Crisis? What Crisis? | ||||
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Studio album by Supertramp | ||||
Released | 14 September 1975 | |||
Recorded | Summer-Autumn 1975 | |||
Studio | A&M Studios, Los Angeles, CA Ramport Studios and Scorpio Studios, London, UK | |||
Genre | Progressive rock | |||
Length | 47:24 | |||
Label | A&M | |||
Producer | Ken Scott, Supertramp | |||
Supertramp chronology | ||||
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Allmusic | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Crisis? What Crisis? is the fourth album by the English rock band Supertramp, released in 1975. It was recorded in Los Angeles and London – Supertramp's first album to have recording done in the United States of America.
A remastered CD version of the album was released on 11 June 2002 on A&M Records. The remaster features the original artwork and credits plus lyrics to all of the songs, which the original release lacked.
Record Mirror included Crisis? What Crisis? on its end-of-year list for 1975, recognising the best albums of the year.
Having achieved commercial success with Crime of the Century (1974), the pressure was on for Supertramp to deliver a followup, and the record company pushed them to begin work as soon as the touring for Crime of the Century was finished. While touring the west coast of North America, Supertramp unintentionally gained extra time: Hodgson injured his hand, forcing the band to cancel the rest of the tour and leaving them with nothing better to do than work on the album. Despite this, the band still didn't have time to rehearse for the album, and much like Indelibly Stamped (1971), songwriters Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson had no vision for a completed album worked out. Furthermore, the band's busy touring schedule had left no time for writing songs, and so they entered A&M's Los Angeles recording studios with only leftover songs from Crime of the Century (or even earlier) for material. Due to shortage of material, production had to be halted at one point so that Davies and Hodgson could write two new songs, one of which was "Ain't Nobody But Me".
Both the title and the concept of the cover were conceived by Davies, as John Helliwell recounted: "It was Rick that came up with the name Crisis? What Crisis? and one day, when we were sitting around Scorpio Studio, he came in with this sketch of a guy in a deck chair under an umbrella with all this chaos going on around him." "Crisis? What Crisis?" is a line in the film The Day of the Jackal (1973). Artist Paul Wakefield returned after his work in Crime of the Century, photographing the backgrounds at the Welsh mining valleys, which were later composited with a model shot in the studio afterwards.