Fool's Overture

Song infobox
Name = Fool's Overture


Artist = Supertramp
Album = Even in the Quietest Moments
Released = 1977
track_no = 3
Recorded =
Genre = Progressive rock
Length = 10:58
Writer = Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson
Label = A&M
Producer = Ken Scott and SupertrampExtra tracklisting
Album = Even in the Quietest Moments
Type = studio
Tracks =
# "Give a Little Bit"
# "Lover Boy"
# "Even in the Quietest Moments"
# "Downstream"
# "Babaji"
# "From Now On"
# "Fool's Overture"

Fool's Overture is the epic closing track off of Supertramp's 1977 album "Even in the Quietest Moments". Written and sung by guitarist, keyboard player, singer and songwriter Roger Hodgson, the song tells about World War II England and the lessons learned from it. The song, which is over 10 minutes long, is a collage of progressive instrumentation and sound samples. First there are excerpts of Winston Churchill's famous June 4, 1940 House of Commons speech regarding England's involvement in World War II ("Never Surrender"), and later sounds of police cars and church bells are heard. 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 very short sample of the band's song Dreamer.

Fool's Overture was the closing song on Supertramp's 1977, 1979 and 1983 tours before the encore. 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, John in his Spider-Man glasses plus a conductor's jacket, dancing gorillas, cops, robbers, Indians, a banana 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.

For several years in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a portion of the song was used as the theme music for W-FIVE, a Canadian news magazine television series. In the Netherlands, the synthesized instrumental part of the track was used as the background music for the concert agenda on Radio Veronica during their broadcast of the national Top 40 chart throughout the 1980s.

Personnel

*Roger Hodgson - piano, Elka Rhapsody synthesizer, lead and backing vocals
*Dougie Thomson - bass guitar and additional backing vocals
*Bob Siebenberg - drums
*Rick Davies - synthesizers, piano, backing vocals
*John Helliwell - Oberheim synthesizer, tenor saxophone, clarinet, backing vocals

External links

* [http://www.deadbabes.net/artist_s/supertramp_all_songs/fools_overture_lyrics.html/ Lyrics.]
* [http://youtube.com/watch?v=QjazA_Vg3uQ Fool's Overture: live in Toronto on Youtube]