In July 1979, in an interview with Rolling Stone journal, Paul McCartney was requested about what music he was listening to that yr. He preferred Squeeze, The Jam and Elvis Costello, he mentioned, however he singled out two songs particularly.
One was Lord Lucan Is Lacking by Brighton punk band The Dodgems. The opposite, barely extra critical selection, was a Grammy and Ivor Novello Award-winning observe that went prime 10 either side of the Atlantic, was no.1 for 2 weeks in Canada, and have become Supertramp‘s greatest hit: The Logical Track.
For Roger Hodgson, Supertramp’s co-leader, it was the best of compliments. “Having been introduced up on The Beatles,” he says, “it was fantastic to listen to Paul McCartney liked my track.”
Hodgson all the time knew The Logical Track was one thing particular. “While you’re writing a track,” he says, “generally you are feeling such as you’re eighty per cent profitable, however with The Logical Track I felt like I’d nailed it 100 per cent. As a melody, a lyric, an association and a recording, it actually is ideal in its completeness.”
The Logical Track was the largest hit of Supertramp’s profession, reaching the Prime Ten within the US and UK, and reworking dad or mum album Breakfast In America right into a chart-topping, multimillion-selling phenomenon.
It additionally received a prestigious Ivor Novello award for Greatest Track Musically And Lyrically. And as Hodgson acknowledges, it was the lyrical content material, as a lot because the expertly crafted music, that made The Logical Track join with such an enormous viewers. “An ideal track,” he says, “is one that individuals can relate to, that touches them, makes them really feel one thing.”
And in The Logical Track, Hodgson drew on the experiences of his personal troubled childhood to create an existentialist pop-rock basic during which he addressed the largest query of all: the which means of life.
Ever since Supertramp shaped in 1969, it was Hodgson and Rick Davies who shaped the band’s artistic nucleus. Each sang lead vocals and performed keyboards, and between them they wrote the entire songs. Hodgson and Davies had the same association to Lennon and McCartney in The Beatles: they wrote individually, however all the time shared the writing credit. Nonetheless, as Hodgson says now: “The Logical Track wasn’t co-written in any means. It was very a lot my track.”
It was in early 1978 that The Logical Track began coming collectively. The band have been in Los Angeles, about to start recording the Breakfast In America album, when Hodgson sat alone at a Wurlitzer electrical piano and started taking part in round with a chord development he’d toyed with, on and off, for a few months.
“I had these chords written,” he says, “and I hadn’t thought a lot of them, to inform the reality. However then at some point after I was taking part in the chords, I heard the melody. And as I began singing the melody, the primary phrase that got here to me was ‘liberal’…”
Instantly, Hodgson reeled off phrases that rhymed: mental, radical… logical. And in that second, the entire idea for the track got here into focus. “Immediately, I knew what I wished to say. The track was born out of my questions on what actually mattered in life.
“All through childhood we’re taught the best way to behave, but we’re very not often advised something in regards to the deeper objective of life. We go from the innocence and surprise of childhood to the confusion of adolescence, and that usually leads to disillusionment in maturity. And many people spend our lives attempting to get again to that innocence.”
In The Logical Track, Hodgson delivered a damning critique of the training system. It was a topic he had tackled earlier than in College, a track from Supertramp’s 1974 breakthrough Crime Of The Century, a landmark progressive rock album. However as Hodgson says, The Logical Track was “very autobiographical”. Its first-person narrative made particular reference to his years at boarding faculty as a ‘shy and delicate’ boy, deeply affected by his mother and father’ divorce when he was 12: ‘They despatched me away to show me the best way to be smart, logical, accountable, sensible/They usually confirmed me a world the place I might be so reliable, medical, mental, cynical…’
Hodgson invested “quite a lot of work” within the lyrics. “I needed to provide you with all of the phrases ending in ‘al’,” he says. “So it was the one and solely time I consulted a dictionary when writing a lyric.” And for the music, his consideration to element bordered on the obsessive. The electrical piano riff was the inspiration. “It had a really percussive, rhythmical really feel I actually preferred.”
However when work started at LA’s Village Recorder studios, Hodgson dictated what every member of the band would play. “I used to be the principle arranger within the band,” he says. “I used to undergo all of the components, even right down to drum fills. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle. Something extraneous shouldn’t be there. Every little thing was orchestrated and that’s why it really works so effectively.”
Integrated into the completed observe have been varied sound results. John Helliwell, having contributed a rasping saxophone solo, supplied the heavy sigh within the intro and blew a whistle to sign the outro. And a shock comedian twist was added by the bleeping ‘purpose’ sound from a Mattel soccer sport that Rick Davies liked to play between takes. “We’d hear that sound echoing across the studio all day,” Hodgson says. “So we put it within the run-out after I sang the phrase ‘digital’.”
As a result of Hodgson’s perfectionism, it took two weeks for the ultimate mixture of the track to be accomplished. “I wouldn’t relaxation till it was completely proper,” he says.
Engineer Peter Henderson remembers delivering the album to the massive wigs at A&M. “I keep in mind we did a take a look at urgent and it was taken as much as a man known as Marv Bornstein who was accountable for high quality management on the time,” he advised Sound On Sound. “There was all this shaking of heads and discussions between him and [mastering engineer] Bernie Grundman. Bernie was saying ‘You’ve got put quite a lot of bass on right here,’ and I mentioned ‘Properly, that is the way in which we do it in England. We like quite a lot of bass…'”
The top-shaking continued “together with the fearful appears to be like and damaging feedback,” remembered Henderson. “I used to be satisfied that the entire thing had been completely fucked up,” he mentioned, “and it was actually a ‘That is the tip of my profession’ scenario.”
Henderson later received the Grammy for Greatest Engineered Album of 1979 for Breakfast In America. After the ceremony, Bernie Grundman got here up and congratulated him. “I all the time knew, from the primary time I heard that album, that it was going to win a Grammy,” he mentioned.
Nonetheless, the tip justified the means. Launched in the summertime of 1979, The Logical Track was acclaimed by Rolling Stone as “a small masterpiece”, and its success turned Supertramp into superstars. It was a success once more in 2001 when it was closely sampled by German techno act, Scooter.
Most significantly of all for Hodgson, it’s a track that has misplaced none of its which means.
“I used to be 29 after I wrote The Logical Track,” he says. “I used to be looking for solutions. The burning query in that track was: ‘Please inform me who I’m.’ I nonetheless don’t have all of the solutions. However I knew there was one thing deeper on the market – a spot of peace. And ultimately, I discovered it.”