The Logical Book: A Supertramp Compendium

Laura Shenton WYMER PUBLISHING

Ramshackle cuttings collage fails to do British soft-rock legends justice.

Perhaps it’s a shortage of finer behindthe-scenes detail, or perhaps the band’s uncertain standing in the classic rock field, but there’s long been a gaping hole where a weighty, definitive Supertramp biography should sit. Unfortunately, Laura Shelton’s lightweight The Logical Book only makes it seem wider.

Delivered with the tone of an enthusiastic fan scrapbook, and openly admitting to a lack of additional insight or analysis, essentially it slots together press cuttings from throughout the band’s career in seemingly random order, like 176 pages of Supertramp-article Tetris.

Album releases and tour reviews might precede sections on the writing or recording; the chapter on 1979’s 20-millionselling soft-rock behemoth Breakfast In America seems to run backwards, and ends with an entire on-the-road Billboard article that’s both fascinating in its rare access and worrying in its lack of copyright credit.

Far into the story, Shelton is quoting lengthy bad reviews that still list band members (and then reviewing the reviews), and, bafflingly, her epilogue concerns their formative influences and 1977 move to LA.

Relying so heavily on cuttings also unbalances the narrative (later Supertramp albums and Roger Hodgson’s solo releases get short shrift) and restricts depth and perspective. Since Hodgson did most of the talking, founder Davies seems a satellite presence post-Crime Of The Century, and any talk of the pair’s notoriously ill-fitting partnership – let alone anything as salacious as early drummer breakdowns – is brushed respectfully under the carpet.

Such an underrated act demands a more meaty and authoritative reappraisal. ■■■■■■■■■■