Graham Russell

Graham Russell is the songwriting half of Air Supply. You'll enjoy his story.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Website Podcast. My
guest today is Graham Russell Leversa Griham. How'd you end
up living in Park City?

Speaker 2 (00:20):
It's an interesting story. We were playing at the MGM.
We were doing two weekends in Vegas. This was in
nineteen eighty nine, actually in nineteen ninety and normally I
would have gone home because I was living in Malibu, California.
Normally I would go home, but I decided to rent

(00:40):
a car and just drive north for a few days,
with no plans, no where to stay. I just wanted
to drive. And when I left Vegas behind, I entered
this desert area and I found it really intriguing. And
then all the red rocks appeared and I was driving

(01:01):
for about five hours and the road was dead straight.
I thought, wow, this is pretty cool. And when I
got to this little town, I got the phone book
and I called a real estate agent. So I just
I didn't know anybody. I called this gentleman up out

(01:21):
of the Yellow Pages and I said, I don't buy anything,
but what's going on here? It's kind of interesting and
he said, well, you know, it's a very rural area.
And we met for breakfast and he showed me some houses,
and the first one he showed me was the one

(01:42):
I bought, although he showed me about twenty five houses,
and I said, I don't want to buy anything. I
just want to see what's happening around here, because it
was all new to me. The mountains and the serenity
and the clowns and the fresh air. I thought, wow.
And he showed me a lot of houses. And then

(02:03):
when he finished showing me, I said, remember the first
one we looked at. I said, yeah, I said, I
want to go and see that again. But it was
just it was a weekender. It was it was just
a shell. But he came with one hundred and twenty
six acres, which I at that time I thought was
a lot of land. In Malibu, I had about five acres,
which was a lot of land. And I ended up

(02:26):
buying the house. You know. I said, I'm going to
buy it, you know, So I bought it. That's how
I came to be in Utah thirty four years ago.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
Okay, how close to the town of Park City are you?

Speaker 2 (02:39):
I'm about ten miles away.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
I happen an old area, which direction, well.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
I'm east of Park City, so it sees, oh, you
know the area. Yeah, yeah, it's a beautiful area, you know.
And when I when I bought the place, it was
park City that really nailed it for me because it's
a cosmopolitan city, not too big, but it has great
restaurants and it's a very liberal place, which I was

(03:14):
not looking for, but it added to the mystique of it.
And so I thought, what these great restaurants around because
where I live then certainly there was nothing here, you know, nothing,
but that's what I really wanted. So but then if
I can be in park City within fifteen minutes at

(03:34):
all kinds of restaurants, yeah, that put the nail in
the deal for me, you know.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Okay, Needless to say, in thirty four years, park City
has really changed.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
It has it has? And you know, I actually don't
go in there that much anyway, as much as I
used to because there's a lot of people there now.
But when when I bought the house, I'm in now
the shells, should I say? The agent that I called
out the phone book, who became a really good friend.

(04:07):
We sat in the house and he said to me
there were five lots in front that were pretty big lots,
and he said, if I were you, if you can
afford these lots, buy them now, and nobody you'll ever
get any closer. And I was able to buy them,
and I'm glad I did now because nobody can get

(04:28):
as close as they were even thirty four thirty five
years ago. So I kind of was able to buy
my little sanctuary. And you know, when because I spent
so much time in cities and traveling around the world,
it's just wonderful to come back to the peace and
the serenity is great for me. But it's not for everyone.

(04:53):
You know. When I first bought it, Russell would come
up occasionally because I put a studio in the house.
He would he would look out the window and he
would say, Wow, it's the quiet is beautiful. But it
wasn't for him because he's more he needs a city.
But for me, it's perfect. You know. I can just

(05:15):
listen to nothing, and that's great for me. You know.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Okay, thirty four years ago, you leave Vegas, you come
to Park City, you call that real estate agent. Do
you tell him you're in air supply?

Speaker 2 (05:31):
No, I didn't. I never do to anyone. But if
they find out that's that's okay. He did find out
once I wanted to buy the house because of finance
and all that kind of stuff, and he kind of
was shocked. He says, oh my god, I said, yeah,
you know, but then they all get used to it.

(05:52):
They refer to me in this area, or they used
to as the movie star that lives upon the hill.
You know. They say, when I go to the grain
store to get grain and bird seed, well now they
know me on a first name basis. But when I
first used to go, they'd say, are you the movie star?
And I'd say, no, I'm actually not a movie star,

(06:14):
you know, but they've got used to me. Now now
I'm considered a local, which is wonderful.

Speaker 1 (06:21):
Okay, everyone knows the name ere supply, but you know,
the two of you, you and Russell have been in
the you know, the act forever. But then the other people,
are you recognized?

Speaker 2 (06:35):
You know, yes I am. However, you know, when I
get on a plane, I'm recognized. But I'm six feet
five and tall, you know, so wherever I go, people
go whoa. But when Russell and I are together, we

(06:55):
certainly we get recognized, you know, but it's always a
positive thing. It's always great. People come up to us
all the time and that will say, oh my god,
I got married your songs, and you know, there's that
and the other, and we'll go, oh, that's fantastic. And
people have done that for decades and we've never turned

(07:16):
down an autograph or taking a picture ever. And I
think that has a lot to do with with our
fan base, you know, because it spreads. But we've never
said now, I'm not signing anything. We've never done that,
and I don't think we ever will, because we're very
aware that the people that come to our shows put

(07:38):
gas in my car, you know, and they're part of
the whole cycle of life. For me. They gave me
the place where I live and everything that I own,
they've given it me, They've helped me get it. So
I will always be grateful and indebted to them for that.
You know.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
Do you think that air supply gets the specter deserve.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
I think so. You know, there are when you know,
in the eighties, for instance, you know, we had we
achieved a lot. At one point, we had as many
top fives as the Beatles, you know, for a short
space of time, and that to us was quite staggering
because the Beatles are everything to us. They were and

(08:28):
still are. I think there are other bands that have
achieved less than us that get a lot more attention.
But you know, it doesn't bother us because we prefer
to step back and let the music speak for us.
You know, we've never been in the magazines. We've never
been in Rolling Stone, let alone on the cover of

(08:51):
Rolling Stone. In fact, when The One that You Love
was number one, Rolling Stone didn't even have in the
top twenty in the magazine. They pulled it out because
we probably weren't good copy. However, we've kind of got
used to it and it doesn't bother us at all

(09:11):
because what's important to us are the fans and us
getting on stage and playing. That's what we love to do,
and we probably do more shows than any other band
in the industry. We play one hundred and thirty every
year and we're almost at fifty six hundred in our career,

(09:32):
and I don't think a lot of artists have done that,
or at least are able to play at a very
high level. I mean, we're not the Rolling Stones, but
for what we do, we do it with a lot
of class and we created our own sound and that's
what that's what we play.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
You know, since you've done so many gigs, do you
find that it's a hardcore fan base that is coming
to see you and you actually know these people or
is it like air Supply goes to a town you've
had a lot of hits. People come as they say,
certain acts, you know surprisingly Kenny g you know Fish

(10:16):
on the other stream, they have very hardcore of fans.
What are the fans like for air Supply?

Speaker 2 (10:21):
They're hardcore the airheads that there's millions of them, and
some of them a few, not a lot. I've seen
maybe five six hundred shows.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
Yeah, it's their legion. And we talk to them because
we know them on a first name basis, and we
have a as all artists do. Now, we have a
VIP thing at sound check and people come get a
picture and they listen to soundcheck and we talk to them,
you know, and we say why do you keep coming back?
And they say, we can't stay away. We don't know

(10:59):
what it is, but we can't stay away. If you're close,
we have to come and see the show. I don't
know why, but you know, after all these years, I think, well,
I'm convinced that people go to see shows to hear
hit songs. There's no doubt about that. When I go

(11:21):
and see McCartney or The Stones, or Peter Gabriel and Sting,
who are all my favorites, you want to hear the
hit songs, you know. And fortunately we have a lot
of them, and we play them all every night that
we play, and people know that and they want to
be part of your journey, you know, with us. But

(11:44):
I think specifically with our music, it's very it's the word,
it's very family. It's family music. You know. They have
a lot of memories to us. They got married, because
we've been together for fifty years. It's their whole family
is part of it. They got married to us, they

(12:05):
had the babies, they've lost people that you know, we
can name any one of a dozen songs that are
their favorite songs and we're going to play it for them.
So it's it's like this nuclear fission that just keeps
empowering itself every time we play, you know, it really does.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
Okay, So with this date, why do you play so
many shows?

Speaker 2 (12:32):
You know, it's simply because we love to play, we
really do. And we've you know, Russell and I have
always said years and years ago, we said we'll stop
playing when the people stopped coming, you know. But I
think we we offer a message. You know. The songs

(12:53):
are great songs for people to live by, and they
have they hold incredible memories for everyone, and we're part
of that cycle. They come to the show and I
see them, you know, when we step on stage, I
see them. A lot of them are in tears, you know,
they go, oh my god, I can't believe I'm watching them.

(13:13):
But it's not like it's different than like, although we
are a rock and roll band, it's different than most
other rock and roll bands. We don't come out and
try and blow people's brains out with volume or anything.
It's a different energy with us, and I'd like to
think it's ours alone with our music, you know. But

(13:35):
we just love to play, and one of these days
we won't be able to for whatever reason, be it
a health reason or we just can't do it. And
who knows when that's going to be. I mean, if
you look at like McCartney and the Stones, or keep
referring to them again, because they really wield the power

(13:59):
that they're the role models for artists like myself. You know,
they're eighty two years old and they're just killing it
and they're great. Got Mick Jagger running everywhere. So that's
what I want to do. I want to be playing
at a very high level when I'm eighty two. I'd
love to do that. But who knows. You know, people

(14:22):
suddenly have a heart attack or they have whatever and
they can't do it. So I think we want to
do it for a bit longer. You know. We just
love being out there, love we love the industry, and
we love our job and we've always been very thankful

(14:43):
for being able to do this. You know, I in particular,
I come from the center of England, and you know
that unless you have great skills and you go to university,
your choices of careers are very limited, especially especially then,
you know, when I'm in the late sixties, it's very limited.

(15:06):
A lot of people end up going down the pit,
or that the pits have closed now. But I didn't
want that. I wanted to be a songwriter from when
I was thirteen years old, and I just followed that
path that I thought would take me there. And I
was really lucky. This should have happened to anyone, any

(15:27):
thousands of people, but it happened to me. And I
don't know if it was because I never let go
of that thought or that dream, I mean, never let
go of it, or it was just chance. I don't know,
but whatever it is, I just have this incredible life
where I'm able to write songs and may earn a

(15:50):
living writing songs and do what I love to do.
And wow, that's everything for me.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
Okay, there's a lot of stuff there, but let's go
back to the live thing. You do one hundred plus
shows a year.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:12):
I have been with musicians where the audience absolutely loved
it and the people on stage said, oh man, it
was a bad night, and vice versa. But usually the
audience loves it. So what is your experience? What makes
these shows different? Are you looking to, you know, get
the Holy Grail once or twice at tour? What's it

(16:32):
like being on stage?

Speaker 2 (16:35):
Oh, it's it's a dream come true every night when
we step on stage, especially now, I mean Russell and
I we're in our seventies, you know, we we shouldn't
be here, you know, in the fifties and sixties, this
was before rock and roll, became of age. The only
people around then that were a little older was Bill

(16:57):
Hayley and the Everly Brothers and those artists. But now
that that boundary has been pushed, pushed to infinity by
people like The Stones and Paul McCartney. So who knows
where it's going to end, and we just want to
be a part of that. But stepping on stage, there's

(17:17):
nothing like it. I mean, we step on stage and
everybody stands up and they're applauding, and we go, oh
my god, this is incredible. And once again a night
doesn't go by where right at the beginning of the
show where I get goose bums right before I come on,

(17:39):
and it's just this incredible feeling you can't describe. But
every night that we play, it's there, and you know,
Russell and I we always say we always look into
the audience right before we come on and see what
kind of audience it is, But it's always the same

(18:00):
people are waiting and then we go on and everything starts,
and it's just this incredible feeling that you can't describe.
It's nothing else comes close. You can't compare it to
anything you know.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
Okay, but are some shows better or worse than other shows.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
And what makes them so well, what you just said
is true. They love it anyway. But sometimes for us,
you know, Russell will come off and when we have
a quick chat, he comes to my dressing room and
he will say, oh, I wasn't on tonight. I just
couldn't get in into the group, and I say, well,
I didn't notice. It becomes a personal, a personal thing,

(18:41):
and sometimes I'm like that. I say, god, I didn't
I didn't get going tonight. I was thinking I didn't
let go. But there that's very infrequently when that happens.
But but when it does, you go, oh my god,
I should have done this, and I didn't give everybody
a one hundred percent. I was held back. But nevertheless, the

(19:05):
audience loves it anyway. But our expectations are high and
our goals are high, simply because, especially these days, people
pay a lot of money to go to shows, you know,
and they spend a lot of money that they probably
should spend on something else, but they don't. So we
want to give them the best show we can give

(19:27):
them that's in our power to give them. And when
we don't, individually, I get annoyed with myself and I say, well,
I'll be better tomorrow night, but an audience wouldn't even notice.
You know, it's a weird thing, but at least we
always want to give one thousand percent every night, you know,

(19:50):
and sometimes it's not possible. For instance, if I mean
I'm not the lead singer, I sing a few leads,
but if I get a cold and my throat's on it,
I can't sing. I will say to the audience when
it's my first turn to speak, which is usually around chances,
I'll say, folks, I got to tell you something. I've
got a really bad throw and if I sound out

(20:10):
a tune, I'm apologizing now because I never sing out
of tune. And I said, if I do, please accept
my apologies. I don't because you deserve the best. So
I tell them, you know, and because I don't want
them to think I'm out of tune every night, because
I'm really not.

Speaker 1 (20:29):
Okay, how do you do it?

Speaker 2 (20:32):
You know?

Speaker 1 (20:32):
On one hand, you know, on the lowest level, people
are in station wagons and vans, and there are people
who go in buses. There are other people take a
jet into every show. Band members come from their own place.
They meet at the gig. Then they go their separate ways.
How does their supply to it?

Speaker 2 (20:50):
We fly commercial, sometimes, we bus. When we first toward
the US and well on our own in nineteen eighty,
we were in buses for nine months of the year,
and occasionally we'd spend a night in hotel, but usually
we'd shower at the show and we'd get on a

(21:12):
bus and drive five hundred miles. But we were a
lot younger than we thought it was really exciting. That
doesn't appeal to us anymore, you know, So we go
we fight commercial, or we rent vans. If it's a
small distance between shows, which it usually is, it's usually
within two hundred and fifty miles, so we rent cars

(21:33):
and we'll drive there. But you know, our style of
transportation is not super luxurious. We you know, we we
can't afford to rent planes and stuff like that. You know,
I wish we could, but that's not in our cars,
not probably not for in the foreseeable future.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
Okay, So to what degree are you a student of
the game, Like, would you know how many people were
intending what the grosses or you just pass that off
to other people.

Speaker 2 (22:06):
No, I'm very aware of everything like that. I even
know how much merchandise we sell in the night, not
because I'm interested in making money. I just want to
see if the people are buying things that they're happy
with that, and I want to know how many people. Well,
we always sell out our show wherever it is, but

(22:30):
if we don't, which is really unusual, I want to
know why. You know, why didn't we sell out? It's
really weird, So I want to know. Plus, it makes
you feel good to know that you're selling a show out,
be it two thousand seats or thirty thousand. You know,
it's just feels good to be able to sell shows out. Plus,

(22:53):
we want everybody to be successful. We want the promoter
to make money because we want him to book Is again,
you know. And that's when I come off stage. My
first question to our tour manager is every night, I
would say, is everybody happy? Is the promoter happy they've
all made money? Yeah, everybody's happy. The producer of the

(23:15):
show is ecstatic, And then I'm happy at that point.

Speaker 1 (23:18):
You know, do you know how much merch per head
you do? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (23:23):
I do. I mean ours is not huge, but you
know we probably do seven eight dollars ahead with a
lot of artists probably do. Like eight hundred.

Speaker 1 (23:36):
Seven eight dollars isn't bad. So what's your view on
using hard drives and other recordings in the live environment.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
We have some some strings, some cellos and stuff on
a hard drive, but that's that's about it for us,
simply because we've always been a loon. I bound, you know,
and I know when I when I sing live, but
I'm not the lead singing. Uh. You know, sometimes I

(24:10):
push if I get excited, I push, and I may
my may go sharp. So I'm I'm reminded reminded by
our front of highs front of house engineer. He say,
don't push, just sit there, let the microphone do the work.
If you get if it's adrenaline, just relaxed. And so
I'm very I'm always reminded of that. But we have

(24:31):
some cellos and a couple of violins on a hard drive,
but on a few songs. But that's that's all. It's
very little, you know, simply because I love the live
I love the live energy. You know.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
Okay, you've had monster hits and there supply songs are
perennials a year in, a year out. Do you still
own your right huh.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
We we about five years ago we sold we sold
a high percentage of our catalog to Primary Wave, who
are one of the companies that people were flocking that artists,
vintage artists especially were flocking to. And we held out

(25:17):
for a long time and then they came to us
and our manager resisted it and he said, he said,
I'm changing my mind on it. If you want to
do it, then do it, you know, and he gave
us his blessing, and he actually engineered the whole thing
and we were very happy when we did it. We

(25:38):
didn't sell everything. We actually sold seventy percent and so
we keep thirty. But you know, we we got a
big payment, which for us, it didn't solve any problems.
We didn't have any problems financial problems. We've always been

(25:59):
very fluid. But it's kind of a backup in case
everything stopped tomorrow. Then we don't have to worry about,
oh my, you know, what are we going to do? Now?
We're okay, we're fine. But it's like you said, we've
had a lot of big hits. And throughout all that time,

(26:19):
I owned I owned all my own publishing rights, you know,
So so I'm in a good place, and Russell Russell agreed,
And Russell shares in my publishing, you know, and he
always has simply because he's the singer on a lot

(26:39):
of these great recordings, you know, and without him, I'm
very aware that we wouldn't be where we are right now.
It's the singer, it's the songs, it's a lot of things,
but his voice is the trademark of air supply, and
I always wanted to make sure he gets rewarded for that.

Speaker 1 (27:01):
Musicians are legendarily bad with money. You got a big
check from Primary Way, what do you do with the money?

Speaker 2 (27:10):
Well, we're in a great position because our manager is
also our accountant and he has been since we began
our career.

Speaker 1 (27:22):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
So yeah, it's incredible. And you know, Barry Siegel is
his name, and he advises us not only as management
to decide what we do in a year, but also
accounting and what we do with the money. And he
invests for us. But he said to us, you know,

(27:45):
I want you to have that money and I don't
want you to touch it, which is a very smart thing.
And so instead of us going through it and buying whatever,
he said, No, he's very he's very very frugal. So far,
we haven't touched any of it because he wanted us
to have it there as a backup in case anything happens.

(28:08):
Of course that's the smart the smart thing. But with
Barry in particular, we have an incredible relationship. Not only
are we extremely close friends, we go on vacation together,
we have dinners all the time. But we're very close.

(28:29):
But there's a great trust there and we look after
each other, you know. And I don't know if we'd
be where we are with that Barry. In fact, we
wouldn't for sure.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
So how did you meet him?

Speaker 2 (28:45):
That's an interesting story when nineteen eighty when Lost in
Love was the biggest song in the world, and we
didn't have any representation, no manager, no accounting or anything.
And Russell and I were, of course still living in
Australia and we got a lot of phone calls from

(29:08):
lawyers from Los Angeles and money people saying, oh, I
know you don't have any representation, I'd like to offer
our services and from great people. And we didn't get
a call from Barry. He came and knocked on my door.
He flew to Australia and he said I'm Barry seeing

(29:30):
on I am accountant and would you be interested in
talking to me? And at that point he was working
with a large accounting firm, but he wanted to go
out on his own with a partner. And I took
him out in Sydney that night and we got him
really drunk and we just left him alone and he

(29:53):
had to find his way through through his dodgy area
called King's Cross in Sydney and he couldn't remember where
his hotel I was. But we we just got on great.
And I Russell and I both thought that him coming
to Australia knocking on out door and saying I'd love
to represent you, you know, and we said, yes, let's

(30:13):
do it. And that's that was a long time ago,
and that's how we get. That's how it started.

Speaker 1 (30:20):
So unlike most musicians, you haven't had an episode of
being seriously ripped off.

Speaker 2 (30:27):
No, no, we haven't, thanks to Barry. We've had people
that have tried to do that, but they they're not successful.
You know, Barry Barry Barry's firm, which is PFM Provident
Provident Financial Management, became very, very successful in an accounting world.

(30:55):
But I believe we're the only artist that he personally manages,
although he's company represents the krem Della Creme of artists
and actors in the industry. So it's great for us,
you know, but we've never nobody's ever tried to rip
us off for him, well, they've tried a few times,

(31:16):
but Barry just knocks it all down, as it's known.
So he's you know, it's something about trust and when
you have a career and if you trust someone totally,
that's a big that's a big plus for us because
we don't spend any time wondering if anybody is ripping
us off. We just don't. And you know, it's a

(31:38):
wonderful experience that we've had together and we we refer
to ourselves as the Three Musketeers.

Speaker 1 (31:55):
Okay, jumping around. You were talking about in the eighties
on the road so much. Why were you on the
road so much? Today acts have to be on the road.
I'm talking about you know, act starting up, recording step
for a few don't generate that much money. Were people
saying you have to go on the road to sell

(32:15):
the act, to build the act, to visit the radio stations,
or they were saying, you're so hot. This is the
time to make money. Why were they having you work
so much?

Speaker 2 (32:28):
We wanted to first up and we had the opportunity.
Suddenly we could have our own tour, which a lot
of artists they have to wait a long time before
they get that. They did say you need to headline
your own tour. So we did a theater tour in
nineteen eighty. I'll never forget it. I remember each show

(32:51):
and we were on a bus. So for us it
was exciting too. You know, I was in nineteen eighty,
I was thirty years old. Russell was thirty one. So
for us it was like, oh my, this whole new
life just started. And they said, if you want to
work every night, you can work every night, and we did.
We wanted to. We were on a bus. It was

(33:12):
a lot of fun where we had several buses. We
were doing the show. Getting on the bus, habit a
bottle of wine and life was fantastic. We'd be looking
we'd get the billboard positions a week early. Clive Davis
would be calling us all the time saying, oh, you've
jumped another ten places. So life was incredible. It was

(33:33):
what every artist, every musician dreams about. And it suddenly
came to us, and we were kind of late in
life for it to happen, thirty and thirty one years old,
so we didn't look a gift horse in the mouth.
Plus we wanted to play. We'd had four years of

(33:53):
not earning any money. We were broke before Lost in
Love hit in the US. We had no money, even
though it was a big hit in Australia. We had
several hits in Australia, we weren't earning anything. We couldn't
even play in Australia. We couldn't afford to hire musicians
or a PA system, so we just weren't working. So

(34:14):
suddenly to headline our own tour was a big deal
for us, and we wanted to get out there. You know,
Lost in Love was you couldn't turn the radio one
without hearing Lost in Love at all anywhere, and we
had a little taste of that right before we came
to the US. We went to Japan because they asked

(34:36):
us to come. Lost in Love was released there, and
in Australia a gold record is twenty thousand copies. We
went to Japan in nineteen seventy nine and we sold
a million albums in a week and we thought, oh

(34:57):
my god, this is just outrageous, you know, and so
we said, yes, that's what we want. And it wasn't
the money, because we'd never had any all the fame.
It was just being able to do, to have a
career and to be able to play and get on
stage and having people in the audience. We we had

(35:18):
done shows in Sydney where nobody came. Nobody and the
problem the guy that was running the pub, you know,
he would because we'd do two we were booked for
two one hour sets. He'd say, okay, nobody's here. After
the first set, I'm going to give you half the money.
You can go home, and we say, no, we have to.

(35:40):
We want to, you know, sit by the contract. This.
We wanted to two shows, two one hour shows, because
we needed the money and we were making two hundred
dollars a night. It was out. It was stupid, you know,
but that's all we had. And then Lost in Love
hit and everything changed, you know. That's why we wanted

(36:01):
to play.

Speaker 1 (36:03):
Okay, you're in the pub in Australia, literally no one comes. Yeah,
how do you keep your attitude up?

Speaker 2 (36:13):
It was very difficult, but just in case anybody was
to walk in, which they didn't. We just did the show,
so it was like a rehearsal and we played both
sets and it destroys you. It's really it breaks your heart,
you know. And at the same time we had a

(36:35):
top ten record in Australia lost in it was top
ten and we couldn't get anybody at the shows. But
our hearts were breaking. But we never gave up. We
never said this is I've had enough of this, I'm
going to get a job. I think we said. We
never did that. We said no, no, we've got to
hang on. We've got to hang on, you know, And

(36:56):
we did and I'm glad we did.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
So where did you grow up?

Speaker 2 (37:03):
I grew up in Nottingham in England, which is in
the center of England.

Speaker 1 (37:07):
All I know was Nottingham. Didn't Raleigh bicycles made in
notting Yes.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
He did. My sister used to work for him and
dunlocked tires.

Speaker 1 (37:18):
So what were the circumstances? What were your parents doing
for a living?

Speaker 2 (37:23):
Well, my mother died when I was ten, which was
really instrumental in me starting to write songs and writing
verse down because when my mother died I didn't speak
to anyone for three months. And when I came out
because I was I was ten years old, I was
in shock. When I started to talk, I would write

(37:45):
things down on a legal pad with add it around
my neck with a pen and I would write things down.
Then I started to put things into verse and make
it right for fun. But then when I started to
speak to people, would I would show them the verses,
you know, say this is what I'm feeling right now,

(38:07):
and they they turned into songs. But my father worked
in a factory. He had for years and years. We
never we didn't have a car or phone. We never
went on vacation anywhere. We didn't have anything. But I
had a great until when my mother passed away, which

(38:29):
changed my whole life. Before that, I had a great childhood.
I was happy and just like all the other kids.
But I just wanted to be a songwriter from very
early age.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
Okay, was your mother ill or did she die suddenly?

Speaker 2 (38:44):
She died from cancer. She had breast cancer. But I
knew she was ill, but they kept it from me
that she was really terminal. And then one morning my
dad just said to myself, my two older sisters, he
said your mother's gone. And I said, oh, where is

(39:06):
she gone? And when she's coming back? And he said, no,
she passed away, and I didn't know what that meant.
I said, well, what when is she coming back? You know?
He said, she's not coming back. That's it. And I
was just devastated. And it took me a long long
time to get used to the idea, you know, which

(39:28):
is you know now, I understand when people when children
lose their apparent at an early age, I understand what
they're going through. But until you go through that, I
don't know if you can understand it. My whole world died,
everything died, and it took me a long time to
build my life back together.

Speaker 1 (39:49):
You know, Okay, you didn't speak for three months.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
Now.

Speaker 1 (39:54):
People noticed that when they say, or what you don't
want to take you to the doctor, they were ribbing you.
How are people here?

Speaker 2 (40:03):
They were trying to comfort me because they realized that
I didn't know that it was going to happen, that
my mother was going to die. Everybody knew but me
that she was going to go, so it was all
it was a comfort thing. But I just didn't want
anything to do with it. I didn't want to talk
to people. I didn't want people comforting me and saying, no,

(40:25):
it's going to be all right, because no, it wasn't
going to be all right, and I needed to go
through it. And even at that early age, I just
wanted to be on my own. I needed to deal
with it myself. But one must remember in England, where
I came from, then I don't ever remember embracing my dad,

(40:48):
or my dad coming up to me giving me a hug,
or ever saying I love you. It just didn't happen,
never happened. So I was on my own. I don't
even remember my sisters coming up to me and putting
their arms around me. And in fact, my sister was
one of my sisters is eight years older than me,

(41:08):
and we're very close now. But she said to me recently,
she said, I had no idea what you went through.
Nobody told you, and nobody tried to help you. And
I said, no, they didn't. But on reflection, it gave
me great strength and I started to listen to my

(41:29):
own voice in my head and it set me on
a path to write things down and to write verse.
And then I wanted to learn to play the guitar.
I got a guitar and I learned to play it
really quickly, and the first song I learned was Home

(41:49):
on the Range, which is like a two chord song.
As soon as I could look, as soon as I
could play that, I started writing my own songs. Not
knowing what I was doing. I just and that was
the beginning. And I would write songs maybe three or
four every week, even as a young teenager and right

(42:10):
into my adult life, you know. So it became second
nature to me, and it became everything to me. It
became the shoulder that I could cry on, and it
became my life everything, you know. So songwriting for me,
it's not just something to do to try and get

(42:33):
a song on the radio. I mean far from it.
It's just it's the other, my other persona that I
talked to, and it's kind of like my twin if
you like.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
Okay, is that when you knew you were going to
be a songwriter?

Speaker 2 (42:50):
Yeah it is, yeah, well not when I knew I
was going to be. It was when I wanted to be.
But you know, I was in the center of England.
The last thing anybody needs in the center of England
is a songwriter. But I never let go of it.
I always wanted my career's person, my career's teacher at school,

(43:11):
who I am actually still in touch with. Yeah, she
and I said, She said, well, what do you want
to be? Do you want to be a doctor or
policeman or what do you want to do? I said,
I want to be in a band. I want to
write songs. And I'm thirteen years old, right, And she says, ha, no,
you can't do that. What do you really want to be?

(43:32):
And I said, I really want to be a songwriter?
So yeah, isn't that weird? It's funny?

Speaker 1 (43:40):
Okay, a couple of things. You're very verbal thinking, but
you're talking about this alone time when your mother pats.
Are you someone who likes their own company or you
someone like Jerry Maguire always has to have somebody around.

Speaker 2 (43:55):
No. I like spending a lot of time on my own.
I don't know if that's good or bad for anyone,
but I always have. Even at school, I was a loner,
you know. I know when I was fifteen sixteen, nobody
would go out with me on a day to the pictures,
the movies, and so I became I was my own

(44:17):
best friend, and then I would just The only thing
I used to run to was writing songs. I'd dash
home from school and i'd listened to this program on
the BBC called Pop Go the Beatles. It was on
a Tuesday afternoon at five o'clock, and I used to
dash home and listen to it. And then i'd listened

(44:39):
to that, and then i'd go and write a song,
you know, obviously imitating what i'd just heard, but it
was a great What I didn't realize what I was
doing is I was informing myself. I was going to school.
I was going to the University of learning how to

(44:59):
write a song, even at thirteen and fourteen. But I
loved it. And you know, I would say to a
couple of school friends. They'd say, what are you just
still writing songs? I said yeah. They say, okay, let
me let me have a listen to some. And I
was never shy. I usually had a guitar with me anyway,

(45:20):
and I would say, okay, listen to this, and I'd
play them one or two or three or four songs
and they go wow, you know, And so that's how
over I overcame my shyness because I wasn't afraid to.
I would just stop and play for anybody. You know.

Speaker 1 (45:37):
Okay, so you're writing songs. I mean you're in England.
It's not the same as America. But in America, certainly
post Beatles, everybody got a guitar, drums, whatever, and they
started to play and they played it high school assemblies
and they played parties. Did you play those kind of gigs?

Speaker 2 (45:58):
A few of them in England? When whenever I could,
If my school friends would say, oh, we're having a
few people around and I was invited, I always took
my guitar just because that was what I did. It
was like my date. You know, I had a guitar,
and of course if somebody sees you with a guitar,
oh you play guitar. There you want to play something? Yeah, sure,

(46:23):
so that's how it started. You know. I've never been
shy about playing. But I'm not a great guitar player.
I just play rhythm guitar and I play enough to
get by. I get I know enough guitar to play
my songs. But that's yeah. I used to play those
kind of things, you know for sure.

Speaker 1 (46:42):
Okay. One have to ask many musicians play music because
it's a way to find girls or girls have been
drawn to them. Was that of your motivations? And did
it work?

Speaker 2 (46:56):
It was never a motivation for me at all. In fact,
I never even thought about that. It wasn't on my
radar at all. I just wanted to play songs. I
wanted to play my own songs. And when I joined
the band in England and I played drums, you.

Speaker 1 (47:17):
Know, how did that happen?

Speaker 2 (47:19):
Well? I loved the Beatles and you know, I bought
every record they had. I used to go around to
my aunt's and say, the Beatles albums coming out? Can
you help me pay for it? You know? And they would.
And then I just had this thing of for ringo,
you know. And so I would sit on my couch

(47:40):
and I would play drums. I had a cardboard box
for the bass drum. I bought a cheap second and
not even second, and a kick drum pedal hitting a
cardboard box. And I had another cardboard box for a
tom tom and I would hit the couch and I

(48:01):
learned every single Beatles song, all the drums, so to
go into I wanted then, I wanted to go into
a band, and I joined a band, but quickly I
realized that drums weren't for me simply because it it
was playing a lot of blues songs, which I didn't

(48:21):
care for, and I wanted to play my own songs.
I would say to the guys man, hey, guys, how
about playing an original song, you know? And they go, no, no,
we're a cover band. So that's what was going on
in England, and I got really fed up with it,
you know, and that's when I decided to leave England

(48:41):
because I couldn't get anywhere.

Speaker 1 (48:50):
Okay, a few questions when you would play your songs,
was reaction always positive? Or was sometimes people would the
morning people said, hey, I'd rather listen to her hit song.

Speaker 2 (49:04):
It was always positive, which was great for me because
a lot of my early songs they weren't great songs.
It was just a young kid trying to learn how
to write songs. But even my sisters, when I play them,
they say, oh, wow, that's really nice. But so they
empowered me. And my school friends would say wow, that's cool,

(49:25):
and they would start learning the songs with me and
they'd sing with me, and so I knew. I knew
the songs were okay. They weren't hit songs, and they
were all over the place, but they were finished, and
they had lyrics and there was a beginning, a chorus
and an ending. So I was very happy with that.

(49:47):
But everybody was always positive. Nobody ever said, oh, that's terrible.
I think if they had I would have been destroyed.
But nobody ever did, Okay, do you still write songs
to Oh? Yeah, every day, every day.

Speaker 1 (50:04):
Yeah, I'll tell me a little bit more about that.

Speaker 2 (50:07):
Well, you know, a supply. We just finished our Ladies' album,
which is our first in fifteen years, so I don't
have a lot of outlet for my songs. So about
ten years ago I started to get involved with musicals.
I love writing musicals, and now I just finished my
twelfth musical simply because I love to write around a story,

(50:33):
so I get the story from somewhere and now I'm
getting the hang of it, and so it's something that
I love to do. I don't know if it's supply
after this album, won't make another album. I don't want
to say we won't, but this one took fifteen years
for us to come around to say, oh, yeah, let's
make an album. I don't know if we have that

(50:55):
much time left, but I just love writing songs. So
people started to come to me with with the scripts
and these stories and say, I really want to turn
this into a musical. Would you be interested? I say, yeah, sure,
So it's good for me. I just love writing songs,
you know. And you know the the air supply musicals

(51:18):
coming this year, so it's all kind of coming full circle.
I mean once again. You know, I just have a
great life. I kind of do what I want to do,
and you know.

Speaker 1 (51:32):
Okay, So what happened with the twelve musicals you wrote?

Speaker 2 (51:39):
Well, four of them were attempts at air supply musicals,
but the book, the book that people wrote, I never
have anything to do with the book. People would say, oh,
the book's not great, you know, But then I try again.
But then I wrote three with two gentlemen from here
in Utah that were and two of them went on stage,

(52:04):
had limited runs, so that was great. So every every
musical I'm getting more and more experience. Now, last July,
I started to write one about David Copperfield, the Charles
Dickens Book, and I finished that in six weeks, and

(52:25):
so that's how it has a reading. A second reading
in March and I think it's going to open in
London in November. That's when I'm tough. So my musicals
are getting more and more notoriety. But even if they don't,
I just love doing it, you know, it's great. And

(52:45):
I enjoyed the readings and they hire all these singers
and and suddenly I'm seeing all these people and rehearsal
singing all these songs, and wow, that's really cool. But
it's great, you know, it's wonderful for me.

Speaker 1 (53:01):
So how do you write songs? And what's the difference
between writing songs for ear supplier for a musical.

Speaker 2 (53:09):
Because in a musical, the parameters are given to me.
There's a story, the script or the book if you like,
and I read the book, I absorb it and I
think where a song should be, or the author of
the book will tell me where the song he thinks

(53:30):
or she thinks needs to be. And I like that.
They give me a lot of pointers and tell me
what should be said in the song. So for me,
it's kind of easy because they're telling me what needs
to happen in the song, who's singing it, and the
parameters of the scene. And then I go and I'll
write the song. So it's great for me, but for

(53:53):
a supply, I have to come up with everything, which
is great too. I have to come up with a
story well, because a song is a story that you've
got to have a beginning, a middle, and a great
ending in three and a half minutes, you know. So
that's a challenge for anyone. But that's what writing a

(54:14):
song is all about. And I love that too. But
there's no doubt I have a gift. I don't know
where it comes from, but I can pretty much write
a song on demand, you know.

Speaker 1 (54:29):
Okay, some people eke it out. I mean, Leonard Cohen
wrote songs over years. Some of the greatest songs in
rock history were written in fifteen minutes. Yeah, So do
you work on inspiration or you know, is it something
you work on a song and you do a song
a day or a song a week. How do you

(54:51):
actually do it? Is it more workman like or is
it more a lightning bolt?

Speaker 2 (54:57):
It's a lightning boat. But I'm very aware, after all,
you know, I've been writing songs now for over sixty years.
That's a long time. So I've kind of figured out
a few of the things. But for me and I
know a lot of songwriters are different, but for me,
I know when it's going to strike. I get a feeling.

(55:18):
If I know I've got to write a song, I'll
just sit at the piano or I'll sit my guitar
and I'll sit there and I think about what I
want to write about, and then I just do it.
And most of my biggest songs were written in fifteen
or thirty minutes. Yeah, Lost in Love was written in

(55:38):
fifteen minutes, simply because I know when the muse, if
you want to call it, that is there. I just
know it, and we have a communication. I just feel
it and I get goosebumps, and I say, Okay, I'm
going to write this song. And then when it's done,
you know, I have my phone going to record it.

(56:00):
I don't have any sophisticated recording technique. I just record
the song and then I'll go back and I listen
to what's on my phone. And I'm always nervous when
I go back to listen because I say to myself, God,
that was great, but it isn't that great. I listen
to my phone and every time I go, yes, I

(56:23):
got I've got the essence of it. Then I go
back and tidy it up and you know, and finish
the lyrics. So it's a great revelation for me, and
it's I love it so much because and every time
that comes, where that inspiration strikes me, I end up

(56:45):
in tears because it's such an incredible feeling and a moment.
You know, it's like I get taken over and I
just can't. I go into this massive crime thing almost
like wow, it happened again. But I don't deserve to
have these feelings and to do this. You know, there

(57:06):
should be somebody else, but it's not, you know, and
I you know, I don't have any training, musical training
about anything. It's all intuitive, but it's never let me
down so far, and I just love it. I just
love it so much.

Speaker 1 (57:26):
Okay, do you know when you write a hit?

Speaker 2 (57:30):
I do? Yeah? Well should I say I know when
I write a great song? I do yeah, because it
happens quickly, and I can just tell after all these years,
I go, oh yeah. But if I'm start to write
something and it doesn't reach my expectations, I'll stop and

(57:52):
I'll never go back to it. It has to happen
really fast so I can get that inspiration, that lightning boat.
I have to catch it and put it in a
bottle so that it's there, And when it is, it's
like the most incredible euphoria. It's like, I imagine it's
like a bit a drug. I don't do drugs, I

(58:14):
never have, but I imagine it's something like that where you know,
you go, oh my god, and it's incredible. It's like
you want to jump off the roof of your house.

Speaker 1 (58:25):
You know, lightning doesn't strike every day, So if you
want to have an album with ten or twelve tracks,
my experience is you can't have lightning strike all those times.

Speaker 2 (58:39):
No, that's true. But with this new album of ours,
we took a long time to record it, simply because
we were on the road so much and we wanted
to play, so we would block out two weeks or
three weeks and we'd go and record. So by the
time we came to a recording block, I'd written another

(59:01):
half a dozen songs, of which two or three I
was really I really knew that they were going to
be strong, so in my opinion, but I may be wrong.
This album is packed with really strong songs, but it
may not be. They may not be songs that people
want to hear anymore, because I don't pay any attention

(59:24):
to what's current or what's what's going to be a
hit or the new flavor of the moment. I just
don't pay any attention because if I did, I wouldn't
be doing what I want to do. I'm not going
to follow another person in their career because mine takes

(59:45):
two much time. I don't have time to listen to
new stuff because I'm working on songs all the time.
And maybe that's a failing, but I don't know. I
don't even know what gen x is or what's hip
or what's current or any of the new artists at all.
But I'm okay with that, you know, I don't. I

(01:00:07):
don't need to know anymore. And Air Supply takes a
lot of my time, but I love it, and it's
it's the band that Russell and I created, So why
wouldn't I love to to fill that that energy, fill
the band with that energy. And the people that work

(01:00:29):
for air Supply, all that crew and the band, they
all feel the same way. They just love it and
it's we all have a part to play, and it's like,
you know, when we I mean, I'm digressing. But when
we go to a show, like I leave tomorrow. We
go to Chicago and we have we have three shows
in a rown. When I see everybody, it's like, oh,

(01:00:51):
how you doing it? It's great to see you. I
mean I saw him four days ago, but we go,
oh wow, you know, it's great, what a what a
great life.

Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
How did you feel towards the end of the peak
of the air supply career in the early eighties late seventies,
when you recorded other people's songs.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
Yeah, well, you know, we were with Clive Davis for
a long time, and you know that I think maybe
eighty five or something. Yeah, it wasn't a good time
for me. Although everything was cool, we weren't selling any

(01:01:35):
albums anymore. It was just that time where people were
trying to have us hang on to everything. You're right.
We recorded a few songs that I really didn't care for.
You know, But I've always said this that Russell is
such a great singer. He deserves to sing other people's songs,

(01:01:55):
not just mine. He deserves to sing the greatest songs
in the world. But when we came on the scene,
of course, every man and their dog were sending songs
to Clive Davis for us, and some of them were
great songs. But then in eighty five or so people
thought they could reinventors. But I don't know where they

(01:02:17):
they figured out that we wanted to be reinvented because
we didn't. It was just we suddenly weren't on the
charts anymore. But that happens to every artist, or most artists,
should I say. And it was a weird time, you know.
All these songs were flying around and we had had
different producers for the albums and they said, oh, yeah,
record this, and ih, it just wasn't my thing. But

(01:02:40):
we recorded several of those songs that I really didn't
care for. One of them was a Bruce Springsteen song
that Clive Davis said, oh, you should record this. It
was called Sandy, and it taught I mean, I'm a
Bruce Springsteen fan. I don't mean any disrespect, but this
Sandy was about the New Jersey or the Atlantic City

(01:03:03):
Boardwalkers something, and we'd never even been there, you know,
And I said, why are we recording this? Because apart
from the fact that Clive said we should, why are
we doing this? We know nothing about this And the
song was a crappy song anyway. You know, every great
artist writes crappy songs as well as great ones. This

(01:03:23):
was one of those. And I thought, ah, you know,
but anyway that we got through that episode and we said,
you know, let's go to places that nobody's been to before.
Let's let's go where they know who we are, and
let's we went to Taiwan. At Taipei, we went to Vietnam,

(01:03:50):
South Korea, they'd never seen a Western band before. We
went to China and all these weird places, and it
was great to see a different point of view, in
a different perspective. And we went and talked these places
for about five years, and everybody said, even Billboard Magazine said, oh,

(01:04:11):
they've broken up. We never broke up. We just wanted
to do a different thing. You know. We went to
South America, into cities you can't even pronounce where we
come into town. There would be everybody came out of
their houses, dogs and cats, and people would just be waving,

(01:04:33):
hundreds of people like, oh, you know, this is really
what music is all about. It's doing things you haven't
done before. And then we got used to the fact
that we weren't going to be in the charts anymore.
It's just it was a fact, you know. So we
got used to that, and then we decided that we

(01:04:56):
just love to play anyway, Let's just play. And that's
that's when it started. We just played everywhere. We went
all over and we go all over the world. And
it's funny because not a lot of artists play all
over the world, you know, And I'm surprised. I mean,
of course, Taylor sway up the stones. Do not very

(01:05:19):
few really venture out of the US and go overseas.
I'm surprised, you know, But we did and it was wonderful,
you know. We we were up there and had a
photo shoot at the Great Wall of China and the
President of Taiwan gave us medals, you know, and he said,

(01:05:41):
when you come to Taiwan in the future, you don't
need to show your passport. You come straight through and go,
oh okay. So it was just not being in the
charts was a part of our career that we hadn't
thought about when we were in the charts. But you know,
then we went into a different a different phase, and

(01:06:04):
here we are, we're still in that next phase.

Speaker 1 (01:06:15):
Okay, whose idea was it to tour all these disparate places?

Speaker 2 (01:06:20):
It was Russell and mine. It really was we. You know,
when when my daughter was born in nineteen seventy, took
way before the man. The first song I heard was
a song called without You, which is which Nielsen's version,

(01:06:41):
and I've always loved that song. And in I think
nineteen eighty eighty eight or something, I said Harry, Harry
Masleum was producing, and I said, you know, Harry, I
want to record with at you. And he said, what
have I done? He thought, what did you want him
to do? I said, no, we want to record the

(01:07:02):
song without You. So we recorded it just because it's
one of the most beautiful songs ever written. And the
story behind it is tragic how it came to be written.
But anyway, we recorded it and it was on an
album that we recorded with Harry, and it became this
massive hit everywhere except the US, and then when people

(01:07:26):
heard our version, everybody else started to record it, you know,
Maria Carey, et cetera, all that. But it was a
big hit for US, especially in South America and in Asia,
and we said, okay, let's go down there. And it
was everything happened all over again for us. So that
introduced us to South America and places even in Asia

(01:07:51):
we hadn't been before, so it was a great thing.
And then once they got used to us again, another
generation discovered us. All the all the old albums started
to sell, and then everything became what it is now.

Speaker 1 (01:08:07):
Really, okay, tell me about a couple of places you
went there were really quite an experience.

Speaker 2 (01:08:16):
Uh do you mean the places are an experience?

Speaker 1 (01:08:20):
I mean I I you know, I like places that
are very different, where they don't speak English. I went
to Bogata once and literally everybody I interacted with it
had a family member killed, and there were a lot
of things, you know. Yeah, there are some other places.
I thought, you know, we have unique experiences that you
don't encounter in the United States. Oh sure, So I
was wondering if maybe you had a couple of experiences

(01:08:42):
you could tell us about.

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
Of course, Well, we played in Metagine. We played there
two or three times. The first time we went there,
the promoter was not a gangster, but he was he
knew what he was doing. And we were in our
transport going to the hotel from the airport and there
were a couple of guys on the roadway that will't

(01:09:08):
looked like they're laying down. They were resting or something.
And I said, to that our promoter, what's going on there?
He said, oh, he's just gone, you know. I said,
what do you mean he's going? He said, oh, he's
dead And I said really and he said yeah. And anyway,
we he took us out that night and he said,

(01:09:29):
I want I'd like you to take you out, you know,
to a club and all that we used to go
out in those days, not anymore. And then we said okay, yeah,
and we had a security to security guards with us,
and he said, we're going to go to this, to
a club that I go to all the time, and
I want you to meet my partner. So we go
to this. We pull up to this club and this

(01:09:53):
massive iron gates and on each side there's a there's
a guy in a suit with a machine gun and
we start freaking out, whoa And the gates open. We
go and say, just don't worry, everything's great, and we
go inside and it's a private club and there's you know,

(01:10:13):
the guy greets us and he says, yeah, we're going
to have a great time. You know, whatever you want.
What do you want, you know, booze, broads or blow
and we said we don't want any of those. So
we go in and he got a dinner for us
and on the table in the center at the table

(01:10:34):
is like a big ball and it looks like sugar
or salked and it's cocaine, you know. And he said,
dig in whatever you want to do. But we've never
been into that, you know. But some of our band impruded.
But it's like whoa, you know, and all these guys
walking around with you see the guns sticking out of

(01:10:54):
the chest. So it was really heavy. And when we
wanted we did the show and the promoter's partner wanted.
He wanted us to do a TV show because we
had bo guitar coming up. And we said, no, we
don't want to do that, you know, and he said, well,

(01:11:14):
I think I think you should. I said, no, we
don't want to. We don't want to do a TV show.
It was a day off, you know, and he said,
you're going to do the TV show. He said, first
of all, I have your passports. He said, if you
don't do the TV show, you're going to stay in
this hotel until you do. And we said, oh really,

(01:11:35):
and he said yeah. So we ended up doing the
TV show and then we left. Once we were in
we were in Vietnam and it was the first time
we'd gone there, and everybody was freaking out. They've never
seen a band before, and we had to go before

(01:12:00):
for all these generals and they were all in military dress,
didn't speak a word of English, and I think it
was like a dozen of them, and they said, through
an interpreter, we want you to play your show. I said,
what are you talking about. He said, we want you
to play your show. I said, We're not doing that,

(01:12:21):
and I kind of dug in, you know, I said,
you know what, We'll do our sound check. They can
listen to that. They didn't speak a word of English,
and we did the sound check and they said no,
and the interpreter came up and he said, now you've
got to play the whole show. I said, I'm not
playing the whole show. And I said they can shove it.
I don't care if we don't play it. And I've
had enough and I put my guitar down and I

(01:12:43):
walked out and I went back to the hotel and
everything was fine. Nobody said anything, and we did the
show and we left. But they they want to see you,
you know, under their own terms. But I says, no,
it's not going to happen. And I was just said, no,
it's not going to happen. So and it didn't. When

(01:13:03):
when we played China the first time in ninety six,
they'd never seen a band before, a Western band, and
we would go in the audience for the One that
you Love, and the promoter said, well, you can't go
in the audience here, you know. And it was a
big twenty thousand seat arena and when we got there

(01:13:27):
there was soldiers all around the perimeter, every six feet
with machine guns, you know, army people, and you know,
during the show, we came to the One that you Love,
and you know, I started it and Russell and I
looked at each other and I said, are we going
and he said yeah. So we got down off the

(01:13:47):
stage and we walked around. We went into the audience
and all everybody freaked out and the soldiers were they
didn't know what to do, but we just walked around
the wholes and everybody was fine. They were waving, and
we went back on stage and finished the song finished

(01:14:07):
the show, and they said, you can never come back
to China again. You can't do that. Of course, we
went back many times, but that was just what goes
on there, you know, and it's part of getting people
in the in the zone. You know, this is what's
happening people, but they're very reluctant to to to share

(01:14:30):
what's going on in the West, very careful about it,
you know. But it was a great experience, and after
that we've been back maybe half a dozen times to
China and it's great now. Of course everybody screams and chants,
but in those days they didn't do that, you know.
So we were kind of pioneers, if you like, with music.

(01:14:51):
But they wouldn't let any band whose lyrics or image
is considered contrary to the communist way of life, you know,
they they would We had to send all our lyrics
in they had to be okayed, and what we were
going to wear. We had to show pictures of what
we're gonna wear. And we couldn't swear on stage. We

(01:15:12):
don't anyway, and we always cool. We never wear jeans
on stage. So we passed all the auditions, but you know,
we gave him a couple of things to think about,
but we had to, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:15:26):
Okay, let's go back to Clive Davis. He is very
controlling of his artist careers. Yes, your experience, good beat
or otherwise.

Speaker 2 (01:15:39):
It was good with Clive, and he had a lot
to do with our success, you know. He All Out
of Love was a big hit in Australia two years
before it was released in the US, so you know,
it was a hit, and so the song had been
okay by everybody. But he came to me and he said,

(01:16:00):
you know, we got to change some of the lyric
a couple of lines in the corpse. Originally it was
I'm all out of love. I want to arrest you, right,
which is really weird now I think about it. And
he said, we can't. You can't have that here and
I said, but it was a hit already, it says,
yeah in Australia, not in the US. He said, you've
got to change that, and he said, what about I'm

(01:16:20):
so lost without you? And I sort of think thought
about it, you know, and the guy that was my
publisher pulled me aside and he said, listen to Clive.
He said, if you change that line, it'll be the
mass the biggest hit you'll ever have, and he said,

(01:16:41):
it's up to you. He says, change the line. What
the hell you know? And he said, Clive's right, it
may not get played, and so I said, okay. So
Clive got a credit, a writing credit on the song,
and he always donates it to charity. So instead of,
you know, a part of me said, God, somebody's trying

(01:17:02):
to mess with my songs. But then I thought, if
it's going to be a big hit, it's going to
be part of our legacy. So I said, yeah, let's
do it, you know. And you know, that was the
beginning of a great relationship with Clive. But then I learned, whatever,
if Clive suggests something, it's not merely a suggestion. He's

(01:17:23):
really telling you that you should do this. And all
the artists that he's worked with went through the same thing.
I had some stories, you know about that, And there
was one Eric Carmen was one of them, and he
was on Arista and Clive Clive wanted to wanted him

(01:17:46):
to sing a Billy Joe song. You know, I don't
know which one it was, but Eric says, now I'm
not doing it, you know. Anyway, he had a single
coming out and it came in the charts really fat,
and I spoke to her, so I know this is true.
He said, well, if he said, if you don't record

(01:18:07):
this song, the single just just come out for you
is going to die. And eric'sas now, it came in
the chart at like seventy with the bullet. Sure enough,
next week it just disappeared. So I learned that Clive
likes to have things his way, you know. But by

(01:18:29):
the same token, he gave us a great career, you know,
and he's always been very respectful to us and we
to him. We've never spoken derogatory about Clive. I mean
all the artists he's worked with, whether he has a
lot to do with their career or not, I mean
it's pretty much everybody. But with us, he was great.

(01:18:51):
You know. He came, he flew out. We were mixing
the one that you loved, and he wanted to know
what was going on with that because this was our
second album, which is very important, you know, we'd had
threest fives. He flew out to the he came to
the studio in Los Angeles and he sat right in

(01:19:12):
the middle of the console and he said to Harry,
who was producing the track. He says, okay, I'm ready
to hear it, you know, and he played the one
that you look a rough mix and he just sat
there with his eyes closed and he didn't say anything
for like two minutes. And I said, oh Jesus with one.
And he turned around and he said, it's going to

(01:19:34):
go to number one and it'll win. You were grammy,
he said, and he said that he walked out and
he was right, and we went, oh, okay, that that
just gave us another ten years on our career, you know.
So he was he was something else like.

Speaker 1 (01:19:55):
Well, you know the first yeah, the hit in Australa yea.
And he says, it didn't you know, work with Lyric
in America. Now you have success in America. To what
degree did he ask you to change or do things
that you would not plan to do? Well?

Speaker 2 (01:20:11):
After all out of love? There was nothing after that,
you know, with the one that you love. He never
touched it. He said, it's perfect, it's going to go
to number one, and it did. So I think I
don't think it was it was never ego with Clive.
It was just he wanted his way. He was the president.
Of Arista Records, which was an independent record company, and

(01:20:34):
he had a lot of success with Barry Manilow. And
you know, we went to see him in New York
in the early days in like nineteen eighty or eighty one,
because we'd go and he wanted to take us to
lunch whenever we were playing in New York. We were
in his office and there was this young African American lady,

(01:20:55):
she was really young, waiting to see Clive. It was
Whitney Houston and and we were you know, we said, oh,
I'm Graham and Russell. She knew who we were. She said, oh,
I'm really use and I'm I'm going to make a
record with Live. And Clive came out and he introduced
us again to and of course that became history. You know,
she was just incredible. She was such a she was

(01:21:18):
really young, and she was just bouncing with energy and
I thought, wow, she's going to be a big start.
And Clive was, you know, she was the new the
new kid on the block. I mean we still were too,
but that's what he did when he when he got
into an artist, it was total and for some reason,

(01:21:43):
he just got into us and he loved Lost in
Love And I asked him how we found lost enough.
He said, every every Monday morning he'd have a stack
of singles on his desk and he got one. It
was Lost in Love from Australia and he said he
played it and he loved it, and he said, I
want to buy this, and he bought the rights to it.

(01:22:07):
And that was it. Once he got into your space
and you were agreeing with him, you could do anything.
You know. He was the man that made careers or
didn't you know?

Speaker 1 (01:22:26):
So how did it end with Clive?

Speaker 2 (01:22:29):
Oh? It ended great. I mean we left Arista. Suddenly
we weren't in the charts anymore, and we left Arista
and we went with Irving as Off. We went from
one legend to another one, and Irving was great. But
when we left Arista, we left on great terms. And

(01:22:50):
Clive chords. He had a nineteen ninety he had I
can't remember what it was, something going on at Radio
City Music w and he had a lot of big
stars and in he called us and he said, would
you come and play Radio City for me? You know?
Of course? Yeah, So Russell and I went and we
did it. We just we played all out of log

(01:23:11):
just one guitar and two voices sounded incredible. And then
right at the beginning of COVID, uh yeah, he said, well,
he called me and I didn't know who it was,
you know, and he said, this is Clive. He said,
oh really, he said yeah, He said, would you do

(01:23:32):
a zoom thing for us? You know, a friend of
his was doing zooms and he had all these big
stars singing on zoom. He said, yeah, of course. So
we have a great relationship with him. He called me.
It was his ninetieth birthday and he said, what do
you want to come to this party? We couldn't come.

(01:23:53):
We already had shows books. So we have a great
relationship with him, which is wonderful, you know. But then
we went from Clive to Irving.

Speaker 1 (01:24:03):
And how was that experience?

Speaker 2 (01:24:05):
It was great, It was wonderful. You know. We went
to his label Giant, and it was with him we
had with that you became a massive here. And he said,
I remember we sat down to a restaurant and we
had that album and it sold way over a million
copies overseas, which was huge in those days. And we

(01:24:27):
wanted to see if we couldn't record another album. We
read it and he said, we said, well, we'd like
to record another album, you know, and he said, go
and do it. She says, just go and do it,
and so we did, and that that was even bigger
than the one with without you on it. It was
called the Vanishing Race. And so we had great success

(01:24:49):
with Irving and he was he was terrific, you know,
terrific guy.

Speaker 1 (01:25:00):
Okay, let's go back a story. How did you end
up leaving the UK for Australia.

Speaker 2 (01:25:08):
Well, after my mother died, there was two years where
my dad was just working. Then suddenly he started seeing
another lady, I mean fairy enough. He was still quite young,
you know, and then suddenly, without telling us, he got married.

(01:25:31):
You know. So I had a bit of an axe
to grind. And suddenly this lady came to our house
and he said, we just got married. And she had
three children too, and I had two sisters and we
were all going to live in the house that we had.
That wasn't a big house. It was two up. Oh,

(01:25:52):
he had won three bedrooms, an attic up on top
and then two rooms downstairs in the kitchen. Well, then
my eldest sister decided to leave and my other sister,
who was four years older than me, decided to get
married because she didn't want to live with another person
in the house. And I really resented it. And you know,

(01:26:17):
my dad's knew wife, whose name was Dorothy, had three children,
so they came into the house. So suddenly I had
to give my bedroom. I was sharing my bedroom with
two other boys that I didn't care for. And then
they started to talk about going to Australia, and I said,
I'm not really into that. I was doing very well

(01:26:37):
at school, you know, academically, I was really doing well,
writing my songs and everything was great. Then suddenly he said, well,
we've actually got a date to leave for Australia and
it's in like a month, and I said really, And
I didn't want to go. So when it came time,

(01:27:01):
when the night before they were going to leave, they
were going to go on the boat before they were
going to leave for Southampton on the train to get
on the boat, I said, I'm going to say goodbye
to my school friends. And I had a little rocksack
on my back and I left and I ran away
and I never saw him for five years, and only

(01:27:21):
two people knew where I was. I couldn't tell anybody,
even my closest friend at school. I couldn't tell because
I knew if he was questioned by the police, he
would tell him where I was. So I didn't tell.
Only two people knew, and for two days I went underground.
You remember, I was fourteen years old, you know, I

(01:27:44):
had no money, but I just didn't want to go
to Australia and I didn't want to go with his
new wife and their kids. Then I found out that
my dad left. He went, so that was the biggest
relief for me. So then I was on my own
and I went to my live with an aunt an uncle.

(01:28:05):
Then I went to live with another art and uncle.
I got passed around, you know, and then I started
to I had a girlfriend and I was seventeen. She
got pregnant and I had a son. Seventeen years old,
I had a son, and we decided to go to

(01:28:29):
Australia on our own terms. My sister had already gone
as well, and so we decided to go. And interestingly enough,
I was ready to go. Then musically I was playing
drums in this band going Nowhere and do It, playing
songs I didn't want to play, and I thought it
would be a nice change and maybe an Australian an

(01:28:53):
English musician might have some chance in Australia. So I
went there and everything was cool. I lived with my
sister and her husband, and you know, my dad never
mentioned anything about me running away ever, even to the data.
He never mentioned it, and neither did his new wife.

(01:29:16):
And I never really thought about it. And we became
very close as a family because I had my family,
and I started playing guitar and writing songs. Still, I
was playing in pizza parlors and I was making a
decent living. I was doing okay, you know, and that's

(01:29:37):
but that's how I went to Australia with a family.

Speaker 1 (01:29:41):
So playing in pizza parlors, you could support your wife
and young child.

Speaker 2 (01:29:47):
Yeah, I could. So one story, I don't mean to interrup,
but we went to a this place called Papa's Pizza,
which is where we lived, and I I saw her
in the corner. They had this little dice about four
feet square diace and I said to the guy, the
manager that said, what's that over there? He said, it's

(01:30:08):
a it's a little dice. He said. We used to
have a singer songwriter come in and not a singer songwriter,
a singer come in and play cover songs. I said, well,
you don't do it any much as now. He left
and I never got around to it. He said, would
you be interested in I mean, somebody come in and play?
He said yeah. He said, do you know anybody? I
said yeah, I said it's me, And so I went

(01:30:31):
there and after and he really liked I was playing
some cover songs Neil Young, you know, Van Morrison, and
a lot of my songs. But the people there didn't
care what it was. They just wanted some music. A
lot of kids throwing pizza around and slurping everything. But

(01:30:53):
I was making decent money there, and he said to
me one about after two or three weeks, he said,
would you be interested in playing at other Popper's pizzas?
Because there was a lot of it was a chain.
I said yeah, sure, I said, okay, would you be
interested in playing five nights at different ones? I said absolutely?
So I got paid and I got a big giant

(01:31:15):
pizza to take home for dinner. So I ended up
playing at all these Popper's pizzas, and I was making
a pretty decent living for then, you know, And I
was playing a lot of my own songs, some covers
which I played really well. And then I used to
start making songs up on the spot because nobody cared anyway,

(01:31:37):
and the kids really liked me. They come up and
pull faces and I would do the same thing, and
I went down really well and you got great reports.
And then I started to play universities at lunch time
and making even more money. And I played folk club
so I got a bit of a following. So that

(01:32:00):
how it began for me.

Speaker 1 (01:32:01):
You know, so you never from the moment you landed
in Australia, you didn't get a street job. You just
started making music.

Speaker 2 (01:32:10):
I did have a straight job yet, and the job
I had, which I loved, It was the best job
I ever had, except for a supply. And I needed
a job where I could finish early because my wife
at the time was one was working, so I needed

(01:32:31):
to look after my son, who was five years old,
and then we had a daughter too that was one
one year old. I needed to look after them in
the day so I could play at night. So I
got a job delivering bread in a truck. You know,
people want bread early, so I started at four o'clock.

(01:32:53):
By seven o'clock seven point thirty, I was finished and
I could go home, get to sleep, look after the kids,
and then when my wife came home, I could have
a nap, oh go and play do my papa's pizza.
But I had to be in bed early because I
was getting up at three thirty every day. But I

(01:33:15):
loved it because I was my young boss. My round
was in the mountains in the Dandinong's a mountain range
in Victoria, Australia, and I loved it. I was on
my own. I could smell beautiful trees early in the morning.
All these weird creatures would make all these weird sounds,

(01:33:37):
and I was finished early. I would meet the butcher.
We'd swap bread for meat and dairy and all kinds
of things. It was a wonderful job. I loved it
so much. I was really sad when I left. But
I left to go into Superstar. So that's what that
was my main job.

Speaker 1 (01:34:00):
So tell me about how you ended up going into
Jesus Great Superstar.

Speaker 2 (01:34:05):
Well, when I was doing my bread run, I was
driving my car in the day after I got back
from my bread run, and I had this really weird
feeling come over me, and this is true, it's a
bit weird. I had this incredible feeling welling up from

(01:34:28):
my feet up through my whole body, and I started
to cry, like profusely, and I thought I was having
a heart attack. I had to pull over. I couldn't drive.
I was crying and making this ridiculous noise and I
didn't know what was happening to me. And I pulled
over and I had my head in my hands, and

(01:34:53):
suddenly I lost all hearing. I couldn't hear anything, and
all I could see the car that I was in disappeared.
I was just sitting there. Everything was quiet, and it
went kind of a gray, misty color. And over there
to the right, I saw this figure and he was

(01:35:16):
off the ground. He was about three or four feet
off the ground and he was and he had a
beard and a big, long, you know, white rope and
he came over in front of where the car was,
and I thought, I remember thinking to myself, don't look

(01:35:36):
at me. I will freak, you know. I didn't want
him to look at me. And he came over. He
stood right in the middle of the of where the
road was, and he turned to look at me and
I'm dying, but I couldn't move. I'm crying profusely. I
had this incredible feeling over me that I'd never experienced

(01:35:58):
until then or since. It was this incredible feeling of love.
And he looked at me. He didn't say anything, but
I knew what he was saying, and he said, not speaking,
he just I knew what he was saying. He said,
it's not time for you yet, and I don't know
what it meant. And after he said that, he carried

(01:36:21):
on off the ground, just floating, and he disappeared. And
then gradually the car came back and I could hear things,
but I had this incredible feeling and it stayed with me,
and I went home. I didn't tell my wife Linda

(01:36:44):
about it for some time because I couldn't. I couldn't.
I didn't know what it was. I thought I was
dying or something. But I had this incredible feeling, and
I started to reach I wanted to read some books,
so I started a couple of religious books. And then

(01:37:06):
this friend of mine that was a guitar player too,
who I used to speak every couple of weeks, speaks
on the phone every couple of weeks. He came to
my house and he said, he said, I don't know why,
but I could have called you, but I needed to
come and I have to tell you something. I said,
what's that. He said, there's a lady. Her name's Dorothy Whittle,

(01:37:28):
and he said she's a friend of mine and she
has a book for you, and you need to go
and see her. I didn't know who she was. I
went to her house and then she was about seventy,
this little lady from the north of England, beautiful, beautiful soul.
And she said, you've had a weird experience r I said, yeah,

(01:37:51):
I have. She said, I got some books for you
to read, and I said, okay. I said, that's what
I'm looking for. So I became a verac reader. When
I came home, would come home from my bread run,
I'd read a book every day and it was, you know,
on Comparative Religion, the first book I ever I read

(01:38:16):
on it was it was a religious book, but I
wasn't a religious person and I'm still not. It was
the power of positive thinking. But it changed my whole life.
And I read it and I needed more, and I
read book after book after book trying to find an answer.
And then one day I went to Dorothy's house because

(01:38:38):
she lived near where my work was, so i'd go
to her place and she became like a library for me,
and I would swap books. She said when I went
there wondering, she said, did you see they had for
Superstar in the paper? I said, no, I haven't seen it.
She said, they're advertising for singers and in dancers and stuff.
I said, oh, really, I said, that's not my thing.

(01:38:59):
I'm not singer, I'm not a dancer. And she said,
she said, listen to me, if you go to that show,
it'll change your life. And when I knew enough to
know when she said something, I needed to listen, and
I said, really, she said, it will change your life.
So I went. I got the paper, I looked at

(01:39:19):
the thing. I called them up, and I asked for
an audition date and I got an audition. I didn't
know what to sing, so I picked a song and
I went to the audition. There were hundreds of people
there waiting to get in, and I thought, oh, the
chances of me getting an audition, not even getting a part,

(01:39:43):
so remote. But because she told me to do it,
I stuck it out and I waited. I did my audition.
It took about three minutes. I said thank you and
I was done, and I thought, thank god, that's over.
I followed through and I thought, great, now I can
get on with my life. And I didn't let Dorothy down.

(01:40:06):
Two weeks later, I get a cool this is Superstar
of the Office from Superstar. We're offering you a part
in the show. You have to leave in two weeks.
There's a month rehearsal in Sydney and you'll be gone
for eighteen months to two years. Can you take the job?
And they told me how much I was going to
get and I said yes, and I was on top

(01:40:31):
of the world. My whole life had changed suddenly. I
was going to be a professional singer, not singing my songs,
but singing Superstar music, which is incredible. And so I
go the first day of rehearsal, I meet this guy

(01:40:53):
with the big afro and we sing together for the
first time and I hear and it was Russell. Of course,
we hadn't even met nobody, knew anybody in the room
and he was sat next to me and I went,
I said, after the rehearse, I said, what an incredible voice.
You have. He said, oh, really, thank you, He said,

(01:41:14):
I've never really sung much before. I said, you sign incredible.
But an alarm went off in my brain and it said,
you need to meet him, you need to work with him.
Because I knew how to write songs, not hit songs
at that point, but I was never a singer, and
I knew it. You know, I didn't want to be

(01:41:36):
a lead singer, but this guy was. And we became
such incredible friends from the very first moment we met.
It was a pluncanny. We had so much in common.
You know, first of all, we have the same name,
We're born three days apart. Neither of us had a brother.

(01:41:58):
We had a sister. I had two sisters, and you know,
we didn't have anything else. We grew up with nothing
and we just hit it off. You know. It was uncanny,
and that's how that's how it all began.

Speaker 1 (01:42:21):
Okay, what did your wife say when you said you
were going to go on the road for eighteen months.

Speaker 2 (01:42:29):
I must say she was incredibly supportive. She had we
had two kids, but I was going to make a
lot of money, well for me then, you know, I
was assured of making a decent wage and she liked
that it wasn't any uncertainty, and she was so supportive,

(01:42:49):
and I said, I want you to come with me
when we start touring, not in rehearsal. We were in
rehearsal for Sydney for a month, but when we went
we started in New Zealand, and I said, you're coming
with me, and she did, and she brought the kids
and straight away she got a job in the show

(01:43:11):
selling programs, and so she was earning money. We had
a babysitter for the kids. Then then she got into
the office because she was in accounting. She was really
good too, so she took a job selling programs, became
really good at that, and then she ended up in
the office. So she went all over with Superstar working.

(01:43:32):
So that was great. The family were there and during
that time, even from the very early days when I
met Russell, we said are you inter forming a bat
and he says, yeah, I'm into it. And he said
to me, she said, bro, I don't want to write
any songs, and I don't write songs. I just want
to sing. And I said that's perfect. I'll write the

(01:43:54):
songs and you sing. And it was the most perfect
scenario that we could even actually, and we were both
green as grass. We didn't know what we were doing,
but we just knew we wanted to do it, and
that's how it began. And it went from there, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:44:13):
Okay, So what was the experience of being in Superstar
like and how did that end?

Speaker 2 (01:44:19):
Well? I knew when we went in that we were
going to be guaranteed eighteen months, maybe longer. But I
also knew that Superstar at that time, in nineteen seventy
five was a big, big show. It was when it
came to Towan, it took over all the media, all
the papers, and I knew that it was a stepping

(01:44:40):
stone for us. We had to make use of it.
We had to use Superstar. So straight away we got
we started singing my songs and a couple of other
cover songs, and we started and we had the lady,
another lady in the show that actually got the role

(01:45:01):
of Mary eventually, but she was I knew her from
before my Papa's Pizza days. She was in the show.
She had a great voice, and she came in with
us and we had a little trio three part harmonies
Lack Crosby, Stills and Nash I was playing guitar, Russ
was playing congers, and we sang all these songs, ninety

(01:45:24):
nine percent of in with my songs, and we sounded
fabulous and people would come by the dress room and say, God,
you guys sound good. And we started. I would call
clubs wherever we were in New Zealand say, we're from Superstar.
We have a little act. Can we come and play? Yeah?

(01:45:45):
Of course, because it was a big draw Superstar, we would.
They would pay us to come and play. We'd do
an hour set and we sounded so good, and that
just grew and grew. We ended up doing making videos.
People would come up to us and say, do you
want to make a video? Yeah, let us do it,
and we got this reputation of being with Superstar.

Speaker 1 (01:46:09):
Just to be clear, Superstar plays every night. When were
you playing these.

Speaker 2 (01:46:12):
Gigs, the show would end about ten point fifteen. We
go to a club at eleven o'clock and play pretty
much every night. So we got really good at doing this.
And we were young. We didn't care if if we
got tired or anything. You know, we weren't We weren't
doing any drugs, we weren't drinking or anything. We were

(01:46:35):
just wanted to play, and we were really good at it,
and everybody in the show was noticing and they come
and see, say, god, you guys great. Then suddenly Chrissy
got the role of Mary. They fired Mary. She got
the role of Mary Magdan, so she couldn't sing with
us anymore. So when we got to Brisbane, they high

(01:47:00):
had another three people and one of them was this guy,
Jeremy Paul and he was a bass player and he
had a great voice. He was our age and we
said to him, do you want to step in and
sing with us? And he says, yeah, I'd love to,
and that that became a supply. That was the first
one and we made we were We made a demo

(01:47:23):
in the pit of Superstar, using the show's drummer and
the show's keyboard player. We recorded two of my songs
on a cassette and you know, talk about low fi.
We just did it live on a little portable cassette
machine and it sounded amazing. It was no high fire

(01:47:45):
or anything, but it sounded great. Russell's voice was incredible,
and we took that little cassette we only had one
copy around to all the record companies and they all
said no. And then the last one we took it
to was CBS Records, and it was a guy that
had just been made a producer for CBS. He was

(01:48:09):
already a famous producer. He had a lot of success
with other artists. And he listened to it and he said,
he said, this kind of music isn't isn't happening. But
he said, something's telling me to sign you guys that
I don't know what it is. And he signed us
and we made it. We made a single, and we

(01:48:32):
made the album in a week and the single came out,
it screamed up the charts. It was the biggest hit
of the year. And nobody knew who we were because
we were still in the show. And he before the
record came out, he said, we didn't have a name,
and he said, what are you going to call yourself?

(01:48:52):
We said, we don't know. He said, I need a
name by tomorrow morning. So that night we were trying
to think of names, and I had a dream, and
this is a true story. I dreamt of a big
billboard and it was pure white and on the perimeter
with flashing lights or strokes and neon lights going crazy,

(01:49:16):
and in the middle of the billboard in big black letters.
It said air supply. And I told Russell and Jeremy
in the morning, I said, I don't know what this means,
but I had this really vivid dream and they said, well,
we haven't got any names either, let's go with it.
So that's how we got the name. And that's that's

(01:49:36):
it began right there, and the record was going to
come out, and the producers said, Peter Dawkins was wonderful person.
He said, there's a friend of his wants to play
the song at like nine o'clock at night the first time.
He said, he's given him the right to be the

(01:49:59):
first one to play, and so we all wait. You know.
It was a Sunday, so we were doing a superstar
show and the guy said, yeah, I've got this band.
It says, I'm going to play this record first time
anywhere in the world. You know, I'm going to play it,
and then I hope you're listening, guys, here here we go,
you know. So he played it and it sounded amazing,

(01:50:22):
you know, first time he had heard a song on
the radio. And about half an hour later he said,
my fans have gone berserk. He says, I've got to
play this song again, and he played it about ten
times that night and his phones just lit up. Everybody
wanted that song, and within two weeks it was in

(01:50:45):
the top ten. So suddenly this band called Air Supply,
we're getting all these plays and it became a big, big,
big hit. It became a classic song in Australia.

Speaker 1 (01:50:57):
You know, So how do you then with Superstar? And
then you made a couple of records before you know,
Clive picked up.

Speaker 2 (01:51:07):
We did well Superstar. We were told it was going
to end, so we had about a month's notice, but
our record was in the charts when it Superstar ended,
so we were pretty happy about it. We were ready
to make that move, and so we made the move.

(01:51:27):
And they had a show called Superstars in Rock or
the two big stars were Trevor White and John English
who played Jesus and Judas, and they were the biggest
stars in Australia. We become really good friends with them.
So we were on their show Superstars in Rock, and

(01:51:48):
we opened the show and we pretty much stole the show.
We had top five songs and then suddenly were going,
oh wow, this isn't a supply. We know who they
were and so we played with them for about six
weeks all around Australia. Then we started our own shows.
So Superstar ended and we went straight into our supply.

(01:52:11):
One of the first shows we played on our own
after we played with John with Superstars in Rock was
at the Opera House and New Year's Eve on the
steps of the Opera House, and there were ninety thousand
people there. We weren't the only act on the build.
There were a lot of other big acts, but nevertheless

(01:52:31):
it was our first big show to a lot of people,
and we were like whoa, we were so green, we
had no idea what we do. We hastily put a
band together and we went on tour and that's how
it all began. So Superstar ended and air supply began.

Speaker 1 (01:52:48):
Okay, how'd you end up in Los Angeles?

Speaker 2 (01:52:51):
Brook, Well, we had a two or three big hits.
Next year we were touring in Australia, big hits, but
we couldn't really make any money. And in the end
we we said, God, what are we going to do?

(01:53:14):
You know? And then suddenly Rod Stewart was touring and
we were asked to open for him because we were
like the biggest band in Australia at the time, so
we opened for him. After the first show, Rod came
to our dressing room personally and he said, I want

(01:53:37):
I want you to open for me in the US
next year, and we went what we couldn't believe it,
but he meant it, and so we went to the US.
We opened for Rod. We did about sixty shows and
we everything was happening for us so fast, and we thought, oh,
this is it, We're going to break wide open, but
we didn't. But we learned from Rod. We watched this

(01:54:02):
show every night. We became really good friends, and we
learned so much from him, just about an audience, how
to handle big audiences. We played everywhere, we opened for him,
Madison Square, Gardens, everywhere. But then we got we got
dropped after you know, when that tour ended, we were

(01:54:23):
back in Australia and we had no hope. We had
no shows to do, we had no band, we had nothing.
We were broke, and I went I decided to go
away and I just wanted to write some songs on
my own. So I went to a friend's place in
Adelaide to get away from everything, and I started to

(01:54:47):
write some songs and then I over six month period.
I called Russell up and I said, I think I've
got some interesting songs, you know, And he came down
on a bus. He took her like a twenty two
hour bus ride to come and see me. And the
first song I played him was lost in Love, and

(01:55:10):
I thought lost in It was a good song, but
he said stop. He said, this is the song that's
going to change it for us. I said really, he
said yeah. I played him that, and I played him
a few of the songs, Chances, all out of Love.
He said, okay, let's do it again. Let's put a
band together. So we did. We released an album we

(01:55:32):
Lost in Love on it. It became a big hit,
but we still weren't making any money. We had a
gold album, twenty thousand copies of an album, but we
weren't making anything. We couldn't afford to do anything. So
I decided, well, we both decided to stop. I wanted

(01:55:52):
to go to this music festival in Cannes, in the
south of France, so I sold a couple of guitars
to get to go there to try and sell some songs.
I get to can and I got food poisoning. I
couldn't get out of bed for three days. I thought

(01:56:13):
I was going to die. And by the time I
got out of bed and walked down the street, the
whole festival was over. It was done. And I thought, okay,
here we go. Just my look. And then there was
a copy of Record World was blowing down the street.
It's all rubbish blowing. Every everybody had left, and I

(01:56:36):
picked I thought, okay, I picked it up. I picked
it up. On the front cover it said lost in Love.
I turned to page five. This song is destined to
go all the Way? And I thought, oh great, somebody,
somebody's written a song called lost in Love, which is
our biggest chance of anything. And I thought everything. I

(01:56:58):
thought we were sunk. But I turned to page five
and there's a picture of Russell and myself there on
that page, and it said air supply going to go
all the way and is an article by Clive Davis.
He'd licensed the song without our knowledge. So I thought, WHOA,
what's going on here? I called Clive, who I didn't know,

(01:57:22):
and I reversed the chargers. Because I had no money.
I called him at Arista Records. He was in I
called New York. He said he's in Los Angeles. I said,
can you give me the number? He gave me the number.
I reversed the chargers. He accepted and he said, are
you from air Supply? I said yeah. He said what
where are I said, I'm in the side of France.
He said, what are you doing there? Get back to Australia.

(01:57:45):
We need that album. He said, Lost in Love's going
to be the biggest song of the year. But as
soon as I heard that, I knew everything was going
to be okay. But on my way back, I went
through Los Angeles. I said, can I come and meet
you to tell me that this is all for real?

(01:58:05):
And he said, yeah, come on, we'll have lunch. I
went to the Bevery Hills Hotel and his bungalow lunch
and he kept it and said, you've got to get
out of it. Get back to Australia, get that album
right now. And so I went back. We made the
album and then everything after that became history.

Speaker 1 (01:58:28):
You know, Okay, Just a couple of questions after the
Rod Stewart tour, Yeah, did you and Russell think you
were going to continue?

Speaker 2 (01:58:38):
No? We well, we weren't going to give up, but
we just had no money. You know. Russell was working
on videos with other artists with a fog machine, sticking
a fog machine in a bass drum. And he was
actually on a little riverband video for reminiscing, and he's

(01:59:01):
sticking the fog machine in the base room. And they
knew he was a singer, and they said, and what
are you doing here? You need to get to the
US because they were a huge little rivermand But I
just needed to earn some money. I had two children,
you know, and I wasn't making any money. I needed

(01:59:22):
to do something. So the only thing I should think
of was to sell songs. And somebody recorded Lost in
Love in Europe, a Greek artist called Demise Rusos, and
it was a big hit all over Europe. So I
made a little bit, a few thousand dollars from that.
But I thought, I've got to sell all the songs.

(01:59:43):
I've got to earn a living, you know. But that
was the only way I could think of. I had
no skills. I wasn't a tradesman or anything. I had nothing,
you know. The only skill I had was I knew
how to write songs, but I was unknown. Nobody wanted
to buy songs from me, I was unknown.

Speaker 1 (02:00:01):
How did it end with your first wife?

Speaker 2 (02:00:04):
Well, when I went with Rod, you know, she knew
I was going to be gone for six months, which
I was, and we kind of knew it was going
to come to an end, you know, we both realized it.
And once I was there for a month and two months,
you know, she said, I'm going to go back to
England and she went back to England with the kids

(02:00:27):
and we were okay with it. I said, yeah, it's
a different vibe now, isn't it. She said, yeah, it is.
But she was never antagonistic. She was always very supportive
and I must give her that, and I always have.
You know. She was wonderful and the only thing that
was important to us was the children, making sure they

(02:00:50):
were okay, and they were, you know, I would see them.
I went to England to see them. I threw them
out to Australia all the time, and I always wanted
to maintain a great relationship with them. And now they're
in the fifties, so I have a great relationship with them.

Speaker 1 (02:01:07):
You know, what are they doing.

Speaker 2 (02:01:10):
My son lives in Tennessee. He works on a big
ranch actually, and my daughter lives in Brisbane, Australia, and
she worked for the government on ecosystems and things like that.
So they're doing really well. They You know, I have
six grandchildren, so life has been good to me. You know.

(02:01:35):
There was that time around Rod's time where I thought,
oh god, I've got no money, I'm losing my family,
I've got no prospects. But right when it was darkest,
there was a light shining. You know.

Speaker 1 (02:01:51):
So are those the only two kids you have?

Speaker 2 (02:01:54):
Yeah? They are. Yeah. I didn't want to go through
it all again, you know, but you ultimately got red, Ma,
I did. Yes.

Speaker 1 (02:02:02):
So how did you meet your new wife?

Speaker 2 (02:02:05):
She was at a show in Rockford, Illinois with her mother.
She was quite young, and somehow she got backstage and
we swapped her dresses and I said I'd love to
She was like sixteen. I said I'd love to write
to you, you know. And we wrote to each other

(02:02:26):
for two years. And when she was nineteen, they were
looking for somebody to shoot the video of making love
out nothing at all, and they couldn't find anybody. And
they said to me, do you know anybody this young
blonde lady that's kind of very good looking and attractive

(02:02:46):
and I said, as a matter of fact, I do,
and they called her and they said we want, we
want you to come out and be in that video.
And when she came out, we we final in love
because we were thrown together for the first time to
fun in Love. We got engaged and we got married
when she was twenty one and ever since.

Speaker 1 (02:03:11):
Wow, just one other thing, going back to Rod's do
it you did all those dates, no one came up
and said, wait, wait, I don't want to sign you.
There's something going on here.

Speaker 2 (02:03:23):
Well, we were signed to CBS because we were signed
to CBS Australia and CBS in the United States were
really handed us. They were given us. They had to
look after us, you know, and they really didn't want to.
They didn't see any future for us. So you know,

(02:03:43):
our album wasn't in the stores. We never did any
press or any interviews. They just didn't want anything to
do with us. We just happened to be on their
label and they were handed us and that they had
to do something with us, but they never did. There
was nobody that came to the show said hey, guys,
let's release a single. They never released anything. The album

(02:04:05):
was released, but nothing happened. They just didn't want anything
to do with it, you know.

Speaker 1 (02:04:11):
And then you know, it was a typical opening act deal.
The money was so poor that at the end of
the tour there was nothing.

Speaker 2 (02:04:18):
Left, nothing left. I think we made maybe five hundred
dollars a show. But I must say Rad and his
entourage really did the right thing. You know. We never
had a sound check. We were just got thrown on.
I mean, this is his show, you know. But we
were fortunate enough to be opening for the biggest act
in the world. We didn't make any money, but we

(02:04:41):
became good friends with his whole entourage. We would he
we would have dinners with them all night, so you know,
suddenly we'd be I mean, we were nobody, you know.
Then we'd be having dinner with the biggest act in
the world at a posh hotel and we'd never been
used to eating whatever we felt like or drinking fine wise,

(02:05:03):
and we would say, you know, we can we have
this this or that, and they say, whatever you want,
you know, And it was pretty much two or three
nights a week was like that. So we really were
looked after, and they did the right thing with us,
which was incredible. They could have just you know, they

(02:05:25):
didn't need to have us open for them. They didn't
need us. We needed them. And you would imagine that
we would break after doing sixty shows with them, but
we just didn't. And it was meant on reflection that
it was meant for us to get in the trenches,
go back and learn your craft. We'd learned a lot

(02:05:47):
from Superstar, we'd learned a lot from being with Rod.
Now we had to learn to be ourselves and to
get ready for the success that was coming our way.
But we didn't even know it.

Speaker 1 (02:06:00):
You know, Well, we've learned a lot here, Graham. Today,
I think that we've covered the surface at least of
what's going on, and I think we're gonna stop it here.
I want to thank you for taking the time with
my audience, Bobby.

Speaker 2 (02:06:17):
It's been such a pleasure. Thank you for the invitation.
When they first had always it's going to be two hours,
I thought, God, I don't know if I can sit
still for two hours, but I managed to do it
and it's been fantastic. Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (02:06:32):
Well, you know, once we hit the groove there, you know,
it's like you you start telling this stray, I can
as I say we can talk all day. I got
a few more questions, but we're gonna leave it here
for now.

Speaker 1 (02:06:44):
Hopefully I'll see on the road at some point, I hope.

Speaker 2 (02:06:47):
So, I hope you come and see how show it again?

Speaker 1 (02:06:49):
Right? In any event, till next time. This is Bob
Leftstock