Fool's Overture

"Fool's Overture" is the closing track from Supertramp's 1977 album Even in the Quietest Moments.... Written and sung by guitarist/keyboardist Roger Hodgson, who took five years to compose it[1], the song is a collage of progressive instrumentation and sound samples. First there are excerpts of Winston Churchill's famous 4 June 1940 House of Commons speech regarding Britain's involvement in World War II ("Never Surrender"), and later sounds of police cars and bells from the London's Big Ben clock tower are heard. The flageolet-sounding instrument plays an excerpt from Gustav Holst's "Venus", from his orchestral suite The Planets. There is also a reading of the first verse of William Blake's poem "And did those feet in ancient time" (more commonly known as "Jerusalem"), ended by a short sample of the band's song "Dreamer".

"Fool's Overture"
Song by Supertramp
from the album Even in the Quietest Moments...
Released1977 (1977)
GenreProgressive rock
Length10:52
LabelA&M
Songwriter(s)Rick Davies, Roger Hodgson
Producer(s)Supertramp

Its writing credits are given to Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson, although it is a Hodgson composition.[2] Hodgson and Davies joined writer's credits from 1974 until 1983, when Hodgson left Supertramp to pursue a solo career.

Live performances

"Fool's Overture" was the closing song on Supertramp's 1977, 1979 and 1983 tours before the encore, and Hodgson's 2010 solo tour. When this song was played live, a video of World War II would be shown during the Winston Churchill speech and another film of bombs and houses exploding before the grand finale of the song. During the song's finale, the band decided to "go crazy" by bringing on stage Superman, a holy man, band member John Heliwell in his Spider-Man glasses plus a conductor's jacket, dancing gorillas, cops, robbers, Indians, a banana, Charlie Chaplin, Miss Piggy (as seen on the Live in Paris '79 concert film) and an Adolf Hitler look-alike. During the music explosion/Jerusalem section of the piece, when performed live from 1977 to 1983, John Helliwell would play a different saxophone solo each performance with some ranging from "The Star Spangled Banner" to "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" to just a plain saxophone doodle. A live version of the song, recorded in 1979, is included in the Paris live album. The song has less frequently appeared on live setlists following the 1983 tour because of Hodgson's departure, but Hodgson plays it almost every solo gig he performs.

For several years from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, a portion of the song was used as the theme music for W5, a Canadian news magazine television series.

In the Netherlands, the synthesized instrumental part of the track was used as the background music for the gig guide on Radio Veronica, during their broadcast of the national Top 40 chart throughout the 1980s.

Personnel

References
  1. Statement by Roger Hodgson at the Starlite Festival in Marbella in 2015
  2. Melhuish, Martin (1986). The Supertramp Book. Toronto, Canada: Omnibus Press. pp. 119–137. ISBN 0-9691272-2-7.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
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