The story behind Supertramp’s “Dreamer” told by Roger Hodgson

The classic Supertramp singer and multi-instrumentalist Roger Hodgson wrote the smash hit “Dreamer” and recorded the demo of the song at his mother’s house years before the group finally recorded the song.

He wrote the song before Supertramp existed and they finally recorded the track on their third album “Crime of The Century”, released in 1974. The track became a worldwide hit, peaking at number one on the UK Singles chart and reaching number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100.

There are many unique sounds in that song and Roger Hogdson recalled in interviews that he got that using many objects at his mother’s house, which were later replicated in studio, at least some part of it.

The story behind the Supertramp hit song “Dreamer” told by Roger Hodgson

In an interview posted on his official Youtube channel (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage), Roger Hodgson recalled it was such a magical demo that he created that Supertramp couldn’t recreate that sound in the studio. So they came up with a different solution to use the song.

“A wonderful thing about ‘Dreamer’ was that I created a demo (of the song) by myself at my mother’s house and it had a certain amount of magic. When we came to record it, four or five years later we tried to duplicate the demo and we couldn’t do it.”

“So we actually ended up putting the demo on two tracks, the multitrack machine. Then (we played) to the demo, trying to duplicate or recreate all the little bits and pieces that are on the demo. I mean, when I created the demo, I was hitting cardboard boxes, hitting lamps and making all kinds of noises.”

“As well as all the singing and the harmonies and stuff. So a lot of the sounds that you find on ‘Dreamer’ are kind of odd. But we did a lot of banging cardboard boxes and stuff like that for even the studio version,” Roger Hodgson said.

It took Roger Hodgson one or two days to make the demo

As he said in another interview posted on his official Youtube channel (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage), it took him only one or two days to make the demo of the song. He recalled it was written in a cold back room of his mother’s house.

“It was in my mother’s house, in this very cold back room of a house. I remember setting up and I had this funky old two track tape recorder. I’ve made this very magical demo banging cardboard boxes, light shades, tin cans, just making all kinds of noises. I literally made this demo I think in one day or two days. Five years later, when Rick and I joined up, we were making ‘Crime of The Century’ and we were trying to record ‘Dreamer’, we couldn’t recreate the magic that I had captured on this demo.”

“So what we actually ended up doing was that we put the demo on two tracks of the multitrack and we ended up trying to duplicate everything on this demo. So we played along with it and along to it, I should say. That way we captured a lot of what I captured in very rough form on the demo. That’s why ‘Dreamer’ has such a unique (sound),” Roger Hogdson said.

Formed in London, England back in 1970 by Roger Hodgson and Rick Davies, who were the band’s main songwriters and singers, Supertramp became one of the most influential Progressive Rock bands of all time. Hodgson was in the band for almost 14 years and was part of their seven most successful albums.