Supertramp – ‘Breakfast In America’

Writer: Roger Hodsgon
Producers: Supertramp and Peter Henderson
Recorded: 1978 at the Village Recorder in Los Angeles, California
Released: Spring 1979
Players:
Roger Hodgson — vocals, keyboards
Rick Davies — keyboards, vocals
John Helliwell — saxophone, vocals
Dougie Thomson — bass
Bob C. Benberg (aka Siebenberg) — drums
Album: Breakfast in America (A&M, 1979)
Also on:
Paris (A&M, 1980)
The Very Best of Supertramp (A&M, 1993)
and other compilations
Roger Hodgson and Rick Davies formed Supertramp in 1969, with sponsorship from a Dutch millionaire named Stanley August Miesegaes.
In 1971, Hodgson and Davies fired their bandmates and replaced them with John Helliwell, Dougie Thomson, and Bob Siebenberg.
According to Hodgson, he wrote “Breakfast in America” when he was 17, about 13 years before Supertramp recorded it: “That’s why the lyrics sound like a 17-year-old’s lyric. We just left it the way it was. I have a lot of songs from that period in my life, when I was 17, 18. It was a very prolific time period.”
Hodgson says Supertramp didn’t record “Breakfast in America” before 1978 simply because it didn’t fit in with the other albums: “We all knew it was around. I knew it was around. But it just didn’t feel like time for it. It’s just a sixth sense I have when it feels like, ‘O.K., it’s time for this one to come out.’ Every album I feel that. This album has this kind of flavor or that kind of flavor. With ‘Breakfast’ it felt more like ‘Let’s have a more fun, upbeat feeling album.’”
The third single from the Breakfast In America album, the title track hit Number 62 on the Billboard Hot 100.
After garnering a cult-sized following with its previous albums, Breakfast In America broke big for Supertramp, hitting Number One on the Billboard charts in May 1979 and staying there for six weeks.
The album sold more than four million copies.

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Hodgson left Supertramp in 1983. He currently records and tours as a solo act.
Davies continued to lead Supertramp for a number of years, but the group is currently inactive.
In 2006 “Breakfast In America” was sampled by the group Gym Class Heroes for their hit “Cupid’s Chokehold.” The Supertramp lyric was sung by Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy, who produced the track.