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I don't know if Roger Hodgson is still touring - he is now 75 - but I saw him perform live in Madeira, probably 5-8 years ago and he was excellent. Still had a decent falsetto voice & a great multi-instrumentalist. Rick's death is another reminder that many of us are getting quite old.
'A friend of the family made Rick a makeshift drum kit out of a biscuit tin, and at the age of 12 he joined the British Railways Staff Association Brass and Silver Jubilee Band as a snare drummer..."in my home town[Swindon] when there was some kind of parade..it was the most fantastic sound to me...I got some drums and I took lessons. I was serious about it...Eventually I started fiddling with the keyboards, and that seemed to go over better than my drumming, for some reason. So you've gotta go with what people react to."
By 1959, his attention had been captured by rock 'n' roll, and he joined a band called Vince and the Vigilantes. In 1962, while studying in the art department at Swindon College, he formed his own band, called Rick's Blues, and was now playing a Hohner electric piano instead of drums. The band included Gilbert O'Sullivan on drums for a time; he later was the best man at Davies's wedding. In a March 1972 interview, O'Sullivan said "Rick had originally taught me how to play the drums and piano – in fact, he taught me everything about music." When his father became ill, Davies disbanded Rick's Blues, left college, and took a job as a welder at a firm making industrial control products and systems, which had a factory on the Cheney Manor Trading Estate in Swindon. Any hopes of an artistic career were temporarily put on ice.
In 1966 he became the organist for The Lonely Ones (best known for being one of Noel Redding's first bands, though Redding had left by the time Davies joined), who later changed their name to The Joint and recorded the soundtracks for a number of German films. He later confessed that he lied about his abilities to get into the group, admitting he could not actually play the organ at the time. While the band was in Munich, Davies met Dutch millionaire Stanley August Miesegaes, who offered to fund him if he started a new group...Davies decided to form a new band, and returned home from Switzerland to place an ad in the music magazine Melody Maker in August 1969. Roger Hodgson was auditioned and, despite their contrasting backgrounds – Davies's working class upbringing and Hodgson's private school education – they struck up an instant rapport and began writing virtually all of their songs together. The band was initially called Daddy, but renamed Supertramp in January 1970.'
I wasn't a great fan but I did buy Crime of the Century when it came out. And the Logical Song was one of the few decent songs I heard on US radio during a three-week car trip there in 1979.
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R.I.P., Rick Davies on 13:55 - Sep 8 with 113 views
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