doug kretchmer photo
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON APRIL 2, 1998
By Steve Newton
Life’s full of memorable little firsts, and sometimes they even come in pairs. I can still recall one such double-whammy from my mid-70s high school days.
A few pals had convened in a schoolmate’s basement one night, and before you could say “Let’s get small”, out came the hash pipe. Our host was showing off his new stereo at the time, and when he cranked Supertramp’s Crime of the Century through those Pioneer HPM-100 Speakers, I had my first ear-opening experience with hash and hi-fi.
It was wild, man!
I was so impressed I went and blew all my money on my own HPM-100s, and those big wood-grained babies are still my main house speakers today. They don’t vibrate to the exhilarating strains of “School” much anymore, though, because after my bratty little sister got hooked on Supertramp–and started playing Breakfast in America ad nauseam–I began to lose interest in the band. I ended up trading in my vinyl copies of Crime and Crisis? What Crisis? Heck, I don’t even smoke hash anymore.
Why, you got some?
Supertramp cofounder Roger Hodgson eventually lost interest in the band too, and left it in 1983. As the 48-year-old tunesmith explains from his home in Nevada City California, his disillusion with the group had been brewing for a while.
“Things were just not working,” he says, “and the communication had gotten really bad between all of us. The Famous Last Words album, which was the last album I was on, was kind of a last-ditch attempt to see if we could still pull something off, and it was a miserable project.”
Supertramp managed to pull off a successful “reunion” tour last year, but Hodgson wasn’t part of it–though you couldn’t tell from the promotional radio spots that prominently featured his voice. The band actually hired a Hodgson sound-alike specifically for the tour, to perform the hits he’d written and sung.
“They definitely did not make it clear what was meant by ‘reunion’,” notes Hodgson, “so they allowed a lot of misrepresentation to happen.”
Hodgson fans who may have felt burned by the current Supertramp’s underhanded approach to filling seats should know that the genuine article is playing a solo concert at Richard’s on Richards on Sunday (April 5). My little sister and her brat friends can even help choose the setlist over the Internet.
“On our Web site I have a vote for which songs you’d like me to play during my tour,” says Hodgson, “and it’s real interesting seeing what songs get voted for. It’s not always the big hits. For example, ‘Breakast in America’ isn’t up there; it’s way down on the list. Actually, ‘Fool’s Overture’ and ‘School’ are number one, and ‘Hide in Your Shell’ is up there too.”
Supertramp fanatics can also expect to hear such Hodgson-penned ditties as “The Logical Song”, “Give a Litte Bit”, and “Take the Long Way Home”, all of which are included on his current live CD, Rites of Passage. Vancouver is the kickoff of his 25-date national tour, his first in 15 years and his first solo tour ever.
“This is like a creative rebirth for me,” he explains. “About a year ago I did some shows in Europe just by myself, and I had so much fun that I realized there’s a kind of troubadour or minstrel in here that’s ready to come out. I just really wanna get out there in as basic a way as possible and connect with people.”
To hear the full audio of my 1998 interview with Roger Hodgson subscribe to my Patreon page, where you can eavesdrop on over 500 of my uncut, one-on-one conversations with musicians since 1982.