• Writer: Roger Hodgson
• Producers: Supertramp and Peter Henderson
• Recorded: 1978 at the Village Recorder in Los Angeles
• Released: Spring 1979
• Players:
  Roger Hodgson — vocals, keyboards
  Rick Davies — keyboards, vocals, harmonica
  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)
  Rites of Passage (Roger Hodgson solo) (Unichord, 1998)
• 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.
• Hodgson remembers writing “Take The Long Way Home” while living in California’s Topanga region, and that it took some time to finish it: “When I’m writing a song, it generally has a two- or three- or four-week birthing period, and bits and pieces come out every time I play it, and each time bits come out.”
• What’s the song about? According to Hodgson, “I’m not totally sure exactly what it’s about. There’s a lot of different analogies or metaphors. I think ‘Take the Long Way Home’ to me means take the long way home to yourself. I really see life as a journey of discovery to who we are in ourselves. that’s changing the whole time.”
• Hodgson says the song’s striking arrangement — particularly Rick Davies’ harmonica hook — was agreed upon by trial and error: “He’s a great harmonica player. We probably thought ‘What would be a great instrument to introduce it? Should it be saxophone? No; that’s too ordinary. Let’s try a harmonica kind of thing.’”
• The last single released from the Breakfast In America album, “Take the Long Way Home” peaked at Number 10 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.