‘Even In The Quietest Moments…’: Revisiting Supertramp’s Affecting Fifth Album
A transatlantic Top 20 hit, it included a clutch of the band’s most timeless songs.
A Top 20 hit in numerous territories, Supertramp’s fourth album Crisis? What Crisis? succeeded in building upon the gains made by 1974’s lauded Crime Of The Century. However, the chaotic nature of the L.A.-based studio sessions still rankled with the English quintet who returned to the U.S. to record the follow-up Even In The Quietest Moments… in less stressful circumstances.
“I think it was Roger [Hodgson] who wanted to get out of Los Angeles to do a record,” co-frontman Rick Davies wrote in the sleeve notes for 2005’s Retrospectacle – The Supertramp Anthology. “At the time, the sky was the limit, so we decided to record at the Caribou Ranch, on a mountaintop outside of Denver. What we didn’t realize was that the thin air in the mountains makes your voice go weird. It also made it hard for John [Helliwell] to play the sax. So we ended up finishing it back in L.A. at the Record Plant.”
All concerned were right to persevere, for Even In The Quietest Moments… remains one of Supertramp’s most satisfying artistic statements. First released in April 1977, it went Top 20 on both sides of the Atlantic and rewarded the band with its first gold-selling U.S. album. Its chart stats were impressive considering it came out when both punk and disco were in vogue, but then fads and fashions largely passed Supertramp by. Instead, Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson just carried on doing what they did best – writing songs stamped with the hallmark of timelessness.
Accordingly, Even In The Quietest Moments… contained a clutch of Supertramp’s most affecting moments. Davies, to begin with, weighed in with two excellent tunes in “Downstream” and “Lover Boy.” The first, a sparse and tender piano ballad, was effectively a solo performance, though the whole band excelled on “Lover Boy”: a deceptively jaunty ode to would-be Casanovas everywhere (“He’s gonna love ‘em and leave ‘em/Cheat ‘em and deceive ‘em”) concluding with an extended “Hey Jude”-style coda.
Not to be outdone, Roger Hodgson responded with three of his finest. Initially written during the soundtrack for a show at Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens, the album’s haunting titular song played out over a mood-shifting six minutes, with its yearning lyric (“Don’t you let the sun disappear”) reflecting the transience of human life. A classic tear-jerker, it still ranks among Supertramp’s best, as does the closing “Fool’s Overture.” Hodgson later told Classic Rock that it was “one of my favorite pieces” and this ambitious, suite-like track, which included excerpts from one of Winston Churchill’s speeches, is now rightly regarded as one of Hodgson’s most epic compositions.
By contrast, though, Hodgson’s innate versatility also enabled him to write “Give A Little Bit.” Driven by strident 12-string guitar, this uplifting, Beatles-esque pop song was a study in economy and it soon became Even In The Quietest Moments…’ signature hit, reaching the U.S. Top 20 on the way to becoming one of Supertramp’s most recognizable songs. Then again, its positive, pro-love and unity message has never really gone out of style.
“[Give A Little Bit] really has taken on a life of its own and I think it’s even more relevant than when I wrote it,” Hodgson told Classic Rock in 2023. “Because we really are needing to value love in a much deeper way, and also we’re needing to care. There’s a spirit in the song that touches people and a magic that comes out in myself and in people around the world when I sing it.”
