Oldish Psych and Prog

Back in 1969 Richard Davies met Dutch millionaire Stanley August Miesegaes (commonly known as Sam) in Munich whilst playing in a band called The Joint. He offered to sponsor Davies if he formed a new group and Davies duly put together line-up after advertising for players in a rock music paper. The new group was originally going to be named Daddy but after much correspondence between roadie Peter Viney and Richard Palmer, the band took its name from W.H. Davies' book, 'The Autobiography Of A Supertramp', published in 1910. Their first album, Supertramp, made little impact when released in 1970. It was full of lengthy and uninteresting solos and Bob Miller suffered a nervous breakdown soon afterwards.

The band regrouped in 1971 with new members Currie and Farrell and original bassist Hodgson switched to lead guitar. Their second album Indelibly Stamped fared no better than the first and after their sponsor Sam paid off £60,000 worth of debts, all the band members quit except for Davies and Hodgson.

A new line-up was put together. Helliweg and Thompson had both played with The Alan Bown Set previously. Bob Siebenberg (also known as C. Benberg) had been with Bees Make Honey. In a make or break gambit A installed the group in Southcombe (a farmhouse in Somerset) and assigned first rate producer Ken Scott to work with them. The resulting album, Crime Of The Century, a semi-concept affair, excellently produced, brought them into the big time. It developed what became a distinctive electric piano rhythm-based sound epitomised by Dreamer, which was taken from the album, put out on 45 and peaked at No 13 in the UK. In the US(Bloody Well Right) the flip side to Dreamer in the UK made it to No 35. The follow-up Crisis? What Crisis was very similar in style and achieved a comparable level of success. It also climbed to No 44 in the US. Indeed as we reach the end of 1976 the band's best days were still to come. Breakfast In America was their magnum opus spawning no less than four hit singles, but it was all down hill after that although they stumbled along into the nineties