Roger Hodgson

Although Roger Hodgson left Supertramp in early 1983, he joined it for a world tour. Without Hodgson. Supertramp would be a different band and they decided to end it with something positive and Hodgson would have a new album and wanted a high profile for it. 

"I scrapped the first attempt [Sleeping with the Enemy]. I made that album under extreme duress, and after listening to it I said, 'No. That's not the kind of album I want to put out.' So I shelved it."

The debut album In the Eye Of the Storm had pre-release orders for 80,000 copies in Canada. It was certified as a gold album the day it was released. By January 1985, it was nearing double platinum. The "Had a Dream" single sold more than 18,000 copies in Canada.

Rather than a concert tour to support Eye of the Storm, Hodgson did a worldwide press and promotional tour.

"You know, I just have a real appreciation of most of the songs. They're still very valid, and they came from a very deep place, most of them. They were very personal, very autobiographical, and not contrived. I don't know whether bravery entered into it, I didn't think of it. For me, I was alone, and I just expressed whatever I had to express, and that's what came out. There's some pretty raw, vulnerable emotions in those songs, and yet I think in a way I was a voice for a lot of people who had those same emotions, but had no way to express them. Because we all put on brave faces for the world, and yet underneath it all, we're all insecure, or all have these questions: 'What the hell's life about?' or whatever it is, you know?"

"To tell you the truth, actually, my deepest longing: I really wanted to know why I'm here! What is God? 'God' is the most misunderstood word, and the most abused word, in a way. And yet we're part of it -- there's a very intimate relationship we have with God: in however we understand it; everyone understands God in a different way, but it's very linked with the purpose of us being here."

"And so a lot of what I went to, when I went to an instrument and wrote, is I went to that place inside, of real deep longing: longing for love, longing for God -- and to me it's the same thing, really. Longing for belonging, longing for home. A lot of my songs are talking about wanting to go home, wanting to find home. Home, really, is where you feel at peace, and feel like you belong, and it's an internal thing, it's not 'out there' -- and yet we're not taught that in school, or in very few places in the world. So that was really the place of inspiration, I think: really calling for that place where I felt at peace, and where I felt more unified inside myself. And that came out in a variety of the songs."

"I am who I am. I don't try to be anything different, and I just put it out there in my songs: who I was, and who I am, and what I'm feeling. And I think there's a lot of very sensitive people out there, who've felt an element of safety, because suddenly there's an artist who was expressing what they were feeling. It helped them not feel so alone, really.

"In a way, artists -- that's what our job is, as an artist: to share our heart, and help others who can't express themselves not feel so alone."