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Supertramp Co-founder Rick Davies Dies at 81

Supertramp co-founder, keyboardist and singer Rick Davies died Sept. 6, more than a decade after being diagnosed with multiple myeloma, the band announced on its social media pages.

“Rick’s music and legacy continue to inspire many and bears testament to the fact that great songs never die, they live on,” the statement said.

Davies, who fronted the band alongside fellow songwriter and singer Roger Hodgson through 1982’s … Famous Last Words … , was the only member to appear on each of the band’s 11 albums released between 1970 and 2002.

“When he played, it was always absolutely spot-on, from the heart and with precise timing - no frills - he captured the very essence of the music that he usually had composed himself,” Supertramp saxophonist John Helliwell said of his former bandmate. “ … I feel honored to have known and played with him.”

Davies’ voice was the lower contrast to Hodgson’s high tenor and falsetto. Specializing on electric piano, Davies’ compositions include “Bloody Well Right,” “Ain’t Nobody But Me,” “Gone Hollywood” and “Goodbye Stranger.”

After his illness prevented touring, and Supertramp canceled a planned 2015 tour, Davies played occasionally around Long Island with Ricky and the Rockets.

“May Rick Davies rest in peace and love,” Todd Rundgren’s Spirit of Harmony Foundation said.

Leo Sayer eulogized Davies as a “great talent, great keyboardist, singer and songwriter,” while Hodgson’s daughter, Heidi, found herself “feeling unspeakably sad about Rick’s passing.

“Though it’s been years since he was closely integrated in my daily routine, he will forever be a part of the fabric of my life,” Heidi Hodgson wrote of Davies on social media.

“ … He was always kind to me, and I am grateful for it. Sending my love out to all the Supertramp community who are grieving this massive loss with me.”

To me, there's only one goal in life, and that is love. For me, music has been a doorway to finding love, to expressing love, to crying out for love, to rejoicing in finding love.