Did Supertramp’s ‘Breakfast in America’ Cover Art Predict 9/11?
The history of classic rock is littered with albums whose covers have been scrutinized for hidden meanings, most famously the “Paul McCartney is dead” rumor that led fans to look for clues across three Beatles albums.
A more recent conspiracy theory suggested that the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were a plot by the Freemasons, and they were hinting at it as far back as 1979 – on the cover of Supertramp’s hit Breakfast in America album.
A nearly three-and-a-half-minute video, which first came to wide notice after a 2016 report by Dangerous Minds, outlines the scenario: Supertramp’s famous cover is a depiction of the New York City skyline as seen from an airplane, with a waitress, substituting for the Statue of Liberty, holding a glass of orange juice instead of a torch. The juice is positioned in front of the Twin Towers and just happens to be the same color as fire.
The kicker is that if you hold the record in front of a mirror — an act required for nearly every rock conspiracy theory out there — the “u” and “p” in “Supertramp” look like a “9” and an “11.” The band’s name could be seen as a synonym for “great whore” – as in the Great Whore of Babylon, the embodiment of sin in the New Testament's Book of Revelation.
Even the title Breakfast in America tells everybody when the attacks would be coming; the first plane struck One World Trade Center at 8:45AM ET. If that’s not enough evidence, a plane is seen flying toward the skyline on the inner sleeve.
Need more “proof”? Stanley August Miesegaes, the Dutch millionaire who financed Supertramp in its early days, appears to be wearing a Masonic pendant in a photograph. Freemasons have often been accused by conspiracy theorists of trying to bring about the New World Order. They were famously lampooned in an episode of The Simpsons, where Homer Simpson was discovered to be the “Chosen One” of a secret society that controls the world called the “Stonecutters.”
None of these clues, however, explain why it took 22 years after the release of Supertramp's Breakfast in America for the plot to come to fruition.