I remember when this came out in 1982. It was just in time for Christmas and I bought two copies. One for me, and one for my best friend Mike. At the time I didn't know the album would be a mostly forgettable collection of songs, with one really annoying "hit" with an S song in "It's Raining Again".
There was a certain degree of pent up excitement at the thought of a new album and the stop gap release of the obligatory live album certainly didn't count, at least to me. Heck, let's be honest, the live version of "Dreamer" got a second life no one saw coming, or wanted ... again, just me.
Breakfast in America was huge in Canada going Diamond, with over 1.5 million copies out there. I suppose the pressure to try and have lightning strike twice was enormous. With the benefit of hindsight, and the internet there's a lot of information out there about the tumultuous gestation period that birthed
"...famous last words..." The delicate push and pull that balanced Roger and Rick was gone. Roger wanted to keep pushing the pop elements that make
Breakfast in America so good, while Rick wanted to go darker and incorporate more of the band's progressive elements back into the music. The joint collaboration that shaped the direction and theme of an album ... the rudder so speak had broken.
What we got with "... famous last works ..." were last words that never became famous. Infamous maybe. Now, to be fair I did actually like this in my own way. The back and forth between Roger and Rick was still in place, with each alternating vocals on the track they wrote. The publishing for the nine songs on the album listed the compositions as by Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson.
I've been pretty consistent in my dislike of "It's Raining Again" since it came out. A song that while a hit, just felt like the worst of the '70s bottled up and puked out as a single. However, I also remember wanting to like it. Much of the album was thin and lifeless, but there were some highlights that I really liked, ""Know Who You Are" and "C'est Le Bon" are both really nice songs. Centred on Roger and a twelve string doing
what he did best. Probably the one that stuck with me from back in the day was the album's closer, "Don't Leave Me Now" that to me felt the closest to the magic of old.
I like many of the songs by Rick Davies, and considering he's just passed away, I was hoping there were songs here I'd forgotten. For the most part the songs I enjoyed more tended to be Rogers. I'm not sleeping on the Rick, "Waiting So Long" is pretty good, but let's be honest this wasn't the band's best work. The album still moved a hundred thousand copies in Canada which is still a lot of record, and went gold in the US but compared to the band's high water mark set by their previous release, the tide had gone out ... way out.
The classic Davies / Hodgson era was over. The band would go on a farewell world tour filling stadiums, playing to millions of fans. I remember this time, and it certainly seemed like a friendly curtain call allowing Roger to bow out. It must have been a surreal experience.
Famous last words.
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