, piano, Wurlitzer, Hammond, harmonica, synth
Roger Hodgson: Vocals, guitars, piano, synth, Fender Rhodes
John Anthony Helliwell: Saxophone, clarinet, glass harp, celesta
Dougie Thompson: Bass
Bob C. Benberg (Bob Siebenberg): Drums
Supertramp get dismissed by a lot of people with pithy off-hand comments like “Oh yeah: they're the ones who did “The logical song” or “Breakfast in America”, but while it's certainly true that the album
Breakfast in America has been their biggest selling and that if you're not a Supertramp album but have one of their records in your collection it's likely to be this, they had had their commercial breakthrough several years before, with this album which yielded them two hits singles, one cracking the difficult American market. While their first album was more folk than prog and their second a bluesy affair, this album began a spate of progressive rock albums that would take them through the seventies and into the world of mainstream music. In ways, 1974 to 1979 can be seen as their golden period, with four very successful albums to their tally. And it all started here.
Review begins
The first thing we hear as the album opens is a lonely harmonica, an instrument which would soon be identified with this band and become part of their signature sound. A long drawn out note, played three times, fades into rising muted synth and guitar as Roger Hodgson's voice comes through against a background of children playing. As the music swells so does the sound of the kids playing, until in a pretty neat piece of production one girl's high-pitched shriek of joy blends with the punch of the percussion as the song gets going properly. A song of basically growing up, “School” is the perfect opener for the album, and features what would have to be called somewhat bitter lyrical material played against a pretty funky guitar from Hodgson, with a powerful piano solo from Davies as the child in the song, now grown to an adult, counsels his own child that he must find his own way in the world, accepting that perhaps after all adults don't know everything. The track is followed by what (I believe weirdly, though I am obviously wrong as it was a hit) was chosen as the single to attack the US market with, the sarcastic “Bloody well right”, which is very much a vehicle both for Davies's honky-tonk piano and laconic vocal.Although I love every song here, this has never been one of my favourites on the album, always came across as somewhat whiny to me. Nevertheless, it gives us a chance to hear Davies take the vocals on his own, and he does a good job with them. Also, you can't fault the piano solo that opens the song, running for almost a quarter of the four and a half minutes the song takes, nor John Helliwell's growling horns which add more bite to the song. Hodgson's guitar, relatively gentle for the most part on the opener, is here snarling and punching, much angrier, as suits the lyrical theme of the song.
Soft and gentle then is the order of the day for “Hide in your shell”, and as will become the pattern over the next eight years, it's Hodgson that takes the vocal here where the song is more cheerful and radio-friendly, with Davies concentrating more on the “album tracks” as opposed to the “singles”, though this does not always follow. Basically though, if you heard a Supertramp song on the radio (with the obvious exception of “Bloody well right”, which I never heard on any radio I owned) it was likely that you were listening to Roger Hodgson. Fender Rhodes and soft synth take the main melody, with Hodgson's vocal soft and relaxed, until the chorus, when percussion booms in and the backing vocals kick the intensity up a little. Overall though it's a lovely little song with a message that life is out there and you need to go look for it, not wait for it to come to you. This is probably the first time you hear what would become the unmistakable sound of this band, where sax, piano and Hodgson's mellifluous vocals blend to create almost a brand right there.
Davies is back for “Asylum”, a much harsher, more bitter track, which begins deceptively quietly, a simple piano line accompanying the low-key vocal, but quickly it picks up and as it goes on the tone gets a little more unhinged and unsteady, the chorus again punching a hole through the reflective mood of the verses and bringing the looming spectre of insanity bearing down on the song. It breaks up into screams and giggles near the end, and if you listen closely, as the piano melody that began the track fades it back out, you can hear the sound of a cuckoo clock. Geddit? Their big hit on this side of the water is up next, and even if you hate Supertramp you've probably heard “Dreamer”. It's really their first foray into what I'd call pure pop music, a definite chart hit even before it was released, with a boppy, devil-may-care melody and a hooky chorus, simplicity itself, as many great pop songs are. Again it's not one of my favourite tracks – I feel it's too throwaway and simple – but it can't be denied that it got them on the music map as it were. That instantly identifiable piano is there, and there's a great buildup halfway through that takes something of the sting of the “poppiness”, if you will, out of the song, but I'm still not too enamoured of it.
I'm also not crazy about “Rudy”, which sees Davies back at the mike, and is a dour, downbeat song about a guy (possibly homeless) riding the subway. Again it features a fine buildup in the middle which has a whole lot of passion in it and just about climaxes (shut it Batty!) as all the instruments pile up almost like a train hurtling out of a station. It's one of only three of the songs on the album in which Hodgson joins Davies on vocals, as he did on the opener and also on “Asylum”, though the main vocal is his and so the song is more identified with Davies than Hodgson among fans. Some fine work from Halliwell on the horns too, and in ways this song is the closest they come to the style demonstrated on
Indelibly Stamped, perhaps a carryover from that album. Good use of effects too – the sound of trains, a station announcer, traffic – all help to build up and create the requisite atmosphere. I also hear echoes of ELO in the use of orchestral synth.
A short ballad then in “If everyone was listening”, which returns Hodgson to solo singing duties, and it's a lovely little song with a passionate chorus, a bouncy, cheerful tune which belies the sad lyric of loss that runs through it. The shortest song on the album, it's almost the perfect intro to the title track which comes in again on single piano notes, then Davies's vocal before the track gets going. For a relatively long song (five and a half minutes) it's got remarkably few lyrics, just the two short verses as Davies demands
”Who are these men of lust greed and glory?/ Rip off the mask and let's see!” only to recoil in horror, crying
”But that's not right!/ Oh no! What's the story?/ Look! There's you and there's me!”
The rest of the song is a powerful instrumental, allowing both Davies and Hodgson their heads, as the latter rips off a fine guitar solo which then fades out to allow Davies to thread a simple two-phrase piano riff alongside dark, rumbling synth, booming percussion from Sieberg and wailing sax from Helliwell to take the track, and the album, out to fade.
Track listing and ratings
School
Bloody well right
Hide in your shell
Asylum
Dreamer
Rudy
If everyone was listening
Crime of the century
Afterword: After the gentle folk sensibilities of the debut and the rather raucous rock of the follow-up album, Supertramp appear to be settling here into something of a groove between progressive rock and a sort of soft pop/rock sound, something that would serve them well down the years. A word on the album sleeve: it's got a lot of stick in some quarters, and initially yes it does look like a literal representation of the album – someone locked away in space for the crime of the century, whatever that crime may be – but I prefer to look at it a different way. To me, this is the human spirit, struggling to be free, trying to break the bonds of responsibilities and duties, trying to find its way in the world, pushing against convention and what's expected of it, yet unable to break out of the cell because, in the end, we are all responsible for our own actions, as Supertramp remind us in the title track: no point blaming others – we're all to blame for the evils of the world, and we all must shoulder at least part of the responsibility.
This was my first Supertramp album, though I had of course heard “The logical song” and “Breakfast in America” prior, having bought this album around the 1980 mark, and it made me instantly a fan and hungry for more. That's not a pun on
Breakfast in America by the way. Oh, you never thought it was, did you? Fu
ck you then.
Rating:
