Recording
The album went through two rounds of demos. The first were home demos, each of which consisted of the chief songwriter (either Rick Davies or Roger Hodgson) playing either acoustic piano or Wurlitzer electric piano and singing. The second were eight-track demos recorded at Southcombe Studios in Burbank, California during late April and early May 1978; it was in recording these demos that the band worked out the backing track arrangements for all the songs (with the exception of "Take the Long Way Home") and determined the order in which they would appear on the album.
In order to avoid spending a lot of time on mixing, the band and their production team devoted a week to experimenting with different sound setups until they found the perfect arrangement. The effort proved to be wasted, as the engineering team would end up spending more than two extremely stressful months searching for the right mix, and were only finished after that length of time because the deadline had arrived, not because they felt at all satisfied with the results.
Tensions between Hodgson and Davies were reportedly almost non-existent on this album. Engineer Peter Henderson recalled "They got along fantastically well and everyone was really happy. There was a very, very good vibe and I think everyone was really buoyed up by the recordings and A&M's response to them." Hodgson contested this, saying that he and Davies had increasingly different lifestyles, and that he felt that Davies disliked many of his songs and only kept quiet about his displeasure because he sensed that he would be voted down. Melody Maker journalist Harry Doherty offered a third take on the duo's interactions during the album sessions: "In three days with the band, I don't think I saw Davies and Hodgson converse once, other than to exchange courteous greetings."
Breakfast In America features a number of songs played on the Wurlitzer electric piano, displaying its most distinctive abilities. In particular, the different sounds made by the Wurlitzer depending on how hard it is played – songs such as "Child of Vision" or "The Logical Song" are built upon this sound. The peculiar sound of the Wurlitzer had already been put forth in older songs such as "Dreamer" or "Lady" but never so extensively into an entire album. Six of the ten tracks have the Wurlitzer on them.
Breakfast In America became Supertramp's biggest-selling album with more than 6 million copies sold in the US alone and was #1 on Billboard's Pop Albums Chart for six weeks in the spring and summer of 1979. The album also hit #1 in Norway, Austria, Canada and Australia. It was also their biggest album in the UK, reaching #3 (for five consecutive weeks) and remaining on the charts for exactly a year.
Read more about this topic: Breakfast In America
Famous quotes containing the word recording:
“I didn’t have to think up so much as a comma or a semicolon; it was all given, straight from the celestial recording room. Weary, I would beg for a break, an intermission, time enough, let’s say, to go to the toilet or take a breath of fresh air on the balcony. Nothing doing!”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“Write while the heat is in you.... The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Too many photographers try too hard. They try to lift photography into the realm of Art, because they have an inferiority complex about their Craft. You and I would see more interesting photography if they would stop worrying, and instead, apply horse-sense to the problem of recording the look and feel of their own era.”
—Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870–1942)