Rick Davis, co-founder, co-vocalist, co-songwriter and keyboard player in prog giants Supertramp, died in September 2025.

I’ve always considered 1979 to be the year many of the best albums ever made were released; and certainly the best albums by some of my favourite artists.

They include debut albums by Joy Division, The Cure, Gang Of Four, Au Pairs, Slits, B-52’s and The Specials, PiL’s Metal Box, Fear Of Music by Talking Heads and Elvis Costello’s Armed Forces.

So it’s a surprise to learn that the year’s biggest-selling album was Breakfast In America by Supertramp. It’s fair to say that I never liked them and by 1979 they represented everything I despised most in music, along with the satanic trilogy of prog: Yes, Genesis and ELP.

Yet, as with almost every artist, there was one song I liked – well, quite liked – in The Logical Song, perhaps because it’s a searing critique of being sent away to boarding school for ten years of misery.

That one was by Roger Hodgson, one half of Supertramp’s songwriting partnership; he was also responsible for the one I like least, Dreamer, the opening bars of which still give me the shivers a lifetime later.

The other half was Rick Davies, who has just died. He’s the one with the terrible hair who plays simple chords and melodies on his Wurlitzer electric piano with the intense concentration and facial contortions of a man tackling Rachmaninov’s 2nd piano concerto.

He also sings half the Supertramp songs – including the hugely annoying hit Bloody Well Right, which came earlier in their career, on the 1974 album Crime Of The Century, that was popular in the school common room when I was doing my O-levels.

Strangely, that song began life as the B-side of the aforementioned Dreamer, but American audiences preferred it to the A-side (understandably, to my mind) and it became their breakthrough hit there.

I can’t say it massively appeals to me half a century later, but you’ve got to admire and respect Supertramp for their achievements, and that obviously extends to the dearly departed Davies (despite his terrible hair).

As ever, I have discovered a trivia fact: Gilbert O’Sullivan was the drummer in his first band, Rick’s Blues, having been taught drums and piano by Davies – and was best man at Davies’ wedding. And another one… Supertramp were originally called Daddy.