Breakfast In America - 2010 Remastered

Supertramp is a British band whose main songwriters were keyboard player Rick Davies and bass player Roger Hodgson. Although they shared songwriting credits, most of their songs were written separately. Hodgson wrote this one when he was in his late teens and still living in England. The song describes an English youth who dreams of going to America and becoming famous, which is exactly what Supertramp did. When we spoke with Hodgson in 2012, he told us that he put himself in character for the song, and was in a whimsical mood when he wrote it. Said Roger: "The line 'playing my jokes upon you,' I think that kind of sums up the song. It was just mind chatter. Just writing down ideas as they came - fun thoughts all strung together. And I do remember the Beatles had just gone to America, and I was pretty impressed with that. That definitely stimulated my dream of wanting to go to America. And obviously seeing all those gorgeous California girls on the TV and thinking, Wow. That's the place I want to go." Roger did go to California - he moved there in 1973 and has lived there ever since.

Roger Hodgson and Rick Davies were at odds over naming the album after the song. Says Hodgson, "He [Davies] didn't want the album title 'Breakfast In America' either. So I guess I won out on both counts."

The Breakfast In America album was very different from Supertramp's previous albums, which were more conceptual and elaborate. Breakfast was designed to have pop appeal, which is why they included this song that Hodgson had written eight years earlier. Hodgson and Davies had a specific disagreement over the first line in the song: "Take a look at my girlfriend, she's the only one I got." Hodgson explained to Melody Maker in 1979: "He never liked the lyric to 'Breakfast.' It's so trite: 'Take a look at my girlfriend.' He's much more into crafting a song. He would have been happier if I'd changed the lyric to either something funnier or more relevant. I tried, but it didn't work out, so I was stuck with the original." Hodgson added in his Songfacts interview, "I don't believe I had a girlfriend at that time, and if I did it wouldn't have lasted much longer after that."