Supertramp were born in 1969 out of the ambitions of Rick Davies, singer and pianist. After two albums that went unnoticed, Supertramp (A&M, 1970) and Indelibly Stamped (A&M, 1971), the group reinvented its character and career with Crime of The Century (A&M, 1974), on which the pop refrains of Bloody Well Right and Dreamer were dominating but were still painted with the harmonic complexity and the jubilation of sounds of contemporary progressive-rock (the jazzy piano solo and the fanfare of winds that open the first, followed by a hard rock riff and Queen-like "operatic" piano; the Yes-like harmonies of the second). The arrangements' lynchpins were the double keyboards of Davies and Roger Hodgson and John Helliwell's winds. The pompous Crime of The Century and the ornate Hide In Your Shell showed some residual progressive-rock ambition.

All vain progressive ambitions definitively abandoned, the group arrived at Crisis? What Crisis? (A&M, 1975), which really rather was that which the title denied, caught between their intellectual past and their present as a sales category star. Davies was venting his passion for Black music (in particular in the rhythm and blues of Ain't Nobody But Me).

Even In The Quietest Moments (A&M, 1977), released after the group had moved to California, was another transitional album, which even so counts as one of their masterpieces, Give A Little Bit, a simple measured ballad on guitar strings.

Breakfast In America (A&M, 1979) instead represents the landing of the progression that took off in 1974, thanks to listenable refrains and tightly crafted arrangements well treated with minimal detail. Logical Song, one of their melodic masterpieces, is propelled by a simple piano figure, elevated by vocal harmonies worthy of the Beach Boys and ennobled by a jazz saxophone solo. Breakfast In America mixes a little vaudeville march, a Yes-style melody and an equestrian circus clarinet solo. Take The Long Way Home glides simply and elegantly, alternating a blues harmonica, a gospel organ, a string section, but always accompanied by a stentorian cadence, beaten by the organ and guitar. Goodbye Stranger entrusts itself to a Bee Gees falsetto and disco beat. They were all elementary refrains, but transformed into sumptuous exercises in sound layering. It's the ideology of George Martin (the Beatles' producer), applied to the era of techno-rock, of electronic keyboards, of the rhythms of the discoteque. In the course of twenty years it would sell 18 million copies.

After Famous Last Words (A&M, 1982), which contains yet another kidney-punch, the glittering chorus of It's Raining Again, rhythmically measured in their own manner by the piano, Roger Hodgson left the group and embarked on a solo career. Davies would never get over his departure.

Brother Where You Bound (A&M, 1985), featuring Cannonball, and Free As A Bird (A&M, 1987) pulled them back down into the anonymity from which they had sprung.

Supertramp returned with Some Things Never Change (Oxygen/SilverCab, 1997) still fronted by Rick Davies but now also by Mark Hart (formerly of Crowded House).

Few groups of the '70s had left a legacy of so many and so memorable melodies. They invented nothing transcendental, but they were a bit like the Creedence Clearwater Revival of techno-rock.

Rick Davies died in 2025.