"The best thing he's ever done!"

Songwriting partnerships walk a delicate line between inspired and volatile. During Supertramp's most commercially successful period, Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson's working relationship created some of their best-loved material. We look back on Rick Davies' finest musical moments and discover what Hodgson considers to be "the best thing" Rick ever did.

- Chris Roberts

Swindon's working-class Rick Davies and Portsmouth's public schoolboy Roger Hodgson were not, on paper, an ideal match - 'There's you, and there's me' - yet it was the yin and yang chemistry of their writing that defined Supertramp at their most potent. Davies grew up on blues and jazz; Hodgson leaned towards an artier strain of pop.

“I think a certain amount of friction is inevitable when you’re involved in a creative process,” Davies said in 1982. “It’s like two people are painting a picture on the same canvas.”

Initially supported by a wealthy benefactor, they muddled through two patchy albums before the conceptual classic Crime Of The Century, rich with themes both personal and universal, cracked it. From there they graduated to the sunnier, radio-friendly Breakfast In America, before the relationship ran down. Davies carried the Supertramp torch forward, his adaptable voice and musical versatility the enduring foundation of their sound and character.

While he may not have been the primary hitmaker, Davies was an arranger who knew the power of blending heavy narratives with digestible melodies, and of sewing prog/jazz piano solos into complex rock structures. A childhood drummer, he was a master of dynamics. His anti-authoritarian tendencies, blatant on Bloody Well Right, ensured the band gave off a righteous attitude. If their lack of a starry, flamboyant frontman meant they never splashed out into mainstream icon status – as the similarly underrated 10cc’s Graham Gouldman has said, “We didn’t have a Freddie Mercury” – many of their songs remain beloved and instantly recognisable to millions worldwide.