- Writer: Rick Davies
- Producer: Supertramp and Peter Henderson
- Recorded: Late 1978/early 1979 at Village Recorder and Crystal Sound in Los Angeles
- Released: March 1979
- Players:
Rick Davies — vocals, piano
Roger Hodgson — guitar, vocals
John Helliwell — vocals, keyboards
Dougie Thompson — bass
Bob Siebenberg — drums
Album: Breakfast In America (A&M, 1979) - Also On:
Paris (A&M, 1980)
The Very Best Of Supertramp (A&M, 1992)
It Was The Best Of Times (EMI, 1999)
and other compilations - Singer-pianist Rick Davies and singer-guitarist Roger Hodgson formed Supertramp in 1969. They were financed by Dutch millionaire Stanley August Miesegaes, who was known as Sam.
- The group’s name is taken from W.H. Davies‘s 1910 book The Autobiography Of A Supertramp.
- After two unsuccessful albums, Davies and Hodgson fired the other members and brought in singer-keyboardist John Helliwell, bassist Dougie Thompson, and drummer Bob Siebenberg in 1973.
- After gaining a small but loyal following with previous albums, Supertramp broke big with Breakfast In America. The album hit Number One on the Billboard 200, where it spent six weeks.
- “Goodbye Stranger” was the album’s second single, and it peaked at Number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was less successful in Britain, where it only reached Number 57.
- Davies remembered writing the song on a piano at his neighbor’s house: “I wrote that in my hometown when I went back to visit one time. The original piano I actually started playing on, my next door neighbor’s — my parents didn’t have a piano, so I’d go next door and learn to play and stuff. She used to make me tea, so I used to play around waiting for my tea. I just went back to visit one time, and for some reason I came up with this song. I hadn’t written for a while. It just all came up at once.”
- Davies admitted that the song’s lyrics, which are about a one-night stand, were taken from some of the band’s road adventures — “Yeah, it is. It turned out to be that. I didn’t know what it was when I wrote it.”
FAST FORWARD:
- Hodgson left Supertramp in 1983 for a solo career.
- Davies led Supertramp without Hodgson for another five years, but the group disbanded in 1988.
- Davies reassembled Supertramp in 1996 to record Some Things Never Change. The group followed that up with a world tour in 1997.
Supertramp released the album Slow Motion in 2002, and they toured Europe, Canada, and the U.S. behind it, but things have been quiet since then.
