Rick Davies, the lead singer and co-founder of the massively successful British progressive rock group Supertramp, has passed away after a decade-long battle with multiple myeloma, a bone marrow cancer that forced Supertramp to cancel a European tour. He was 81.
As a co-writer with partner Roger Hodgson, Davies was the voice and the pianist of Supertramp’s most iconic songs. The classic lineup, which lasted from 1973 to 1983, underwent numerous personnel changes, with Davies being the only consistent member.
The band won worldwide fame for their smart and cynical songs that included ‘Bloody Well Right’, ‘Goodbye Stranger’, ‘My Kind of Lady’, ‘Cannonball’ and ‘I’m Beggin’ You’.
Davies was born in Swindon, England, on 22 July 1944 to a mother who was a hairdresser and a father who was a merchant seaman.
According to his Mum: “Music was the only thing he was ever good at in school.”
When he was eight, Davies’ parents gave him a second-hand radiogram which included some albums from a previous owner. Davies heard and fell in love with Gene Krupa’s ‘Drummin’ Man’.
Davies said the song “hit like a thunderbolt”.
“I must have played it 2,000 times,” he added. “That was it.”
This sparked a lifelong love of rock ‘n roll, and rhythm and blues.
A family friend made Davies a makeshift drum kit out of a biscuit tin, and it wasn’t long before he joined the British Railways Staff Association and Jubilee Band as a snare drummer.
In an interview in 2022, Davies said:
“As a kid, I used to hear the drums marching along the street in England, my hometown, when there was some kind of parade and it was the most fantastic sound to me.”
He went on to embrace the keyboards and turned out to be a prodigy, teaching himself to play all manner of complicated melodies.
Wanting to build an exciting and progressive band, Davies placed an ad in Melody Maker magazine in August 1969 and met Roger Hodgson, his partner in crime.
Initially, it didn’t look very promising. The two men had very little in common. Davies was from a working-class background, while Hodgson was brought up in posh English public schools. That said, the two were kindred spirits. After a few fruitless months as the unfortunately named Daddy, they became Supertramp at the start of the new decade.
The name of the band came from a 1908 book called The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp by Welsh author William Henry Davies.
Supertramp was massively successful on the adult-oriented rock/album-oriented rock circuit of the mid to late 1970s, reaching their commercial peak in 1979 with their Breakfast In America album, which yielded international top ten hits such as ‘Take The Long Way Home’, ‘Dreamer’ and ‘Logical Song’.
As of 2007, Supertramp’s album sales exceeded 60 million.
They didn’t produce the kind of music that incited riots or got stadiums ripped apart, but in their quiet way, Supertramp made their mark.
Michael Hann, music writer for The Guardian, said:
Supertramp were one of a number of British groups of the '70s who seemed to exist entirely on their own terms, never quite one thing or another, a little like 10cc: were they an arty pop band or a poppy art band? And like 10cc, whose roots were in the 60s beat boom, they had to find their way to this sound. Their first two albums were underformed and underwhelming prog; they only found their way in 1974’s Crime of the Century.
Supertramp didn’t seem remotely like a rock band. They weren’t pictured on their album covers. Their TV appearances were undramatic and interviews unremarkable: “Since their first success, this group have rarely presented a strikingly interesting public image,” wrote NME’s Tony Stewart in 1977. That kind of unremarkable grown-upness became very unfashionable in the peacocking 80s.
Davies’ passing prompted a flood of tributes.
A statement from the band said:
His soulful vocals and unmistakable touch on the Wurlitzer became the heartbeat of the band's sound. Beyond the stage, Rick was known for his warmth, resilience, and devotion to his wife Sue, with whom he shared over five decades. After facing serious health challenges, which kept him unable to continue touring as Supertramp, he enjoyed performing with his hometown buds as Ricky and the Rockets. Rick's music and legacy continue to inspire many and bears testament to the fact that great songs never die, they live on.
Jenny LeComte is a freelance journalist currently based in Port Lincoln, South Australia.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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