Rick Davies, who together with his associate Roger Hodgson co-founded the British rock group Supertramp and served as one in every of its two lead singers, died Saturday in East Hampton, N.Y. He was 81.
His demise was introduced in an announcement on Supertramp’s web site, which stated Davies battled a number of myeloma for greater than a decade. The assertion described Davies as “the voice and pianist behind Supertramp’s most iconic songs” and stated his “soulful vocals and unmistakable touch on the Wurlitzer” shaped the “heartbeat” of the band’s sound.
Davies’ keyboard taking part in was maybe finest showcased in Supertramp’s “Goodbye Stranger,” a High 20 pop hit about an unrepentant drifter that helped drive the band’s 1979 album “Breakfast in America” to quadruple-platinum gross sales in the US and a Grammy nomination for album of the yr. In 1999, the director Paul Thomas Anderson memorably used “Goodbye Stranger” to soundtrack a dramatic scene starring William H. Macy within the film “Magnolia.”
Davies was born in 1944 in Swindon, England, and fell in love with music after listening to Gene Krupa’s “Drummin’ Man,” based on Supertramp’s assertion. In school he performed in a short-lived band with Gilbert O’Sullivan; he shaped Supertramp (which was first known as Daddy) after Hodgson responded to an advert he’d positioned in England’s Melody Maker in 1969.
Supertramp launched its self-titled debut in 1970 and launched a follow-up the subsequent yr; neither garnered a lot curiosity. (Rolling Stone known as the band’s early prog-rock work “rhythmically underfed” and “lyrically facile.”) But Supertramp scored a success with the funky “Bloody Well Right,” which Davies wrote for 1974’s “Crime of the Century” LP and which prominently featured his electrical piano.
Among the many different hits that adopted had been “Give a Little Bit” and “The Logical Song” — each of which have greater than 500 million streams on Spotify — in addition to “Breakfast in America,” “Take the Long Way Home” and “It’s Raining Again.” Regardless of the band’s success, Hodgson give up Supertramp after 1982’s “Famous Last Words” album. He later instructed The Instances that the group “became stagnant, and I personally just couldn’t grow anymore.”
Davies carried on with out Hodgson, recording and touring intermittently below the Supertramp identify till the early 2010s. When his well being prevented him from happening the highway, he performed near dwelling on Lengthy Island with a gaggle known as Ricky and the Rockets. Davies’ survivors embrace his spouse, Sue Davies, who additionally managed his profession.
