Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Website Podcast. My
Speaker 1: guest today is Graham Russell Leversa Griham. How'd you end
Speaker 1: up living in Park City?
Speaker 2: It's an interesting story. We were playing at the MGM.
Speaker 2: We were doing two weekends in Vegas. This was in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine, actually in nineteen ninety and normally I
Speaker 2: would have gone home because I was living in Malibu, California.
Speaker 2: Normally I would go home, but I decided to rent
Speaker 2: a car and just drive north for a few days,
Speaker 2: with no plans, no where to stay. I just wanted
Speaker 2: to drive. And when I left Vegas behind, I entered
Speaker 2: this desert area and I found it really intriguing. And
Speaker 2: then all the red rocks appeared and I was driving
Speaker 2: for about five hours and the road was dead straight.
Speaker 2: I thought, wow, this is pretty cool. And when I
Speaker 2: got to this little town, I got the phone book
Speaker 2: and I called a real estate agent. So I just
Speaker 2: I didn't know anybody. I called this gentleman up out
Speaker 2: of the Yellow Pages and I said, I don't buy anything,
Speaker 2: but what's going on here? It's kind of interesting and
Speaker 2: he said, well, you know, it's a very rural area.
Speaker 2: And we met for breakfast and he showed me some houses,
Speaker 2: and the first one he showed me was the one
Speaker 2: I bought, although he showed me about twenty five houses,
Speaker 2: and I said, I don't want to buy anything. I
Speaker 2: just want to see what's happening around here, because it
Speaker 2: was all new to me. The mountains and the serenity
Speaker 2: and the clowns and the fresh air. I thought, wow.
Speaker 2: And he showed me a lot of houses. And then
Speaker 2: when he finished showing me, I said, remember the first
Speaker 2: one we looked at. I said, yeah, I said, I
Speaker 2: want to go and see that again. But it was
Speaker 2: just it was a weekender. It was it was just
Speaker 2: a shell. But he came with one hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: six acres, which I at that time I thought was
Speaker 2: a lot of land. In Malibu, I had about five acres,
Speaker 2: which was a lot of land. And I ended up
Speaker 2: buying the house. You know. I said, I'm going to
Speaker 2: buy it, you know, So I bought it. That's how
Speaker 2: I came to be in Utah thirty four years ago.
Speaker 1: Okay, how close to the town of Park City are you?
Speaker 2: I'm about ten miles away.
Speaker 1: I happen an old area, which direction, well.
Speaker 2: I'm east of Park City, so it sees, oh, you
Speaker 2: know the area. Yeah, yeah, it's a beautiful area, you know.
Speaker 2: And when I when I bought the place, it was
Speaker 2: park City that really nailed it for me because it's
Speaker 2: a cosmopolitan city, not too big, but it has great
Speaker 2: restaurants and it's a very liberal place, which I was
Speaker 2: not looking for, but it added to the mystique of it.
Speaker 2: And so I thought, what these great restaurants around because
Speaker 2: where I live then certainly there was nothing here, you know, nothing,
Speaker 2: but that's what I really wanted. So but then if
Speaker 2: I can be in park City within fifteen minutes at
Speaker 2: all kinds of restaurants, yeah, that put the nail in
Speaker 2: the deal for me, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, Needless to say, in thirty four years, park City
Speaker 1: has really changed.
Speaker 2: It has it has? And you know, I actually don't
Speaker 2: go in there that much anyway, as much as I
Speaker 2: used to because there's a lot of people there now.
Speaker 2: But when when I bought the house, I'm in now
Speaker 2: the shells, should I say? The agent that I called
Speaker 2: out the phone book, who became a really good friend.
Speaker 2: We sat in the house and he said to me
Speaker 2: there were five lots in front that were pretty big lots,
Speaker 2: and he said, if I were you, if you can
Speaker 2: afford these lots, buy them now, and nobody you'll ever
Speaker 2: get any closer. And I was able to buy them,
Speaker 2: and I'm glad I did now because nobody can get
Speaker 2: as close as they were even thirty four thirty five
Speaker 2: years ago. So I kind of was able to buy
Speaker 2: my little sanctuary. And you know, when because I spent
Speaker 2: so much time in cities and traveling around the world,
Speaker 2: it's just wonderful to come back to the peace and
Speaker 2: the serenity is great for me. But it's not for everyone.
Speaker 2: You know. When I first bought it, Russell would come
Speaker 2: up occasionally because I put a studio in the house.
Speaker 2: He would he would look out the window and he
Speaker 2: would say, Wow, it's the quiet is beautiful. But it
Speaker 2: wasn't for him because he's more he needs a city.
Speaker 2: But for me, it's perfect. You know. I can just
Speaker 2: listen to nothing, and that's great for me. You know.
Speaker 1: Okay, thirty four years ago, you leave Vegas, you come
Speaker 1: to Park City, you call that real estate agent. Do
Speaker 1: you tell him you're in air supply?
Speaker 2: No, I didn't. I never do to anyone. But if
Speaker 2: they find out that's that's okay. He did find out
Speaker 2: once I wanted to buy the house because of finance
Speaker 2: and all that kind of stuff, and he kind of
Speaker 2: was shocked. He says, oh my god, I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, but then they all get used to it.
Speaker 2: They refer to me in this area, or they used
Speaker 2: to as the movie star that lives upon the hill.
Speaker 2: You know. They say, when I go to the grain
Speaker 2: store to get grain and bird seed, well now they
Speaker 2: know me on a first name basis. But when I
Speaker 2: first used to go, they'd say, are you the movie star?
Speaker 2: And I'd say, no, I'm actually not a movie star,
Speaker 2: you know, but they've got used to me. Now now
Speaker 2: I'm considered a local, which is wonderful.
Speaker 1: Okay, everyone knows the name ere supply, but you know,
Speaker 1: the two of you, you and Russell have been in
Speaker 1: the you know, the act forever. But then the other people,
Speaker 1: are you recognized?
Speaker 2: You know, yes I am. However, you know, when I
Speaker 2: get on a plane, I'm recognized. But I'm six feet
Speaker 2: five and tall, you know, so wherever I go, people
Speaker 2: go whoa. But when Russell and I are together, we
Speaker 2: certainly we get recognized, you know, but it's always a
Speaker 2: positive thing. It's always great. People come up to us
Speaker 2: all the time and that will say, oh my god,
Speaker 2: I got married your songs, and you know, there's that
Speaker 2: and the other, and we'll go, oh, that's fantastic. And
Speaker 2: people have done that for decades and we've never turned
Speaker 2: down an autograph or taking a picture ever. And I
Speaker 2: think that has a lot to do with with our
Speaker 2: fan base, you know, because it spreads. But we've never
Speaker 2: said now, I'm not signing anything. We've never done that,
Speaker 2: and I don't think we ever will, because we're very
Speaker 2: aware that the people that come to our shows put
Speaker 2: gas in my car, you know, and they're part of
Speaker 2: the whole cycle of life. For me. They gave me
Speaker 2: the place where I live and everything that I own,
Speaker 2: they've given it me, They've helped me get it. So
Speaker 2: I will always be grateful and indebted to them for that.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Do you think that air supply gets the specter deserve.
Speaker 2: I think so. You know, there are when you know,
Speaker 2: in the eighties, for instance, you know, we had we
Speaker 2: achieved a lot. At one point, we had as many
Speaker 2: top fives as the Beatles, you know, for a short
Speaker 2: space of time, and that to us was quite staggering
Speaker 2: because the Beatles are everything to us. They were and
Speaker 2: still are. I think there are other bands that have
Speaker 2: achieved less than us that get a lot more attention.
Speaker 2: But you know, it doesn't bother us because we prefer
Speaker 2: to step back and let the music speak for us.
Speaker 2: You know, we've never been in the magazines. We've never
Speaker 2: been in Rolling Stone, let alone on the cover of
Speaker 2: Rolling Stone. In fact, when The One that You Love
Speaker 2: was number one, Rolling Stone didn't even have in the
Speaker 2: top twenty in the magazine. They pulled it out because
Speaker 2: we probably weren't good copy. However, we've kind of got
Speaker 2: used to it and it doesn't bother us at all
Speaker 2: because what's important to us are the fans and us
Speaker 2: getting on stage and playing. That's what we love to do,
Speaker 2: and we probably do more shows than any other band
Speaker 2: in the industry. We play one hundred and thirty every
Speaker 2: year and we're almost at fifty six hundred in our career,
Speaker 2: and I don't think a lot of artists have done that,
Speaker 2: or at least are able to play at a very
Speaker 2: high level. I mean, we're not the Rolling Stones, but
Speaker 2: for what we do, we do it with a lot
Speaker 2: of class and we created our own sound and that's
Speaker 2: what that's what we play.
Speaker 1: You know, since you've done so many gigs, do you
Speaker 1: find that it's a hardcore fan base that is coming
Speaker 1: to see you and you actually know these people or
Speaker 1: is it like air Supply goes to a town you've
Speaker 1: had a lot of hits. People come as they say,
Speaker 1: certain acts, you know surprisingly Kenny g you know Fish
Speaker 1: on the other stream, they have very hardcore of fans.
Speaker 1: What are the fans like for air Supply?
Speaker 2: They're hardcore the airheads that there's millions of them, and
Speaker 2: some of them a few, not a lot. I've seen
Speaker 2: maybe five six hundred shows.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's their legion. And we talk to them because
Speaker 2: we know them on a first name basis, and we
Speaker 2: have a as all artists do. Now, we have a
Speaker 2: VIP thing at sound check and people come get a
Speaker 2: picture and they listen to soundcheck and we talk to them,
Speaker 2: you know, and we say why do you keep coming back?
Speaker 2: And they say, we can't stay away. We don't know
Speaker 2: what it is, but we can't stay away. If you're close,
Speaker 2: we have to come and see the show. I don't
Speaker 2: know why, but you know, after all these years, I think, well,
Speaker 2: I'm convinced that people go to see shows to hear
Speaker 2: hit songs. There's no doubt about that. When I go
Speaker 2: and see McCartney or The Stones, or Peter Gabriel and Sting,
Speaker 2: who are all my favorites, you want to hear the
Speaker 2: hit songs, you know. And fortunately we have a lot
Speaker 2: of them, and we play them all every night that
Speaker 2: we play, and people know that and they want to
Speaker 2: be part of your journey, you know, with us. But
Speaker 2: I think specifically with our music, it's very it's the word,
Speaker 2: it's very family. It's family music. You know. They have
Speaker 2: a lot of memories to us. They got married, because
Speaker 2: we've been together for fifty years. It's their whole family
Speaker 2: is part of it. They got married to us, they
Speaker 2: had the babies, they've lost people that you know, we
Speaker 2: can name any one of a dozen songs that are
Speaker 2: their favorite songs and we're going to play it for them.
Speaker 2: So it's it's like this nuclear fission that just keeps
Speaker 2: empowering itself every time we play, you know, it really does.
Speaker 1: Okay, So with this date, why do you play so
Speaker 1: many shows?
Speaker 2: You know, it's simply because we love to play, we
Speaker 2: really do. And we've you know, Russell and I have
Speaker 2: always said years and years ago, we said we'll stop
Speaker 2: playing when the people stopped coming, you know. But I
Speaker 2: think we we offer a message. You know. The songs
Speaker 2: are great songs for people to live by, and they
Speaker 2: have they hold incredible memories for everyone, and we're part
Speaker 2: of that cycle. They come to the show and I
Speaker 2: see them, you know, when we step on stage, I
Speaker 2: see them. A lot of them are in tears, you know,
Speaker 2: they go, oh my god, I can't believe I'm watching them.
Speaker 2: But it's not like it's different than like, although we
Speaker 2: are a rock and roll band, it's different than most
Speaker 2: other rock and roll bands. We don't come out and
Speaker 2: try and blow people's brains out with volume or anything.
Speaker 2: It's a different energy with us, and I'd like to
Speaker 2: think it's ours alone with our music, you know. But
Speaker 2: we just love to play, and one of these days
Speaker 2: we won't be able to for whatever reason, be it
Speaker 2: a health reason or we just can't do it. And
Speaker 2: who knows when that's going to be. I mean, if
Speaker 2: you look at like McCartney and the Stones, or keep
Speaker 2: referring to them again, because they really wield the power
Speaker 2: that they're the role models for artists like myself. You know,
Speaker 2: they're eighty two years old and they're just killing it
Speaker 2: and they're great. Got Mick Jagger running everywhere. So that's
Speaker 2: what I want to do. I want to be playing
Speaker 2: at a very high level when I'm eighty two. I'd
Speaker 2: love to do that. But who knows. You know, people
Speaker 2: suddenly have a heart attack or they have whatever and
Speaker 2: they can't do it. So I think we want to
Speaker 2: do it for a bit longer. You know. We just
Speaker 2: love being out there, love we love the industry, and
Speaker 2: we love our job and we've always been very thankful
Speaker 2: for being able to do this. You know, I in particular,
Speaker 2: I come from the center of England, and you know
Speaker 2: that unless you have great skills and you go to university,
Speaker 2: your choices of careers are very limited, especially especially then,
Speaker 2: you know, when I'm in the late sixties, it's very limited.
Speaker 2: A lot of people end up going down the pit,
Speaker 2: or that the pits have closed now. But I didn't
Speaker 2: want that. I wanted to be a songwriter from when
Speaker 2: I was thirteen years old, and I just followed that
Speaker 2: path that I thought would take me there. And I
Speaker 2: was really lucky. This should have happened to anyone, any
Speaker 2: thousands of people, but it happened to me. And I
Speaker 2: don't know if it was because I never let go
Speaker 2: of that thought or that dream, I mean, never let
Speaker 2: go of it, or it was just chance. I don't know,
Speaker 2: but whatever it is, I just have this incredible life
Speaker 2: where I'm able to write songs and may earn a
Speaker 2: living writing songs and do what I love to do.
Speaker 2: And wow, that's everything for me.
Speaker 1: Okay, there's a lot of stuff there, but let's go
Speaker 1: back to the live thing. You do one hundred plus
Speaker 1: shows a year.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I have been with musicians where the audience absolutely loved
Speaker 1: it and the people on stage said, oh man, it
Speaker 1: was a bad night, and vice versa. But usually the
Speaker 1: audience loves it. So what is your experience? What makes
Speaker 1: these shows different? Are you looking to, you know, get
Speaker 1: the Holy Grail once or twice at tour? What's it
Speaker 1: like being on stage?
Speaker 2: Oh, it's it's a dream come true every night when
Speaker 2: we step on stage, especially now, I mean Russell and
Speaker 2: I we're in our seventies, you know, we we shouldn't
Speaker 2: be here, you know, in the fifties and sixties, this
Speaker 2: was before rock and roll, became of age. The only
Speaker 2: people around then that were a little older was Bill
Speaker 2: Hayley and the Everly Brothers and those artists. But now
Speaker 2: that that boundary has been pushed, pushed to infinity by
Speaker 2: people like The Stones and Paul McCartney. So who knows
Speaker 2: where it's going to end, and we just want to
Speaker 2: be a part of that. But stepping on stage, there's
Speaker 2: nothing like it. I mean, we step on stage and
Speaker 2: everybody stands up and they're applauding, and we go, oh
Speaker 2: my god, this is incredible. And once again a night
Speaker 2: doesn't go by where right at the beginning of the
Speaker 2: show where I get goose bums right before I come on,
Speaker 2: and it's just this incredible feeling you can't describe. But
Speaker 2: every night that we play, it's there, and you know,
Speaker 2: Russell and I we always say we always look into
Speaker 2: the audience right before we come on and see what
Speaker 2: kind of audience it is, But it's always the same
Speaker 2: people are waiting and then we go on and everything starts,
Speaker 2: and it's just this incredible feeling that you can't describe.
Speaker 2: It's nothing else comes close. You can't compare it to
Speaker 2: anything you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, but are some shows better or worse than other shows.
Speaker 2: And what makes them so well, what you just said
Speaker 2: is true. They love it anyway. But sometimes for us,
Speaker 2: you know, Russell will come off and when we have
Speaker 2: a quick chat, he comes to my dressing room and
Speaker 2: he will say, oh, I wasn't on tonight. I just
Speaker 2: couldn't get in into the group, and I say, well,
Speaker 2: I didn't notice. It becomes a personal, a personal thing,
Speaker 2: and sometimes I'm like that. I say, god, I didn't
Speaker 2: I didn't get going tonight. I was thinking I didn't
Speaker 2: let go. But there that's very infrequently when that happens.
Speaker 2: But but when it does, you go, oh my god,
Speaker 2: I should have done this, and I didn't give everybody
Speaker 2: a one hundred percent. I was held back. But nevertheless, the
Speaker 2: audience loves it anyway. But our expectations are high and
Speaker 2: our goals are high, simply because, especially these days, people
Speaker 2: pay a lot of money to go to shows, you know,
Speaker 2: and they spend a lot of money that they probably
Speaker 2: should spend on something else, but they don't. So we
Speaker 2: want to give them the best show we can give
Speaker 2: them that's in our power to give them. And when
Speaker 2: we don't, individually, I get annoyed with myself and I say, well,
Speaker 2: I'll be better tomorrow night, but an audience wouldn't even notice.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a weird thing, but at least we
Speaker 2: always want to give one thousand percent every night, you know,
Speaker 2: and sometimes it's not possible. For instance, if I mean
Speaker 2: I'm not the lead singer, I sing a few leads,
Speaker 2: but if I get a cold and my throat's on it,
Speaker 2: I can't sing. I will say to the audience when
Speaker 2: it's my first turn to speak, which is usually around chances,
Speaker 2: I'll say, folks, I got to tell you something. I've
Speaker 2: got a really bad throw and if I sound out
Speaker 2: a tune, I'm apologizing now because I never sing out
Speaker 2: of tune. And I said, if I do, please accept
Speaker 2: my apologies. I don't because you deserve the best. So
Speaker 2: I tell them, you know, and because I don't want
Speaker 2: them to think I'm out of tune every night, because
Speaker 2: I'm really not.
Speaker 1: Okay, how do you do it?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: On one hand, you know, on the lowest level, people
Speaker 1: are in station wagons and vans, and there are people
Speaker 1: who go in buses. There are other people take a
Speaker 1: jet into every show. Band members come from their own place.
Speaker 1: They meet at the gig. Then they go their separate ways.
Speaker 1: How does their supply to it?
Speaker 2: We fly commercial, sometimes, we bus. When we first toward
Speaker 2: the US and well on our own in nineteen eighty,
Speaker 2: we were in buses for nine months of the year,
Speaker 2: and occasionally we'd spend a night in hotel, but usually
Speaker 2: we'd shower at the show and we'd get on a
Speaker 2: bus and drive five hundred miles. But we were a
Speaker 2: lot younger than we thought it was really exciting. That
Speaker 2: doesn't appeal to us anymore, you know, So we go
Speaker 2: we fight commercial, or we rent vans. If it's a
Speaker 2: small distance between shows, which it usually is, it's usually
Speaker 2: within two hundred and fifty miles, so we rent cars
Speaker 2: and we'll drive there. But you know, our style of
Speaker 2: transportation is not super luxurious. We you know, we we
Speaker 2: can't afford to rent planes and stuff like that. You know,
Speaker 2: I wish we could, but that's not in our cars,
Speaker 2: not probably not for in the foreseeable future.
Speaker 1: Okay, So to what degree are you a student of
Speaker 1: the game, Like, would you know how many people were
Speaker 1: intending what the grosses or you just pass that off
Speaker 1: to other people.
Speaker 2: No, I'm very aware of everything like that. I even
Speaker 2: know how much merchandise we sell in the night, not
Speaker 2: because I'm interested in making money. I just want to
Speaker 2: see if the people are buying things that they're happy
Speaker 2: with that, and I want to know how many people. Well,
Speaker 2: we always sell out our show wherever it is, but
Speaker 2: if we don't, which is really unusual, I want to
Speaker 2: know why. You know, why didn't we sell out? It's
Speaker 2: really weird, So I want to know. Plus, it makes
Speaker 2: you feel good to know that you're selling a show out,
Speaker 2: be it two thousand seats or thirty thousand. You know,
Speaker 2: it's just feels good to be able to sell shows out. Plus,
Speaker 2: we want everybody to be successful. We want the promoter
Speaker 2: to make money because we want him to book Is again,
Speaker 2: you know. And that's when I come off stage. My
Speaker 2: first question to our tour manager is every night, I
Speaker 2: would say, is everybody happy? Is the promoter happy they've
Speaker 2: all made money? Yeah, everybody's happy. The producer of the
Speaker 2: show is ecstatic, And then I'm happy at that point.
Speaker 1: You know, do you know how much merch per head
Speaker 1: you do? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I do. I mean ours is not huge, but you
Speaker 2: know we probably do seven eight dollars ahead with a
Speaker 2: lot of artists probably do. Like eight hundred.
Speaker 1: Seven eight dollars isn't bad. So what's your view on
Speaker 1: using hard drives and other recordings in the live environment.
Speaker 2: We have some some strings, some cellos and stuff on
Speaker 2: a hard drive, but that's that's about it for us,
Speaker 2: simply because we've always been a loon. I bound, you know,
Speaker 2: and I know when I when I sing live, but
Speaker 2: I'm not the lead singing. Uh. You know, sometimes I
Speaker 2: push if I get excited, I push, and I may
Speaker 2: my may go sharp. So I'm I'm reminded reminded by
Speaker 2: our front of highs front of house engineer. He say,
Speaker 2: don't push, just sit there, let the microphone do the work.
Speaker 2: If you get if it's adrenaline, just relaxed. And so
Speaker 2: I'm very I'm always reminded of that. But we have
Speaker 2: some cellos and a couple of violins on a hard drive,
Speaker 2: but on a few songs. But that's that's all. It's
Speaker 2: very little, you know, simply because I love the live
Speaker 2: I love the live energy. You know.
Speaker 1: Okay, you've had monster hits and there supply songs are
Speaker 1: perennials a year in, a year out. Do you still
Speaker 1: own your right huh.
Speaker 2: We we about five years ago we sold we sold
Speaker 2: a high percentage of our catalog to Primary Wave, who
Speaker 2: are one of the companies that people were flocking that artists,
Speaker 2: vintage artists especially were flocking to. And we held out
Speaker 2: for a long time and then they came to us
Speaker 2: and our manager resisted it and he said, he said,
Speaker 2: I'm changing my mind on it. If you want to
Speaker 2: do it, then do it, you know, and he gave
Speaker 2: us his blessing, and he actually engineered the whole thing
Speaker 2: and we were very happy when we did it. We
Speaker 2: didn't sell everything. We actually sold seventy percent and so
Speaker 2: we keep thirty. But you know, we we got a
Speaker 2: big payment, which for us, it didn't solve any problems.
Speaker 2: We didn't have any problems financial problems. We've always been
Speaker 2: very fluid. But it's kind of a backup in case
Speaker 2: everything stopped tomorrow. Then we don't have to worry about,
Speaker 2: oh my, you know, what are we going to do? Now?
Speaker 2: We're okay, we're fine. But it's like you said, we've
Speaker 2: had a lot of big hits. And throughout all that time,
Speaker 2: I owned I owned all my own publishing rights, you know,
Speaker 2: So so I'm in a good place, and Russell Russell agreed,
Speaker 2: And Russell shares in my publishing, you know, and he
Speaker 2: always has simply because he's the singer on a lot
Speaker 2: of these great recordings, you know, and without him, I'm
Speaker 2: very aware that we wouldn't be where we are right now.
Speaker 2: It's the singer, it's the songs, it's a lot of things,
Speaker 2: but his voice is the trademark of air supply, and
Speaker 2: I always wanted to make sure he gets rewarded for that.
Speaker 1: Musicians are legendarily bad with money. You got a big
Speaker 1: check from Primary Way, what do you do with the money?
Speaker 2: Well, we're in a great position because our manager is
Speaker 2: also our accountant and he has been since we began
Speaker 2: our career.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's incredible. And you know, Barry Siegel is
Speaker 2: his name, and he advises us not only as management
Speaker 2: to decide what we do in a year, but also
Speaker 2: accounting and what we do with the money. And he
Speaker 2: invests for us. But he said to us, you know,
Speaker 2: I want you to have that money and I don't
Speaker 2: want you to touch it, which is a very smart thing.
Speaker 2: And so instead of us going through it and buying whatever,
Speaker 2: he said, No, he's very he's very very frugal. So far,
Speaker 2: we haven't touched any of it because he wanted us
Speaker 2: to have it there as a backup in case anything happens.
Speaker 2: Of course that's the smart the smart thing. But with
Speaker 2: Barry in particular, we have an incredible relationship. Not only
Speaker 2: are we extremely close friends, we go on vacation together,
Speaker 2: we have dinners all the time. But we're very close.
Speaker 2: But there's a great trust there and we look after
Speaker 2: each other, you know. And I don't know if we'd
Speaker 2: be where we are with that Barry. In fact, we
Speaker 2: wouldn't for sure.
Speaker 1: So how did you meet him?
Speaker 2: That's an interesting story when nineteen eighty when Lost in
Speaker 2: Love was the biggest song in the world, and we
Speaker 2: didn't have any representation, no manager, no accounting or anything.
Speaker 2: And Russell and I were, of course still living in
Speaker 2: Australia and we got a lot of phone calls from
Speaker 2: lawyers from Los Angeles and money people saying, oh, I
Speaker 2: know you don't have any representation, I'd like to offer
Speaker 2: our services and from great people. And we didn't get
Speaker 2: a call from Barry. He came and knocked on my door.
Speaker 2: He flew to Australia and he said I'm Barry seeing
Speaker 2: on I am accountant and would you be interested in
Speaker 2: talking to me? And at that point he was working
Speaker 2: with a large accounting firm, but he wanted to go
Speaker 2: out on his own with a partner. And I took
Speaker 2: him out in Sydney that night and we got him
Speaker 2: really drunk and we just left him alone and he
Speaker 2: had to find his way through through his dodgy area
Speaker 2: called King's Cross in Sydney and he couldn't remember where
Speaker 2: his hotel I was. But we we just got on great.
Speaker 2: And I Russell and I both thought that him coming
Speaker 2: to Australia knocking on out door and saying I'd love
Speaker 2: to represent you, you know, and we said, yes, let's
Speaker 2: do it. And that's that was a long time ago,
Speaker 2: and that's how we get. That's how it started.
Speaker 1: So unlike most musicians, you haven't had an episode of
Speaker 1: being seriously ripped off.
Speaker 2: No, no, we haven't, thanks to Barry. We've had people
Speaker 2: that have tried to do that, but they they're not successful.
Speaker 2: You know, Barry Barry Barry's firm, which is PFM Provident
Speaker 2: Provident Financial Management, became very, very successful in an accounting world.
Speaker 2: But I believe we're the only artist that he personally manages,
Speaker 2: although he's company represents the krem Della Creme of artists
Speaker 2: and actors in the industry. So it's great for us,
Speaker 2: you know, but we've never nobody's ever tried to rip
Speaker 2: us off for him, well, they've tried a few times,
Speaker 2: but Barry just knocks it all down, as it's known.
Speaker 2: So he's you know, it's something about trust and when
Speaker 2: you have a career and if you trust someone totally,
Speaker 2: that's a big that's a big plus for us because
Speaker 2: we don't spend any time wondering if anybody is ripping
Speaker 2: us off. We just don't. And you know, it's a
Speaker 2: wonderful experience that we've had together and we we refer
Speaker 2: to ourselves as the Three Musketeers.
Speaker 1: Okay, jumping around. You were talking about in the eighties
Speaker 1: on the road so much. Why were you on the
Speaker 1: road so much? Today acts have to be on the road.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about you know, act starting up, recording step
Speaker 1: for a few don't generate that much money. Were people
Speaker 1: saying you have to go on the road to sell
Speaker 1: the act, to build the act, to visit the radio stations,
Speaker 1: or they were saying, you're so hot. This is the
Speaker 1: time to make money. Why were they having you work
Speaker 1: so much?
Speaker 2: We wanted to first up and we had the opportunity.
Speaker 2: Suddenly we could have our own tour, which a lot
Speaker 2: of artists they have to wait a long time before
Speaker 2: they get that. They did say you need to headline
Speaker 2: your own tour. So we did a theater tour in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty. I'll never forget it. I remember each show
Speaker 2: and we were on a bus. So for us it
Speaker 2: was exciting too. You know, I was in nineteen eighty,
Speaker 2: I was thirty years old. Russell was thirty one. So
Speaker 2: for us it was like, oh my, this whole new
Speaker 2: life just started. And they said, if you want to
Speaker 2: work every night, you can work every night, and we did.
Speaker 2: We wanted to. We were on a bus. It was
Speaker 2: a lot of fun where we had several buses. We
Speaker 2: were doing the show. Getting on the bus, habit a
Speaker 2: bottle of wine and life was fantastic. We'd be looking
Speaker 2: we'd get the billboard positions a week early. Clive Davis
Speaker 2: would be calling us all the time saying, oh, you've
Speaker 2: jumped another ten places. So life was incredible. It was
Speaker 2: what every artist, every musician dreams about. And it suddenly
Speaker 2: came to us, and we were kind of late in
Speaker 2: life for it to happen, thirty and thirty one years old,
Speaker 2: so we didn't look a gift horse in the mouth.
Speaker 2: Plus we wanted to play. We'd had four years of
Speaker 2: not earning any money. We were broke before Lost in
Speaker 2: Love hit in the US. We had no money, even
Speaker 2: though it was a big hit in Australia. We had
Speaker 2: several hits in Australia, we weren't earning anything. We couldn't
Speaker 2: even play in Australia. We couldn't afford to hire musicians
Speaker 2: or a PA system, so we just weren't working. So
Speaker 2: suddenly to headline our own tour was a big deal
Speaker 2: for us, and we wanted to get out there. You know,
Speaker 2: Lost in Love was you couldn't turn the radio one
Speaker 2: without hearing Lost in Love at all anywhere, and we
Speaker 2: had a little taste of that right before we came
Speaker 2: to the US. We went to Japan because they asked
Speaker 2: us to come. Lost in Love was released there, and
Speaker 2: in Australia a gold record is twenty thousand copies. We
Speaker 2: went to Japan in nineteen seventy nine and we sold
Speaker 2: a million albums in a week and we thought, oh
Speaker 2: my god, this is just outrageous, you know, and so
Speaker 2: we said, yes, that's what we want. And it wasn't
Speaker 2: the money, because we'd never had any all the fame.
Speaker 2: It was just being able to do, to have a
Speaker 2: career and to be able to play and get on
Speaker 2: stage and having people in the audience. We we had
Speaker 2: done shows in Sydney where nobody came. Nobody and the
Speaker 2: problem the guy that was running the pub, you know,
Speaker 2: he would because we'd do two we were booked for
Speaker 2: two one hour sets. He'd say, okay, nobody's here. After
Speaker 2: the first set, I'm going to give you half the money.
Speaker 2: You can go home, and we say, no, we have to.
Speaker 2: We want to, you know, sit by the contract. This.
Speaker 2: We wanted to two shows, two one hour shows, because
Speaker 2: we needed the money and we were making two hundred
Speaker 2: dollars a night. It was out. It was stupid, you know,
Speaker 2: but that's all we had. And then Lost in Love
Speaker 2: hit and everything changed, you know. That's why we wanted
Speaker 2: to play.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're in the pub in Australia, literally no one comes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how do you keep your attitude up?
Speaker 2: It was very difficult, but just in case anybody was
Speaker 2: to walk in, which they didn't. We just did the show,
Speaker 2: so it was like a rehearsal and we played both
Speaker 2: sets and it destroys you. It's really it breaks your heart,
Speaker 2: you know. And at the same time we had a
Speaker 2: top ten record in Australia lost in it was top
Speaker 2: ten and we couldn't get anybody at the shows. But
Speaker 2: our hearts were breaking. But we never gave up. We
Speaker 2: never said this is I've had enough of this, I'm
Speaker 2: going to get a job. I think we said. We
Speaker 2: never did that. We said no, no, we've got to
Speaker 2: hang on. We've got to hang on, you know, And
Speaker 2: we did and I'm glad we did.
Speaker 1: So where did you grow up?
Speaker 2: I grew up in Nottingham in England, which is in
Speaker 2: the center of England.
Speaker 1: All I know was Nottingham. Didn't Raleigh bicycles made in
Speaker 1: notting Yes.
Speaker 2: He did. My sister used to work for him and
Speaker 2: dunlocked tires.
Speaker 1: So what were the circumstances? What were your parents doing
Speaker 1: for a living?
Speaker 2: Well, my mother died when I was ten, which was
Speaker 2: really instrumental in me starting to write songs and writing
Speaker 2: verse down because when my mother died I didn't speak
Speaker 2: to anyone for three months. And when I came out
Speaker 2: because I was I was ten years old, I was
Speaker 2: in shock. When I started to talk, I would write
Speaker 2: things down on a legal pad with add it around
Speaker 2: my neck with a pen and I would write things down.
Speaker 2: Then I started to put things into verse and make
Speaker 2: it right for fun. But then when I started to
Speaker 2: speak to people, would I would show them the verses,
Speaker 2: you know, say this is what I'm feeling right now,
Speaker 2: and they they turned into songs. But my father worked
Speaker 2: in a factory. He had for years and years. We
Speaker 2: never we didn't have a car or phone. We never
Speaker 2: went on vacation anywhere. We didn't have anything. But I
Speaker 2: had a great until when my mother passed away, which
Speaker 2: changed my whole life. Before that, I had a great childhood.
Speaker 2: I was happy and just like all the other kids.
Speaker 2: But I just wanted to be a songwriter from very
Speaker 2: early age.
Speaker 1: Okay, was your mother ill or did she die suddenly?
Speaker 2: She died from cancer. She had breast cancer. But I
Speaker 2: knew she was ill, but they kept it from me
Speaker 2: that she was really terminal. And then one morning my
Speaker 2: dad just said to myself, my two older sisters, he
Speaker 2: said your mother's gone. And I said, oh, where is
Speaker 2: she gone? And when she's coming back? And he said, no,
Speaker 2: she passed away, and I didn't know what that meant.
Speaker 2: I said, well, what when is she coming back? You know?
Speaker 2: He said, she's not coming back. That's it. And I
Speaker 2: was just devastated. And it took me a long long
Speaker 2: time to get used to the idea, you know, which
Speaker 2: is you know now, I understand when people when children
Speaker 2: lose their apparent at an early age, I understand what
Speaker 2: they're going through. But until you go through that, I
Speaker 2: don't know if you can understand it. My whole world died,
Speaker 2: everything died, and it took me a long time to
Speaker 2: build my life back together.
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, you didn't speak for three months.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: People noticed that when they say, or what you don't
Speaker 1: want to take you to the doctor, they were ribbing you.
Speaker 1: How are people here?
Speaker 2: They were trying to comfort me because they realized that
Speaker 2: I didn't know that it was going to happen, that
Speaker 2: my mother was going to die. Everybody knew but me
Speaker 2: that she was going to go, so it was all
Speaker 2: it was a comfort thing. But I just didn't want
Speaker 2: anything to do with it. I didn't want to talk
Speaker 2: to people. I didn't want people comforting me and saying, no,
Speaker 2: it's going to be all right, because no, it wasn't
Speaker 2: going to be all right, and I needed to go
Speaker 2: through it. And even at that early age, I just
Speaker 2: wanted to be on my own. I needed to deal
Speaker 2: with it myself. But one must remember in England, where
Speaker 2: I came from, then I don't ever remember embracing my dad,
Speaker 2: or my dad coming up to me giving me a hug,
Speaker 2: or ever saying I love you. It just didn't happen,
Speaker 2: never happened. So I was on my own. I don't
Speaker 2: even remember my sisters coming up to me and putting
Speaker 2: their arms around me. And in fact, my sister was
Speaker 2: one of my sisters is eight years older than me,
Speaker 2: and we're very close now. But she said to me recently,
Speaker 2: she said, I had no idea what you went through.
Speaker 2: Nobody told you, and nobody tried to help you. And
Speaker 2: I said, no, they didn't. But on reflection, it gave
Speaker 2: me great strength and I started to listen to my
Speaker 2: own voice in my head and it set me on
Speaker 2: a path to write things down and to write verse.
Speaker 2: And then I wanted to learn to play the guitar.
Speaker 2: I got a guitar and I learned to play it
Speaker 2: really quickly, and the first song I learned was Home
Speaker 2: on the Range, which is like a two chord song.
Speaker 2: As soon as I could look, as soon as I
Speaker 2: could play that, I started writing my own songs. Not
Speaker 2: knowing what I was doing. I just and that was
Speaker 2: the beginning. And I would write songs maybe three or
Speaker 2: four every week, even as a young teenager and right
Speaker 2: into my adult life, you know. So it became second
Speaker 2: nature to me, and it became everything to me. It
Speaker 2: became the shoulder that I could cry on, and it
Speaker 2: became my life everything, you know. So songwriting for me,
Speaker 2: it's not just something to do to try and get
Speaker 2: a song on the radio. I mean far from it.
Speaker 2: It's just it's the other, my other persona that I
Speaker 2: talked to, and it's kind of like my twin if
Speaker 2: you like.
Speaker 1: Okay, is that when you knew you were going to
Speaker 1: be a songwriter?
Speaker 2: Yeah it is, yeah, well not when I knew I
Speaker 2: was going to be. It was when I wanted to be.
Speaker 2: But you know, I was in the center of England.
Speaker 2: The last thing anybody needs in the center of England
Speaker 2: is a songwriter. But I never let go of it.
Speaker 2: I always wanted my career's person, my career's teacher at school,
Speaker 2: who I am actually still in touch with. Yeah, she
Speaker 2: and I said, She said, well, what do you want
Speaker 2: to be? Do you want to be a doctor or
Speaker 2: policeman or what do you want to do? I said,
Speaker 2: I want to be in a band. I want to
Speaker 2: write songs. And I'm thirteen years old, right, And she says, ha, no,
Speaker 2: you can't do that. What do you really want to be?
Speaker 2: And I said, I really want to be a songwriter?
Speaker 2: So yeah, isn't that weird? It's funny?
Speaker 1: Okay, a couple of things. You're very verbal thinking, but
Speaker 1: you're talking about this alone time when your mother pats.
Speaker 1: Are you someone who likes their own company or you
Speaker 1: someone like Jerry Maguire always has to have somebody around.
Speaker 2: No. I like spending a lot of time on my own.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's good or bad for anyone,
Speaker 2: but I always have. Even at school, I was a loner,
Speaker 2: you know. I know when I was fifteen sixteen, nobody
Speaker 2: would go out with me on a day to the pictures,
Speaker 2: the movies, and so I became I was my own
Speaker 2: best friend, and then I would just The only thing
Speaker 2: I used to run to was writing songs. I'd dash
Speaker 2: home from school and i'd listened to this program on
Speaker 2: the BBC called Pop Go the Beatles. It was on
Speaker 2: a Tuesday afternoon at five o'clock, and I used to
Speaker 2: dash home and listen to it. And then i'd listened
Speaker 2: to that, and then i'd go and write a song,
Speaker 2: you know, obviously imitating what i'd just heard, but it
Speaker 2: was a great What I didn't realize what I was
Speaker 2: doing is I was informing myself. I was going to school.
Speaker 2: I was going to the University of learning how to
Speaker 2: write a song, even at thirteen and fourteen. But I
Speaker 2: loved it. And you know, I would say to a
Speaker 2: couple of school friends. They'd say, what are you just
Speaker 2: still writing songs? I said yeah. They say, okay, let
Speaker 2: me let me have a listen to some. And I
Speaker 2: was never shy. I usually had a guitar with me anyway,
Speaker 2: and I would say, okay, listen to this, and I'd
Speaker 2: play them one or two or three or four songs
Speaker 2: and they go wow, you know, And so that's how
Speaker 2: over I overcame my shyness because I wasn't afraid to.
Speaker 2: I would just stop and play for anybody. You know.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're writing songs. I mean you're in England.
Speaker 1: It's not the same as America. But in America, certainly
Speaker 1: post Beatles, everybody got a guitar, drums, whatever, and they
Speaker 1: started to play and they played it high school assemblies
Speaker 1: and they played parties. Did you play those kind of gigs?
Speaker 2: A few of them in England? When whenever I could,
Speaker 2: If my school friends would say, oh, we're having a
Speaker 2: few people around and I was invited, I always took
Speaker 2: my guitar just because that was what I did. It
Speaker 2: was like my date. You know, I had a guitar,
Speaker 2: and of course if somebody sees you with a guitar,
Speaker 2: oh you play guitar. There you want to play something? Yeah, sure,
Speaker 2: so that's how it started. You know. I've never been
Speaker 2: shy about playing. But I'm not a great guitar player.
Speaker 2: I just play rhythm guitar and I play enough to
Speaker 2: get by. I get I know enough guitar to play
Speaker 2: my songs. But that's yeah. I used to play those
Speaker 2: kind of things, you know for sure.
Speaker 1: Okay. One have to ask many musicians play music because
Speaker 1: it's a way to find girls or girls have been
Speaker 1: drawn to them. Was that of your motivations? And did
Speaker 1: it work?
Speaker 2: It was never a motivation for me at all. In fact,
Speaker 2: I never even thought about that. It wasn't on my
Speaker 2: radar at all. I just wanted to play songs. I
Speaker 2: wanted to play my own songs. And when I joined
Speaker 2: the band in England and I played drums, you.
Speaker 1: Know, how did that happen?
Speaker 2: Well? I loved the Beatles and you know, I bought
Speaker 2: every record they had. I used to go around to
Speaker 2: my aunt's and say, the Beatles albums coming out? Can
Speaker 2: you help me pay for it? You know? And they would.
Speaker 2: And then I just had this thing of for ringo,
Speaker 2: you know. And so I would sit on my couch
Speaker 2: and I would play drums. I had a cardboard box
Speaker 2: for the bass drum. I bought a cheap second and
Speaker 2: not even second, and a kick drum pedal hitting a
Speaker 2: cardboard box. And I had another cardboard box for a
Speaker 2: tom tom and I would hit the couch and I
Speaker 2: learned every single Beatles song, all the drums, so to
Speaker 2: go into I wanted then, I wanted to go into
Speaker 2: a band, and I joined a band, but quickly I
Speaker 2: realized that drums weren't for me simply because it it
Speaker 2: was playing a lot of blues songs, which I didn't
Speaker 2: care for, and I wanted to play my own songs.
Speaker 2: I would say to the guys man, hey, guys, how
Speaker 2: about playing an original song, you know? And they go, no, no,
Speaker 2: we're a cover band. So that's what was going on
Speaker 2: in England, and I got really fed up with it,
Speaker 2: you know, and that's when I decided to leave England
Speaker 2: because I couldn't get anywhere.
Speaker 1: Okay, a few questions when you would play your songs,
Speaker 1: was reaction always positive? Or was sometimes people would the
Speaker 1: morning people said, hey, I'd rather listen to her hit song.
Speaker 2: It was always positive, which was great for me because
Speaker 2: a lot of my early songs they weren't great songs.
Speaker 2: It was just a young kid trying to learn how
Speaker 2: to write songs. But even my sisters, when I play them,
Speaker 2: they say, oh, wow, that's really nice. But so they
Speaker 2: empowered me. And my school friends would say wow, that's cool,
Speaker 2: and they would start learning the songs with me and
Speaker 2: they'd sing with me, and so I knew. I knew
Speaker 2: the songs were okay. They weren't hit songs, and they
Speaker 2: were all over the place, but they were finished, and
Speaker 2: they had lyrics and there was a beginning, a chorus
Speaker 2: and an ending. So I was very happy with that.
Speaker 2: But everybody was always positive. Nobody ever said, oh, that's terrible.
Speaker 2: I think if they had I would have been destroyed.
Speaker 2: But nobody ever did, Okay, do you still write songs
Speaker 2: to Oh? Yeah, every day, every day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll tell me a little bit more about that.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, a supply. We just finished our Ladies' album,
Speaker 2: which is our first in fifteen years, so I don't
Speaker 2: have a lot of outlet for my songs. So about
Speaker 2: ten years ago I started to get involved with musicals.
Speaker 2: I love writing musicals, and now I just finished my
Speaker 2: twelfth musical simply because I love to write around a story,
Speaker 2: so I get the story from somewhere and now I'm
Speaker 2: getting the hang of it, and so it's something that
Speaker 2: I love to do. I don't know if it's supply
Speaker 2: after this album, won't make another album. I don't want
Speaker 2: to say we won't, but this one took fifteen years
Speaker 2: for us to come around to say, oh, yeah, let's
Speaker 2: make an album. I don't know if we have that
Speaker 2: much time left, but I just love writing songs. So
Speaker 2: people started to come to me with with the scripts
Speaker 2: and these stories and say, I really want to turn
Speaker 2: this into a musical. Would you be interested? I say, yeah, sure,
Speaker 2: So it's good for me. I just love writing songs,
Speaker 2: you know. And you know the the air supply musicals
Speaker 2: coming this year, so it's all kind of coming full circle.
Speaker 2: I mean once again. You know, I just have a
Speaker 2: great life. I kind of do what I want to do,
Speaker 2: and you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, So what happened with the twelve musicals you wrote?
Speaker 2: Well, four of them were attempts at air supply musicals,
Speaker 2: but the book, the book that people wrote, I never
Speaker 2: have anything to do with the book. People would say, oh,
Speaker 2: the book's not great, you know, But then I try again.
Speaker 2: But then I wrote three with two gentlemen from here
Speaker 2: in Utah that were and two of them went on stage,
Speaker 2: had limited runs, so that was great. So every every
Speaker 2: musical I'm getting more and more experience. Now, last July,
Speaker 2: I started to write one about David Copperfield, the Charles
Speaker 2: Dickens Book, and I finished that in six weeks, and
Speaker 2: so that's how it has a reading. A second reading
Speaker 2: in March and I think it's going to open in
Speaker 2: London in November. That's when I'm tough. So my musicals
Speaker 2: are getting more and more notoriety. But even if they don't,
Speaker 2: I just love doing it, you know, it's great. And
Speaker 2: I enjoyed the readings and they hire all these singers
Speaker 2: and and suddenly I'm seeing all these people and rehearsal
Speaker 2: singing all these songs, and wow, that's really cool. But
Speaker 2: it's great, you know, it's wonderful for me.
Speaker 1: So how do you write songs? And what's the difference
Speaker 1: between writing songs for ear supplier for a musical.
Speaker 2: Because in a musical, the parameters are given to me.
Speaker 2: There's a story, the script or the book if you like,
Speaker 2: and I read the book, I absorb it and I
Speaker 2: think where a song should be, or the author of
Speaker 2: the book will tell me where the song he thinks
Speaker 2: or she thinks needs to be. And I like that.
Speaker 2: They give me a lot of pointers and tell me
Speaker 2: what should be said in the song. So for me,
Speaker 2: it's kind of easy because they're telling me what needs
Speaker 2: to happen in the song, who's singing it, and the
Speaker 2: parameters of the scene. And then I go and I'll
Speaker 2: write the song. So it's great for me, but for
Speaker 2: a supply, I have to come up with everything, which
Speaker 2: is great too. I have to come up with a
Speaker 2: story well, because a song is a story that you've
Speaker 2: got to have a beginning, a middle, and a great
Speaker 2: ending in three and a half minutes, you know. So
Speaker 2: that's a challenge for anyone. But that's what writing a
Speaker 2: song is all about. And I love that too. But
Speaker 2: there's no doubt I have a gift. I don't know
Speaker 2: where it comes from, but I can pretty much write
Speaker 2: a song on demand, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, some people eke it out. I mean, Leonard Cohen
Speaker 1: wrote songs over years. Some of the greatest songs in
Speaker 1: rock history were written in fifteen minutes. Yeah, So do
Speaker 1: you work on inspiration or you know, is it something
Speaker 1: you work on a song and you do a song
Speaker 1: a day or a song a week. How do you
Speaker 1: actually do it? Is it more workman like or is
Speaker 1: it more a lightning bolt?
Speaker 2: It's a lightning boat. But I'm very aware, after all,
Speaker 2: you know, I've been writing songs now for over sixty years.
Speaker 2: That's a long time. So I've kind of figured out
Speaker 2: a few of the things. But for me and I
Speaker 2: know a lot of songwriters are different, but for me,
Speaker 2: I know when it's going to strike. I get a feeling.
Speaker 2: If I know I've got to write a song, I'll
Speaker 2: just sit at the piano or I'll sit my guitar
Speaker 2: and I'll sit there and I think about what I
Speaker 2: want to write about, and then I just do it.
Speaker 2: And most of my biggest songs were written in fifteen
Speaker 2: or thirty minutes. Yeah, Lost in Love was written in
Speaker 2: fifteen minutes, simply because I know when the muse, if
Speaker 2: you want to call it, that is there. I just
Speaker 2: know it, and we have a communication. I just feel
Speaker 2: it and I get goosebumps, and I say, Okay, I'm
Speaker 2: going to write this song. And then when it's done,
Speaker 2: you know, I have my phone going to record it.
Speaker 2: I don't have any sophisticated recording technique. I just record
Speaker 2: the song and then I'll go back and I listen
Speaker 2: to what's on my phone. And I'm always nervous when
Speaker 2: I go back to listen because I say to myself, God,
Speaker 2: that was great, but it isn't that great. I listen
Speaker 2: to my phone and every time I go, yes, I
Speaker 2: got I've got the essence of it. Then I go
Speaker 2: back and tidy it up and you know, and finish
Speaker 2: the lyrics. So it's a great revelation for me, and
Speaker 2: it's I love it so much because and every time
Speaker 2: that comes, where that inspiration strikes me, I end up
Speaker 2: in tears because it's such an incredible feeling and a moment.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like I get taken over and I
Speaker 2: just can't. I go into this massive crime thing almost
Speaker 2: like wow, it happened again. But I don't deserve to
Speaker 2: have these feelings and to do this. You know, there
Speaker 2: should be somebody else, but it's not, you know, and
Speaker 2: I you know, I don't have any training, musical training
Speaker 2: about anything. It's all intuitive, but it's never let me
Speaker 2: down so far, and I just love it. I just
Speaker 2: love it so much.
Speaker 1: Okay, do you know when you write a hit?
Speaker 2: I do? Yeah? Well should I say I know when
Speaker 2: I write a great song? I do yeah, because it
Speaker 2: happens quickly, and I can just tell after all these years,
Speaker 2: I go, oh yeah. But if I'm start to write
Speaker 2: something and it doesn't reach my expectations, I'll stop and
Speaker 2: I'll never go back to it. It has to happen
Speaker 2: really fast so I can get that inspiration, that lightning boat.
Speaker 2: I have to catch it and put it in a
Speaker 2: bottle so that it's there, And when it is, it's
Speaker 2: like the most incredible euphoria. It's like, I imagine it's
Speaker 2: like a bit a drug. I don't do drugs, I
Speaker 2: never have, but I imagine it's something like that where you know,
Speaker 2: you go, oh my god, and it's incredible. It's like
Speaker 2: you want to jump off the roof of your house.
Speaker 1: You know, lightning doesn't strike every day, So if you
Speaker 1: want to have an album with ten or twelve tracks,
Speaker 1: my experience is you can't have lightning strike all those times.
Speaker 2: No, that's true. But with this new album of ours,
Speaker 2: we took a long time to record it, simply because
Speaker 2: we were on the road so much and we wanted
Speaker 2: to play, so we would block out two weeks or
Speaker 2: three weeks and we'd go and record. So by the
Speaker 2: time we came to a recording block, I'd written another
Speaker 2: half a dozen songs, of which two or three I
Speaker 2: was really I really knew that they were going to
Speaker 2: be strong, so in my opinion, but I may be wrong.
Speaker 2: This album is packed with really strong songs, but it
Speaker 2: may not be. They may not be songs that people
Speaker 2: want to hear anymore, because I don't pay any attention
Speaker 2: to what's current or what's what's going to be a
Speaker 2: hit or the new flavor of the moment. I just
Speaker 2: don't pay any attention because if I did, I wouldn't
Speaker 2: be doing what I want to do. I'm not going
Speaker 2: to follow another person in their career because mine takes
Speaker 2: two much time. I don't have time to listen to
Speaker 2: new stuff because I'm working on songs all the time.
Speaker 2: And maybe that's a failing, but I don't know. I
Speaker 2: don't even know what gen x is or what's hip
Speaker 2: or what's current or any of the new artists at all.
Speaker 2: But I'm okay with that, you know, I don't. I
Speaker 2: don't need to know anymore. And Air Supply takes a
Speaker 2: lot of my time, but I love it, and it's
Speaker 2: it's the band that Russell and I created, So why
Speaker 2: wouldn't I love to to fill that that energy, fill
Speaker 2: the band with that energy. And the people that work
Speaker 2: for air Supply, all that crew and the band, they
Speaker 2: all feel the same way. They just love it and
Speaker 2: it's we all have a part to play, and it's like,
Speaker 2: you know, when we I mean, I'm digressing. But when
Speaker 2: we go to a show, like I leave tomorrow. We
Speaker 2: go to Chicago and we have we have three shows
Speaker 2: in a rown. When I see everybody, it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: how you doing it? It's great to see you. I
Speaker 2: mean I saw him four days ago, but we go,
Speaker 2: oh wow, you know, it's great, what a what a
Speaker 2: great life.
Speaker 1: How did you feel towards the end of the peak
Speaker 1: of the air supply career in the early eighties late seventies,
Speaker 1: when you recorded other people's songs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, we were with Clive Davis for
Speaker 2: a long time, and you know that I think maybe
Speaker 2: eighty five or something. Yeah, it wasn't a good time
Speaker 2: for me. Although everything was cool, we weren't selling any
Speaker 2: albums anymore. It was just that time where people were
Speaker 2: trying to have us hang on to everything. You're right.
Speaker 2: We recorded a few songs that I really didn't care for.
Speaker 2: You know, But I've always said this that Russell is
Speaker 2: such a great singer. He deserves to sing other people's songs,
Speaker 2: not just mine. He deserves to sing the greatest songs
Speaker 2: in the world. But when we came on the scene,
Speaker 2: of course, every man and their dog were sending songs
Speaker 2: to Clive Davis for us, and some of them were
Speaker 2: great songs. But then in eighty five or so people
Speaker 2: thought they could reinventors. But I don't know where they
Speaker 2: they figured out that we wanted to be reinvented because
Speaker 2: we didn't. It was just we suddenly weren't on the
Speaker 2: charts anymore. But that happens to every artist, or most artists,
Speaker 2: should I say. And it was a weird time, you know.
Speaker 2: All these songs were flying around and we had had
Speaker 2: different producers for the albums and they said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: record this, and ih, it just wasn't my thing. But
Speaker 2: we recorded several of those songs that I really didn't
Speaker 2: care for. One of them was a Bruce Springsteen song
Speaker 2: that Clive Davis said, oh, you should record this. It
Speaker 2: was called Sandy, and it taught I mean, I'm a
Speaker 2: Bruce Springsteen fan. I don't mean any disrespect, but this
Speaker 2: Sandy was about the New Jersey or the Atlantic City
Speaker 2: Boardwalkers something, and we'd never even been there, you know,
Speaker 2: And I said, why are we recording this? Because apart
Speaker 2: from the fact that Clive said we should, why are
Speaker 2: we doing this? We know nothing about this And the
Speaker 2: song was a crappy song anyway. You know, every great
Speaker 2: artist writes crappy songs as well as great ones. This
Speaker 2: was one of those. And I thought, ah, you know,
Speaker 2: but anyway that we got through that episode and we said,
Speaker 2: you know, let's go to places that nobody's been to before.
Speaker 2: Let's let's go where they know who we are, and
Speaker 2: let's we went to Taiwan. At Taipei, we went to Vietnam,
Speaker 2: South Korea, they'd never seen a Western band before. We
Speaker 2: went to China and all these weird places, and it
Speaker 2: was great to see a different point of view, in
Speaker 2: a different perspective. And we went and talked these places
Speaker 2: for about five years, and everybody said, even Billboard Magazine said, oh,
Speaker 2: they've broken up. We never broke up. We just wanted
Speaker 2: to do a different thing. You know. We went to
Speaker 2: South America, into cities you can't even pronounce where we
Speaker 2: come into town. There would be everybody came out of
Speaker 2: their houses, dogs and cats, and people would just be waving,
Speaker 2: hundreds of people like, oh, you know, this is really
Speaker 2: what music is all about. It's doing things you haven't
Speaker 2: done before. And then we got used to the fact
Speaker 2: that we weren't going to be in the charts anymore.
Speaker 2: It's just it was a fact, you know. So we
Speaker 2: got used to that, and then we decided that we
Speaker 2: just love to play anyway, Let's just play. And that's
Speaker 2: that's when it started. We just played everywhere. We went
Speaker 2: all over and we go all over the world. And
Speaker 2: it's funny because not a lot of artists play all
Speaker 2: over the world, you know, And I'm surprised. I mean,
Speaker 2: of course, Taylor sway up the stones. Do not very
Speaker 2: few really venture out of the US and go overseas.
Speaker 2: I'm surprised, you know, But we did and it was wonderful,
Speaker 2: you know. We we were up there and had a
Speaker 2: photo shoot at the Great Wall of China and the
Speaker 2: President of Taiwan gave us medals, you know, and he said,
Speaker 2: when you come to Taiwan in the future, you don't
Speaker 2: need to show your passport. You come straight through and go,
Speaker 2: oh okay. So it was just not being in the
Speaker 2: charts was a part of our career that we hadn't
Speaker 2: thought about when we were in the charts. But you know,
Speaker 2: then we went into a different a different phase, and
Speaker 2: here we are, we're still in that next phase.
Speaker 1: Okay, whose idea was it to tour all these disparate places?
Speaker 2: It was Russell and mine. It really was we. You know,
Speaker 2: when when my daughter was born in nineteen seventy, took
Speaker 2: way before the man. The first song I heard was
Speaker 2: a song called without You, which is which Nielsen's version,
Speaker 2: and I've always loved that song. And in I think
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty eighty eight or something, I said Harry, Harry
Speaker 2: Masleum was producing, and I said, you know, Harry, I
Speaker 2: want to record with at you. And he said, what
Speaker 2: have I done? He thought, what did you want him
Speaker 2: to do? I said, no, we want to record the
Speaker 2: song without You. So we recorded it just because it's
Speaker 2: one of the most beautiful songs ever written. And the
Speaker 2: story behind it is tragic how it came to be written.
Speaker 2: But anyway, we recorded it and it was on an
Speaker 2: album that we recorded with Harry, and it became this
Speaker 2: massive hit everywhere except the US, and then when people
Speaker 2: heard our version, everybody else started to record it, you know,
Speaker 2: Maria Carey, et cetera, all that. But it was a
Speaker 2: big hit for US, especially in South America and in Asia,
Speaker 2: and we said, okay, let's go down there. And it
Speaker 2: was everything happened all over again for us. So that
Speaker 2: introduced us to South America and places even in Asia
Speaker 2: we hadn't been before, so it was a great thing.
Speaker 2: And then once they got used to us again, another
Speaker 2: generation discovered us. All the all the old albums started
Speaker 2: to sell, and then everything became what it is now.
Speaker 1: Really, okay, tell me about a couple of places you
Speaker 1: went there were really quite an experience.
Speaker 2: Uh do you mean the places are an experience?
Speaker 1: I mean I I you know, I like places that
Speaker 1: are very different, where they don't speak English. I went
Speaker 1: to Bogata once and literally everybody I interacted with it
Speaker 1: had a family member killed, and there were a lot
Speaker 1: of things, you know. Yeah, there are some other places.
Speaker 1: I thought, you know, we have unique experiences that you
Speaker 1: don't encounter in the United States. Oh sure, So I
Speaker 1: was wondering if maybe you had a couple of experiences
Speaker 1: you could tell us about.
Speaker 2: Of course, Well, we played in Metagine. We played there
Speaker 2: two or three times. The first time we went there,
Speaker 2: the promoter was not a gangster, but he was he
Speaker 2: knew what he was doing. And we were in our
Speaker 2: transport going to the hotel from the airport and there
Speaker 2: were a couple of guys on the roadway that will't
Speaker 2: looked like they're laying down. They were resting or something.
Speaker 2: And I said, to that our promoter, what's going on there?
Speaker 2: He said, oh, he's just gone, you know. I said,
Speaker 2: what do you mean he's going? He said, oh, he's
Speaker 2: dead And I said really and he said yeah. And anyway,
Speaker 2: we he took us out that night and he said,
Speaker 2: I want I'd like you to take you out, you know,
Speaker 2: to a club and all that we used to go
Speaker 2: out in those days, not anymore. And then we said okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: and we had a security to security guards with us,
Speaker 2: and he said, we're going to go to this, to
Speaker 2: a club that I go to all the time, and
Speaker 2: I want you to meet my partner. So we go
Speaker 2: to this. We pull up to this club and this
Speaker 2: massive iron gates and on each side there's a there's
Speaker 2: a guy in a suit with a machine gun and
Speaker 2: we start freaking out, whoa And the gates open. We
Speaker 2: go and say, just don't worry, everything's great, and we
Speaker 2: go inside and it's a private club and there's you know,
Speaker 2: the guy greets us and he says, yeah, we're going
Speaker 2: to have a great time. You know, whatever you want.
Speaker 2: What do you want, you know, booze, broads or blow
Speaker 2: and we said we don't want any of those. So
Speaker 2: we go in and he got a dinner for us
Speaker 2: and on the table in the center at the table
Speaker 2: is like a big ball and it looks like sugar
Speaker 2: or salked and it's cocaine, you know. And he said,
Speaker 2: dig in whatever you want to do. But we've never
Speaker 2: been into that, you know. But some of our band impruded.
Speaker 2: But it's like whoa, you know, and all these guys
Speaker 2: walking around with you see the guns sticking out of
Speaker 2: the chest. So it was really heavy. And when we
Speaker 2: wanted we did the show and the promoter's partner wanted.
Speaker 2: He wanted us to do a TV show because we
Speaker 2: had bo guitar coming up. And we said, no, we
Speaker 2: don't want to do that, you know, and he said, well,
Speaker 2: I think I think you should. I said, no, we
Speaker 2: don't want to. We don't want to do a TV show.
Speaker 2: It was a day off, you know, and he said,
Speaker 2: you're going to do the TV show. He said, first
Speaker 2: of all, I have your passports. He said, if you
Speaker 2: don't do the TV show, you're going to stay in
Speaker 2: this hotel until you do. And we said, oh really,
Speaker 2: and he said yeah. So we ended up doing the
Speaker 2: TV show and then we left. Once we were in
Speaker 2: we were in Vietnam and it was the first time
Speaker 2: we'd gone there, and everybody was freaking out. They've never
Speaker 2: seen a band before, and we had to go before
Speaker 2: for all these generals and they were all in military dress,
Speaker 2: didn't speak a word of English, and I think it
Speaker 2: was like a dozen of them, and they said, through
Speaker 2: an interpreter, we want you to play your show. I said,
Speaker 2: what are you talking about. He said, we want you
Speaker 2: to play your show. I said, We're not doing that,
Speaker 2: and I kind of dug in, you know, I said,
Speaker 2: you know what, We'll do our sound check. They can
Speaker 2: listen to that. They didn't speak a word of English,
Speaker 2: and we did the sound check and they said no,
Speaker 2: and the interpreter came up and he said, now you've
Speaker 2: got to play the whole show. I said, I'm not
Speaker 2: playing the whole show. And I said they can shove it.
Speaker 2: I don't care if we don't play it. And I've
Speaker 2: had enough and I put my guitar down and I
Speaker 2: walked out and I went back to the hotel and
Speaker 2: everything was fine. Nobody said anything, and we did the
Speaker 2: show and we left. But they they want to see you,
Speaker 2: you know, under their own terms. But I says, no,
Speaker 2: it's not going to happen. And I was just said, no,
Speaker 2: it's not going to happen. So and it didn't. When
Speaker 2: when we played China the first time in ninety six,
Speaker 2: they'd never seen a band before, a Western band, and
Speaker 2: we would go in the audience for the One that
Speaker 2: you Love, and the promoter said, well, you can't go
Speaker 2: in the audience here, you know. And it was a
Speaker 2: big twenty thousand seat arena and when we got there
Speaker 2: there was soldiers all around the perimeter, every six feet
Speaker 2: with machine guns, you know, army people, and you know,
Speaker 2: during the show, we came to the One that you Love,
Speaker 2: and you know, I started it and Russell and I
Speaker 2: looked at each other and I said, are we going
Speaker 2: and he said yeah. So we got down off the
Speaker 2: stage and we walked around. We went into the audience
Speaker 2: and all everybody freaked out and the soldiers were they
Speaker 2: didn't know what to do, but we just walked around
Speaker 2: the wholes and everybody was fine. They were waving, and
Speaker 2: we went back on stage and finished the song finished
Speaker 2: the show, and they said, you can never come back
Speaker 2: to China again. You can't do that. Of course, we
Speaker 2: went back many times, but that was just what goes
Speaker 2: on there, you know, and it's part of getting people
Speaker 2: in the in the zone. You know, this is what's
Speaker 2: happening people, but they're very reluctant to to to share
Speaker 2: what's going on in the West, very careful about it,
Speaker 2: you know. But it was a great experience, and after
Speaker 2: that we've been back maybe half a dozen times to
Speaker 2: China and it's great now. Of course everybody screams and chants,
Speaker 2: but in those days they didn't do that, you know.
Speaker 2: So we were kind of pioneers, if you like, with music.
Speaker 2: But they wouldn't let any band whose lyrics or image
Speaker 2: is considered contrary to the communist way of life, you know,
Speaker 2: they they would We had to send all our lyrics
Speaker 2: in they had to be okayed, and what we were
Speaker 2: going to wear. We had to show pictures of what
Speaker 2: we're gonna wear. And we couldn't swear on stage. We
Speaker 2: don't anyway, and we always cool. We never wear jeans
Speaker 2: on stage. So we passed all the auditions, but you know,
Speaker 2: we gave him a couple of things to think about,
Speaker 2: but we had to, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to Clive Davis. He is very
Speaker 1: controlling of his artist careers. Yes, your experience, good beat
Speaker 1: or otherwise.
Speaker 2: It was good with Clive, and he had a lot
Speaker 2: to do with our success, you know. He All Out
Speaker 2: of Love was a big hit in Australia two years
Speaker 2: before it was released in the US, so you know,
Speaker 2: it was a hit, and so the song had been
Speaker 2: okay by everybody. But he came to me and he said,
Speaker 2: you know, we got to change some of the lyric
Speaker 2: a couple of lines in the corpse. Originally it was
Speaker 2: I'm all out of love. I want to arrest you, right,
Speaker 2: which is really weird now I think about it. And
Speaker 2: he said, we can't. You can't have that here and
Speaker 2: I said, but it was a hit already, it says,
Speaker 2: yeah in Australia, not in the US. He said, you've
Speaker 2: got to change that, and he said, what about I'm
Speaker 2: so lost without you? And I sort of think thought
Speaker 2: about it, you know, and the guy that was my
Speaker 2: publisher pulled me aside and he said, listen to Clive.
Speaker 2: He said, if you change that line, it'll be the
Speaker 2: mass the biggest hit you'll ever have, and he said,
Speaker 2: it's up to you. He says, change the line. What
Speaker 2: the hell you know? And he said, Clive's right, it
Speaker 2: may not get played, and so I said, okay. So
Speaker 2: Clive got a credit, a writing credit on the song,
Speaker 2: and he always donates it to charity. So instead of,
Speaker 2: you know, a part of me said, God, somebody's trying
Speaker 2: to mess with my songs. But then I thought, if
Speaker 2: it's going to be a big hit, it's going to
Speaker 2: be part of our legacy. So I said, yeah, let's
Speaker 2: do it, you know. And you know, that was the
Speaker 2: beginning of a great relationship with Clive. But then I learned, whatever,
Speaker 2: if Clive suggests something, it's not merely a suggestion. He's
Speaker 2: really telling you that you should do this. And all
Speaker 2: the artists that he's worked with went through the same thing.
Speaker 2: I had some stories, you know about that, And there
Speaker 2: was one Eric Carmen was one of them, and he
Speaker 2: was on Arista and Clive Clive wanted to wanted him
Speaker 2: to sing a Billy Joe song. You know, I don't
Speaker 2: know which one it was, but Eric says, now I'm
Speaker 2: not doing it, you know. Anyway, he had a single
Speaker 2: coming out and it came in the charts really fat,
Speaker 2: and I spoke to her, so I know this is true.
Speaker 2: He said, well, if he said, if you don't record
Speaker 2: this song, the single just just come out for you
Speaker 2: is going to die. And eric'sas now, it came in
Speaker 2: the chart at like seventy with the bullet. Sure enough,
Speaker 2: next week it just disappeared. So I learned that Clive
Speaker 2: likes to have things his way, you know. But by
Speaker 2: the same token, he gave us a great career, you know,
Speaker 2: and he's always been very respectful to us and we
Speaker 2: to him. We've never spoken derogatory about Clive. I mean
Speaker 2: all the artists he's worked with, whether he has a
Speaker 2: lot to do with their career or not, I mean
Speaker 2: it's pretty much everybody. But with us, he was great.
Speaker 2: You know. He came, he flew out. We were mixing
Speaker 2: the one that you loved, and he wanted to know
Speaker 2: what was going on with that because this was our
Speaker 2: second album, which is very important, you know, we'd had
Speaker 2: threest fives. He flew out to the he came to
Speaker 2: the studio in Los Angeles and he sat right in
Speaker 2: the middle of the console and he said to Harry,
Speaker 2: who was producing the track. He says, okay, I'm ready
Speaker 2: to hear it, you know, and he played the one
Speaker 2: that you look a rough mix and he just sat
Speaker 2: there with his eyes closed and he didn't say anything
Speaker 2: for like two minutes. And I said, oh Jesus with one.
Speaker 2: And he turned around and he said, it's going to
Speaker 2: go to number one and it'll win. You were grammy,
Speaker 2: he said, and he said that he walked out and
Speaker 2: he was right, and we went, oh, okay, that that
Speaker 2: just gave us another ten years on our career, you know.
Speaker 2: So he was he was something else like.
Speaker 1: Well, you know the first yeah, the hit in Australa yea.
Speaker 1: And he says, it didn't you know, work with Lyric
Speaker 1: in America. Now you have success in America. To what
Speaker 1: degree did he ask you to change or do things
Speaker 1: that you would not plan to do? Well?
Speaker 2: After all out of love? There was nothing after that,
Speaker 2: you know, with the one that you love. He never
Speaker 2: touched it. He said, it's perfect, it's going to go
Speaker 2: to number one, and it did. So I think I
Speaker 2: don't think it was it was never ego with Clive.
Speaker 2: It was just he wanted his way. He was the president.
Speaker 2: Of Arista Records, which was an independent record company, and
Speaker 2: he had a lot of success with Barry Manilow. And
Speaker 2: you know, we went to see him in New York
Speaker 2: in the early days in like nineteen eighty or eighty one,
Speaker 2: because we'd go and he wanted to take us to
Speaker 2: lunch whenever we were playing in New York. We were
Speaker 2: in his office and there was this young African American lady,
Speaker 2: she was really young, waiting to see Clive. It was
Speaker 2: Whitney Houston and and we were you know, we said, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm Graham and Russell. She knew who we were. She said, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm really use and I'm I'm going to make a
Speaker 2: record with Live. And Clive came out and he introduced
Speaker 2: us again to and of course that became history. You know,
Speaker 2: she was just incredible. She was such a she was
Speaker 2: really young, and she was just bouncing with energy and
Speaker 2: I thought, wow, she's going to be a big start.
Speaker 2: And Clive was, you know, she was the new the
Speaker 2: new kid on the block. I mean we still were too,
Speaker 2: but that's what he did when he when he got
Speaker 2: into an artist, it was total and for some reason,
Speaker 2: he just got into us and he loved Lost in
Speaker 2: Love And I asked him how we found lost enough.
Speaker 2: He said, every every Monday morning he'd have a stack
Speaker 2: of singles on his desk and he got one. It
Speaker 2: was Lost in Love from Australia and he said he
Speaker 2: played it and he loved it, and he said, I
Speaker 2: want to buy this, and he bought the rights to it.
Speaker 2: And that was it. Once he got into your space
Speaker 2: and you were agreeing with him, you could do anything.
Speaker 2: You know. He was the man that made careers or
Speaker 2: didn't you know?
Speaker 1: So how did it end with Clive?
Speaker 2: Oh? It ended great. I mean we left Arista. Suddenly
Speaker 2: we weren't in the charts anymore, and we left Arista
Speaker 2: and we went with Irving as Off. We went from
Speaker 2: one legend to another one, and Irving was great. But
Speaker 2: when we left Arista, we left on great terms. And
Speaker 2: Clive chords. He had a nineteen ninety he had I
Speaker 2: can't remember what it was, something going on at Radio
Speaker 2: City Music w and he had a lot of big
Speaker 2: stars and in he called us and he said, would
Speaker 2: you come and play Radio City for me? You know?
Speaker 2: Of course? Yeah, So Russell and I went and we
Speaker 2: did it. We just we played all out of log
Speaker 2: just one guitar and two voices sounded incredible. And then
Speaker 2: right at the beginning of COVID, uh yeah, he said, well,
Speaker 2: he called me and I didn't know who it was,
Speaker 2: you know, and he said, this is Clive. He said,
Speaker 2: oh really, he said yeah, He said, would you do
Speaker 2: a zoom thing for us? You know, a friend of
Speaker 2: his was doing zooms and he had all these big
Speaker 2: stars singing on zoom. He said, yeah, of course. So
Speaker 2: we have a great relationship with him. He called me.
Speaker 2: It was his ninetieth birthday and he said, what do
Speaker 2: you want to come to this party? We couldn't come.
Speaker 2: We already had shows books. So we have a great
Speaker 2: relationship with him, which is wonderful, you know. But then
Speaker 2: we went from Clive to Irving.
Speaker 1: And how was that experience?
Speaker 2: It was great, It was wonderful. You know. We went
Speaker 2: to his label Giant, and it was with him we
Speaker 2: had with that you became a massive here. And he said,
Speaker 2: I remember we sat down to a restaurant and we
Speaker 2: had that album and it sold way over a million
Speaker 2: copies overseas, which was huge in those days. And we
Speaker 2: wanted to see if we couldn't record another album. We
Speaker 2: read it and he said, we said, well, we'd like
Speaker 2: to record another album, you know, and he said, go
Speaker 2: and do it. She says, just go and do it,
Speaker 2: and so we did, and that that was even bigger
Speaker 2: than the one with without you on it. It was
Speaker 2: called the Vanishing Race. And so we had great success
Speaker 2: with Irving and he was he was terrific, you know,
Speaker 2: terrific guy.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back a story. How did you end
Speaker 1: up leaving the UK for Australia.
Speaker 2: Well, after my mother died, there was two years where
Speaker 2: my dad was just working. Then suddenly he started seeing
Speaker 2: another lady, I mean fairy enough. He was still quite young,
Speaker 2: you know, and then suddenly, without telling us, he got married.
Speaker 2: You know. So I had a bit of an axe
Speaker 2: to grind. And suddenly this lady came to our house
Speaker 2: and he said, we just got married. And she had
Speaker 2: three children too, and I had two sisters and we
Speaker 2: were all going to live in the house that we had.
Speaker 2: That wasn't a big house. It was two up. Oh,
Speaker 2: he had won three bedrooms, an attic up on top
Speaker 2: and then two rooms downstairs in the kitchen. Well, then
Speaker 2: my eldest sister decided to leave and my other sister,
Speaker 2: who was four years older than me, decided to get
Speaker 2: married because she didn't want to live with another person
Speaker 2: in the house. And I really resented it. And you know,
Speaker 2: my dad's knew wife, whose name was Dorothy, had three children,
Speaker 2: so they came into the house. So suddenly I had
Speaker 2: to give my bedroom. I was sharing my bedroom with
Speaker 2: two other boys that I didn't care for. And then
Speaker 2: they started to talk about going to Australia, and I said,
Speaker 2: I'm not really into that. I was doing very well
Speaker 2: at school, you know, academically, I was really doing well,
Speaker 2: writing my songs and everything was great. Then suddenly he said, well,
Speaker 2: we've actually got a date to leave for Australia and
Speaker 2: it's in like a month, and I said really, And
Speaker 2: I didn't want to go. So when it came time,
Speaker 2: when the night before they were going to leave, they
Speaker 2: were going to go on the boat before they were
Speaker 2: going to leave for Southampton on the train to get
Speaker 2: on the boat, I said, I'm going to say goodbye
Speaker 2: to my school friends. And I had a little rocksack
Speaker 2: on my back and I left and I ran away
Speaker 2: and I never saw him for five years, and only
Speaker 2: two people knew where I was. I couldn't tell anybody,
Speaker 2: even my closest friend at school. I couldn't tell because
Speaker 2: I knew if he was questioned by the police, he
Speaker 2: would tell him where I was. So I didn't tell.
Speaker 2: Only two people knew, and for two days I went underground.
Speaker 2: You remember, I was fourteen years old, you know, I
Speaker 2: had no money, but I just didn't want to go
Speaker 2: to Australia and I didn't want to go with his
Speaker 2: new wife and their kids. Then I found out that
Speaker 2: my dad left. He went, so that was the biggest
Speaker 2: relief for me. So then I was on my own
Speaker 2: and I went to my live with an aunt an uncle.
Speaker 2: Then I went to live with another art and uncle.
Speaker 2: I got passed around, you know, and then I started
Speaker 2: to I had a girlfriend and I was seventeen. She
Speaker 2: got pregnant and I had a son. Seventeen years old,
Speaker 2: I had a son, and we decided to go to
Speaker 2: Australia on our own terms. My sister had already gone
Speaker 2: as well, and so we decided to go. And interestingly enough,
Speaker 2: I was ready to go. Then musically I was playing
Speaker 2: drums in this band going Nowhere and do It, playing
Speaker 2: songs I didn't want to play, and I thought it
Speaker 2: would be a nice change and maybe an Australian an
Speaker 2: English musician might have some chance in Australia. So I
Speaker 2: went there and everything was cool. I lived with my
Speaker 2: sister and her husband, and you know, my dad never
Speaker 2: mentioned anything about me running away ever, even to the data.
Speaker 2: He never mentioned it, and neither did his new wife.
Speaker 2: And I never really thought about it. And we became
Speaker 2: very close as a family because I had my family,
Speaker 2: and I started playing guitar and writing songs. Still, I
Speaker 2: was playing in pizza parlors and I was making a
Speaker 2: decent living. I was doing okay, you know, and that's
Speaker 2: but that's how I went to Australia with a family.
Speaker 1: So playing in pizza parlors, you could support your wife
Speaker 1: and young child.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I could. So one story, I don't mean to interrup,
Speaker 2: but we went to a this place called Papa's Pizza,
Speaker 2: which is where we lived, and I I saw her
Speaker 2: in the corner. They had this little dice about four
Speaker 2: feet square diace and I said to the guy, the
Speaker 2: manager that said, what's that over there? He said, it's
Speaker 2: a it's a little dice. He said. We used to
Speaker 2: have a singer songwriter come in and not a singer songwriter,
Speaker 2: a singer come in and play cover songs. I said, well,
Speaker 2: you don't do it any much as now. He left
Speaker 2: and I never got around to it. He said, would
Speaker 2: you be interested in I mean, somebody come in and play?
Speaker 2: He said yeah. He said, do you know anybody? I
Speaker 2: said yeah, I said it's me, And so I went
Speaker 2: there and after and he really liked I was playing
Speaker 2: some cover songs Neil Young, you know, Van Morrison, and
Speaker 2: a lot of my songs. But the people there didn't
Speaker 2: care what it was. They just wanted some music. A
Speaker 2: lot of kids throwing pizza around and slurping everything. But
Speaker 2: I was making decent money there, and he said to
Speaker 2: me one about after two or three weeks, he said,
Speaker 2: would you be interested in playing at other Popper's pizzas?
Speaker 2: Because there was a lot of it was a chain.
Speaker 2: I said yeah, sure, I said, okay, would you be
Speaker 2: interested in playing five nights at different ones? I said absolutely?
Speaker 2: So I got paid and I got a big giant
Speaker 2: pizza to take home for dinner. So I ended up
Speaker 2: playing at all these Popper's pizzas, and I was making
Speaker 2: a pretty decent living for then, you know, And I
Speaker 2: was playing a lot of my own songs, some covers
Speaker 2: which I played really well. And then I used to
Speaker 2: start making songs up on the spot because nobody cared anyway,
Speaker 2: and the kids really liked me. They come up and
Speaker 2: pull faces and I would do the same thing, and
Speaker 2: I went down really well and you got great reports.
Speaker 2: And then I started to play universities at lunch time
Speaker 2: and making even more money. And I played folk club
Speaker 2: so I got a bit of a following. So that
Speaker 2: how it began for me.
Speaker 1: You know, so you never from the moment you landed
Speaker 1: in Australia, you didn't get a street job. You just
Speaker 1: started making music.
Speaker 2: I did have a straight job yet, and the job
Speaker 2: I had, which I loved, It was the best job
Speaker 2: I ever had, except for a supply. And I needed
Speaker 2: a job where I could finish early because my wife
Speaker 2: at the time was one was working, so I needed
Speaker 2: to look after my son, who was five years old,
Speaker 2: and then we had a daughter too that was one
Speaker 2: one year old. I needed to look after them in
Speaker 2: the day so I could play at night. So I
Speaker 2: got a job delivering bread in a truck. You know,
Speaker 2: people want bread early, so I started at four o'clock.
Speaker 2: By seven o'clock seven point thirty, I was finished and
Speaker 2: I could go home, get to sleep, look after the kids,
Speaker 2: and then when my wife came home, I could have
Speaker 2: a nap, oh go and play do my papa's pizza.
Speaker 2: But I had to be in bed early because I
Speaker 2: was getting up at three thirty every day. But I
Speaker 2: loved it because I was my young boss. My round
Speaker 2: was in the mountains in the Dandinong's a mountain range
Speaker 2: in Victoria, Australia, and I loved it. I was on
Speaker 2: my own. I could smell beautiful trees early in the morning.
Speaker 2: All these weird creatures would make all these weird sounds,
Speaker 2: and I was finished early. I would meet the butcher.
Speaker 2: We'd swap bread for meat and dairy and all kinds
Speaker 2: of things. It was a wonderful job. I loved it
Speaker 2: so much. I was really sad when I left. But
Speaker 2: I left to go into Superstar. So that's what that
Speaker 2: was my main job.
Speaker 1: So tell me about how you ended up going into
Speaker 1: Jesus Great Superstar.
Speaker 2: Well, when I was doing my bread run, I was
Speaker 2: driving my car in the day after I got back
Speaker 2: from my bread run, and I had this really weird
Speaker 2: feeling come over me, and this is true, it's a
Speaker 2: bit weird. I had this incredible feeling welling up from
Speaker 2: my feet up through my whole body, and I started
Speaker 2: to cry, like profusely, and I thought I was having
Speaker 2: a heart attack. I had to pull over. I couldn't drive.
Speaker 2: I was crying and making this ridiculous noise and I
Speaker 2: didn't know what was happening to me. And I pulled
Speaker 2: over and I had my head in my hands, and
Speaker 2: suddenly I lost all hearing. I couldn't hear anything, and
Speaker 2: all I could see the car that I was in disappeared.
Speaker 2: I was just sitting there. Everything was quiet, and it
Speaker 2: went kind of a gray, misty color. And over there
Speaker 2: to the right, I saw this figure and he was
Speaker 2: off the ground. He was about three or four feet
Speaker 2: off the ground and he was and he had a
Speaker 2: beard and a big, long, you know, white rope and
Speaker 2: he came over in front of where the car was,
Speaker 2: and I thought, I remember thinking to myself, don't look
Speaker 2: at me. I will freak, you know. I didn't want
Speaker 2: him to look at me. And he came over. He
Speaker 2: stood right in the middle of the of where the
Speaker 2: road was, and he turned to look at me and
Speaker 2: I'm dying, but I couldn't move. I'm crying profusely. I
Speaker 2: had this incredible feeling over me that I'd never experienced
Speaker 2: until then or since. It was this incredible feeling of love.
Speaker 2: And he looked at me. He didn't say anything, but
Speaker 2: I knew what he was saying, and he said, not speaking,
Speaker 2: he just I knew what he was saying. He said,
Speaker 2: it's not time for you yet, and I don't know
Speaker 2: what it meant. And after he said that, he carried
Speaker 2: on off the ground, just floating, and he disappeared. And
Speaker 2: then gradually the car came back and I could hear things,
Speaker 2: but I had this incredible feeling and it stayed with me,
Speaker 2: and I went home. I didn't tell my wife Linda
Speaker 2: about it for some time because I couldn't. I couldn't.
Speaker 2: I didn't know what it was. I thought I was
Speaker 2: dying or something. But I had this incredible feeling, and
Speaker 2: I started to reach I wanted to read some books,
Speaker 2: so I started a couple of religious books. And then
Speaker 2: this friend of mine that was a guitar player too,
Speaker 2: who I used to speak every couple of weeks, speaks
Speaker 2: on the phone every couple of weeks. He came to
Speaker 2: my house and he said, he said, I don't know why,
Speaker 2: but I could have called you, but I needed to
Speaker 2: come and I have to tell you something. I said,
Speaker 2: what's that. He said, there's a lady. Her name's Dorothy Whittle,
Speaker 2: and he said she's a friend of mine and she
Speaker 2: has a book for you, and you need to go
Speaker 2: and see her. I didn't know who she was. I
Speaker 2: went to her house and then she was about seventy,
Speaker 2: this little lady from the north of England, beautiful, beautiful soul.
Speaker 2: And she said, you've had a weird experience r I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: I have. She said, I got some books for you
Speaker 2: to read, and I said, okay. I said, that's what
Speaker 2: I'm looking for. So I became a verac reader. When
Speaker 2: I came home, would come home from my bread run,
Speaker 2: I'd read a book every day and it was, you know,
Speaker 2: on Comparative Religion, the first book I ever I read
Speaker 2: on it was it was a religious book, but I
Speaker 2: wasn't a religious person and I'm still not. It was
Speaker 2: the power of positive thinking. But it changed my whole life.
Speaker 2: And I read it and I needed more, and I
Speaker 2: read book after book after book trying to find an answer.
Speaker 2: And then one day I went to Dorothy's house because
Speaker 2: she lived near where my work was, so i'd go
Speaker 2: to her place and she became like a library for me,
Speaker 2: and I would swap books. She said when I went
Speaker 2: there wondering, she said, did you see they had for
Speaker 2: Superstar in the paper? I said, no, I haven't seen it.
Speaker 2: She said, they're advertising for singers and in dancers and stuff.
Speaker 2: I said, oh, really, I said, that's not my thing.
Speaker 2: I'm not singer, I'm not a dancer. And she said,
Speaker 2: she said, listen to me, if you go to that show,
Speaker 2: it'll change your life. And when I knew enough to
Speaker 2: know when she said something, I needed to listen, and
Speaker 2: I said, really, she said, it will change your life.
Speaker 2: So I went. I got the paper, I looked at
Speaker 2: the thing. I called them up, and I asked for
Speaker 2: an audition date and I got an audition. I didn't
Speaker 2: know what to sing, so I picked a song and
Speaker 2: I went to the audition. There were hundreds of people
Speaker 2: there waiting to get in, and I thought, oh, the
Speaker 2: chances of me getting an audition, not even getting a part,
Speaker 2: so remote. But because she told me to do it,
Speaker 2: I stuck it out and I waited. I did my audition.
Speaker 2: It took about three minutes. I said thank you and
Speaker 2: I was done, and I thought, thank god, that's over.
Speaker 2: I followed through and I thought, great, now I can
Speaker 2: get on with my life. And I didn't let Dorothy down.
Speaker 2: Two weeks later, I get a cool this is Superstar
Speaker 2: of the Office from Superstar. We're offering you a part
Speaker 2: in the show. You have to leave in two weeks.
Speaker 2: There's a month rehearsal in Sydney and you'll be gone
Speaker 2: for eighteen months to two years. Can you take the job?
Speaker 2: And they told me how much I was going to
Speaker 2: get and I said yes, and I was on top
Speaker 2: of the world. My whole life had changed suddenly. I
Speaker 2: was going to be a professional singer, not singing my songs,
Speaker 2: but singing Superstar music, which is incredible. And so I
Speaker 2: go the first day of rehearsal, I meet this guy
Speaker 2: with the big afro and we sing together for the
Speaker 2: first time and I hear and it was Russell. Of course,
Speaker 2: we hadn't even met nobody, knew anybody in the room
Speaker 2: and he was sat next to me and I went,
Speaker 2: I said, after the rehearse, I said, what an incredible voice.
Speaker 2: You have. He said, oh, really, thank you, He said,
Speaker 2: I've never really sung much before. I said, you sign incredible.
Speaker 2: But an alarm went off in my brain and it said,
Speaker 2: you need to meet him, you need to work with him.
Speaker 2: Because I knew how to write songs, not hit songs
Speaker 2: at that point, but I was never a singer, and
Speaker 2: I knew it. You know, I didn't want to be
Speaker 2: a lead singer, but this guy was. And we became
Speaker 2: such incredible friends from the very first moment we met.
Speaker 2: It was a pluncanny. We had so much in common.
Speaker 2: You know, first of all, we have the same name,
Speaker 2: We're born three days apart. Neither of us had a brother.
Speaker 2: We had a sister. I had two sisters, and you know,
Speaker 2: we didn't have anything else. We grew up with nothing
Speaker 2: and we just hit it off. You know. It was uncanny,
Speaker 2: and that's how that's how it all began.
Speaker 1: Okay, what did your wife say when you said you
Speaker 1: were going to go on the road for eighteen months.
Speaker 2: I must say she was incredibly supportive. She had we
Speaker 2: had two kids, but I was going to make a
Speaker 2: lot of money, well for me then, you know, I
Speaker 2: was assured of making a decent wage and she liked
Speaker 2: that it wasn't any uncertainty, and she was so supportive,
Speaker 2: and I said, I want you to come with me
Speaker 2: when we start touring, not in rehearsal. We were in
Speaker 2: rehearsal for Sydney for a month, but when we went
Speaker 2: we started in New Zealand, and I said, you're coming
Speaker 2: with me, and she did, and she brought the kids
Speaker 2: and straight away she got a job in the show
Speaker 2: selling programs, and so she was earning money. We had
Speaker 2: a babysitter for the kids. Then then she got into
Speaker 2: the office because she was in accounting. She was really
Speaker 2: good too, so she took a job selling programs, became
Speaker 2: really good at that, and then she ended up in
Speaker 2: the office. So she went all over with Superstar working.
Speaker 2: So that was great. The family were there and during
Speaker 2: that time, even from the very early days when I
Speaker 2: met Russell, we said are you inter forming a bat
Speaker 2: and he says, yeah, I'm into it. And he said
Speaker 2: to me, she said, bro, I don't want to write
Speaker 2: any songs, and I don't write songs. I just want
Speaker 2: to sing. And I said that's perfect. I'll write the
Speaker 2: songs and you sing. And it was the most perfect
Speaker 2: scenario that we could even actually, and we were both
Speaker 2: green as grass. We didn't know what we were doing,
Speaker 2: but we just knew we wanted to do it, and
Speaker 2: that's how it began. And it went from there, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, So what was the experience of being in Superstar
Speaker 1: like and how did that end?
Speaker 2: Well? I knew when we went in that we were
Speaker 2: going to be guaranteed eighteen months, maybe longer. But I
Speaker 2: also knew that Superstar at that time, in nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: five was a big, big show. It was when it
Speaker 2: came to Towan, it took over all the media, all
Speaker 2: the papers, and I knew that it was a stepping
Speaker 2: stone for us. We had to make use of it.
Speaker 2: We had to use Superstar. So straight away we got
Speaker 2: we started singing my songs and a couple of other
Speaker 2: cover songs, and we started and we had the lady,
Speaker 2: another lady in the show that actually got the role
Speaker 2: of Mary eventually, but she was I knew her from
Speaker 2: before my Papa's Pizza days. She was in the show.
Speaker 2: She had a great voice, and she came in with
Speaker 2: us and we had a little trio three part harmonies
Speaker 2: Lack Crosby, Stills and Nash I was playing guitar, Russ
Speaker 2: was playing congers, and we sang all these songs, ninety
Speaker 2: nine percent of in with my songs, and we sounded
Speaker 2: fabulous and people would come by the dress room and say, God,
Speaker 2: you guys sound good. And we started. I would call
Speaker 2: clubs wherever we were in New Zealand say, we're from Superstar.
Speaker 2: We have a little act. Can we come and play? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Of course, because it was a big draw Superstar, we would.
Speaker 2: They would pay us to come and play. We'd do
Speaker 2: an hour set and we sounded so good, and that
Speaker 2: just grew and grew. We ended up doing making videos.
Speaker 2: People would come up to us and say, do you
Speaker 2: want to make a video? Yeah, let us do it,
Speaker 2: and we got this reputation of being with Superstar.
Speaker 1: Just to be clear, Superstar plays every night. When were
Speaker 1: you playing these.
Speaker 2: Gigs, the show would end about ten point fifteen. We
Speaker 2: go to a club at eleven o'clock and play pretty
Speaker 2: much every night. So we got really good at doing this.
Speaker 2: And we were young. We didn't care if if we
Speaker 2: got tired or anything. You know, we weren't We weren't
Speaker 2: doing any drugs, we weren't drinking or anything. We were
Speaker 2: just wanted to play, and we were really good at it,
Speaker 2: and everybody in the show was noticing and they come
Speaker 2: and see, say, god, you guys great. Then suddenly Chrissy
Speaker 2: got the role of Mary. They fired Mary. She got
Speaker 2: the role of Mary Magdan, so she couldn't sing with
Speaker 2: us anymore. So when we got to Brisbane, they high
Speaker 2: had another three people and one of them was this guy,
Speaker 2: Jeremy Paul and he was a bass player and he
Speaker 2: had a great voice. He was our age and we
Speaker 2: said to him, do you want to step in and
Speaker 2: sing with us? And he says, yeah, I'd love to,
Speaker 2: and that that became a supply. That was the first
Speaker 2: one and we made we were We made a demo
Speaker 2: in the pit of Superstar, using the show's drummer and
Speaker 2: the show's keyboard player. We recorded two of my songs
Speaker 2: on a cassette and you know, talk about low fi.
Speaker 2: We just did it live on a little portable cassette
Speaker 2: machine and it sounded amazing. It was no high fire
Speaker 2: or anything, but it sounded great. Russell's voice was incredible,
Speaker 2: and we took that little cassette we only had one
Speaker 2: copy around to all the record companies and they all
Speaker 2: said no. And then the last one we took it
Speaker 2: to was CBS Records, and it was a guy that
Speaker 2: had just been made a producer for CBS. He was
Speaker 2: already a famous producer. He had a lot of success
Speaker 2: with other artists. And he listened to it and he said,
Speaker 2: he said, this kind of music isn't isn't happening. But
Speaker 2: he said, something's telling me to sign you guys that
Speaker 2: I don't know what it is. And he signed us
Speaker 2: and we made it. We made a single, and we
Speaker 2: made the album in a week and the single came out,
Speaker 2: it screamed up the charts. It was the biggest hit
Speaker 2: of the year. And nobody knew who we were because
Speaker 2: we were still in the show. And he before the
Speaker 2: record came out, he said, we didn't have a name,
Speaker 2: and he said, what are you going to call yourself?
Speaker 2: We said, we don't know. He said, I need a
Speaker 2: name by tomorrow morning. So that night we were trying
Speaker 2: to think of names, and I had a dream, and
Speaker 2: this is a true story. I dreamt of a big
Speaker 2: billboard and it was pure white and on the perimeter
Speaker 2: with flashing lights or strokes and neon lights going crazy,
Speaker 2: and in the middle of the billboard in big black letters.
Speaker 2: It said air supply. And I told Russell and Jeremy
Speaker 2: in the morning, I said, I don't know what this means,
Speaker 2: but I had this really vivid dream and they said, well,
Speaker 2: we haven't got any names either, let's go with it.
Speaker 2: So that's how we got the name. And that's that's
Speaker 2: it began right there, and the record was going to
Speaker 2: come out, and the producers said, Peter Dawkins was wonderful person.
Speaker 2: He said, there's a friend of his wants to play
Speaker 2: the song at like nine o'clock at night the first time.
Speaker 2: He said, he's given him the right to be the
Speaker 2: first one to play, and so we all wait. You know.
Speaker 2: It was a Sunday, so we were doing a superstar
Speaker 2: show and the guy said, yeah, I've got this band.
Speaker 2: It says, I'm going to play this record first time
Speaker 2: anywhere in the world. You know, I'm going to play it,
Speaker 2: and then I hope you're listening, guys, here here we go,
Speaker 2: you know. So he played it and it sounded amazing,
Speaker 2: you know, first time he had heard a song on
Speaker 2: the radio. And about half an hour later he said,
Speaker 2: my fans have gone berserk. He says, I've got to
Speaker 2: play this song again, and he played it about ten
Speaker 2: times that night and his phones just lit up. Everybody
Speaker 2: wanted that song, and within two weeks it was in
Speaker 2: the top ten. So suddenly this band called Air Supply,
Speaker 2: we're getting all these plays and it became a big, big,
Speaker 2: big hit. It became a classic song in Australia.
Speaker 1: You know, So how do you then with Superstar? And
Speaker 1: then you made a couple of records before you know,
Speaker 1: Clive picked up.
Speaker 2: We did well Superstar. We were told it was going
Speaker 2: to end, so we had about a month's notice, but
Speaker 2: our record was in the charts when it Superstar ended,
Speaker 2: so we were pretty happy about it. We were ready
Speaker 2: to make that move, and so we made the move.
Speaker 2: And they had a show called Superstars in Rock or
Speaker 2: the two big stars were Trevor White and John English
Speaker 2: who played Jesus and Judas, and they were the biggest
Speaker 2: stars in Australia. We become really good friends with them.
Speaker 2: So we were on their show Superstars in Rock, and
Speaker 2: we opened the show and we pretty much stole the show.
Speaker 2: We had top five songs and then suddenly were going,
Speaker 2: oh wow, this isn't a supply. We know who they
Speaker 2: were and so we played with them for about six
Speaker 2: weeks all around Australia. Then we started our own shows.
Speaker 2: So Superstar ended and we went straight into our supply.
Speaker 2: One of the first shows we played on our own
Speaker 2: after we played with John with Superstars in Rock was
Speaker 2: at the Opera House and New Year's Eve on the
Speaker 2: steps of the Opera House, and there were ninety thousand
Speaker 2: people there. We weren't the only act on the build.
Speaker 2: There were a lot of other big acts, but nevertheless
Speaker 2: it was our first big show to a lot of people,
Speaker 2: and we were like whoa, we were so green, we
Speaker 2: had no idea what we do. We hastily put a
Speaker 2: band together and we went on tour and that's how
Speaker 2: it all began. So Superstar ended and air supply began.
Speaker 1: Okay, how'd you end up in Los Angeles?
Speaker 2: Brook, Well, we had a two or three big hits.
Speaker 2: Next year we were touring in Australia, big hits, but
Speaker 2: we couldn't really make any money. And in the end
Speaker 2: we we said, God, what are we going to do?
Speaker 2: You know? And then suddenly Rod Stewart was touring and
Speaker 2: we were asked to open for him because we were
Speaker 2: like the biggest band in Australia at the time, so
Speaker 2: we opened for him. After the first show, Rod came
Speaker 2: to our dressing room personally and he said, I want
Speaker 2: I want you to open for me in the US
Speaker 2: next year, and we went what we couldn't believe it,
Speaker 2: but he meant it, and so we went to the US.
Speaker 2: We opened for Rod. We did about sixty shows and
Speaker 2: we everything was happening for us so fast, and we thought, oh,
Speaker 2: this is it, We're going to break wide open, but
Speaker 2: we didn't. But we learned from Rod. We watched this
Speaker 2: show every night. We became really good friends, and we
Speaker 2: learned so much from him, just about an audience, how
Speaker 2: to handle big audiences. We played everywhere, we opened for him,
Speaker 2: Madison Square, Gardens, everywhere. But then we got we got
Speaker 2: dropped after you know, when that tour ended, we were
Speaker 2: back in Australia and we had no hope. We had
Speaker 2: no shows to do, we had no band, we had nothing.
Speaker 2: We were broke, and I went I decided to go
Speaker 2: away and I just wanted to write some songs on
Speaker 2: my own. So I went to a friend's place in
Speaker 2: Adelaide to get away from everything, and I started to
Speaker 2: write some songs and then I over six month period.
Speaker 2: I called Russell up and I said, I think I've
Speaker 2: got some interesting songs, you know, And he came down
Speaker 2: on a bus. He took her like a twenty two
Speaker 2: hour bus ride to come and see me. And the
Speaker 2: first song I played him was lost in Love, and
Speaker 2: I thought lost in It was a good song, but
Speaker 2: he said stop. He said, this is the song that's
Speaker 2: going to change it for us. I said really, he
Speaker 2: said yeah. I played him that, and I played him
Speaker 2: a few of the songs, Chances, all out of Love.
Speaker 2: He said, okay, let's do it again. Let's put a
Speaker 2: band together. So we did. We released an album we
Speaker 2: Lost in Love on it. It became a big hit,
Speaker 2: but we still weren't making any money. We had a
Speaker 2: gold album, twenty thousand copies of an album, but we
Speaker 2: weren't making anything. We couldn't afford to do anything. So
Speaker 2: I decided, well, we both decided to stop. I wanted
Speaker 2: to go to this music festival in Cannes, in the
Speaker 2: south of France, so I sold a couple of guitars
Speaker 2: to get to go there to try and sell some songs.
Speaker 2: I get to can and I got food poisoning. I
Speaker 2: couldn't get out of bed for three days. I thought
Speaker 2: I was going to die. And by the time I
Speaker 2: got out of bed and walked down the street, the
Speaker 2: whole festival was over. It was done. And I thought, okay,
Speaker 2: here we go. Just my look. And then there was
Speaker 2: a copy of Record World was blowing down the street.
Speaker 2: It's all rubbish blowing. Every everybody had left, and I
Speaker 2: picked I thought, okay, I picked it up. I picked
Speaker 2: it up. On the front cover it said lost in Love.
Speaker 2: I turned to page five. This song is destined to
Speaker 2: go all the Way? And I thought, oh great, somebody,
Speaker 2: somebody's written a song called lost in Love, which is
Speaker 2: our biggest chance of anything. And I thought everything. I
Speaker 2: thought we were sunk. But I turned to page five
Speaker 2: and there's a picture of Russell and myself there on
Speaker 2: that page, and it said air supply going to go
Speaker 2: all the way and is an article by Clive Davis.
Speaker 2: He'd licensed the song without our knowledge. So I thought, WHOA,
Speaker 2: what's going on here? I called Clive, who I didn't know,
Speaker 2: and I reversed the chargers. Because I had no money.
Speaker 2: I called him at Arista Records. He was in I
Speaker 2: called New York. He said he's in Los Angeles. I said,
Speaker 2: can you give me the number? He gave me the number.
Speaker 2: I reversed the chargers. He accepted and he said, are
Speaker 2: you from air Supply? I said yeah. He said what
Speaker 2: where are I said, I'm in the side of France.
Speaker 2: He said, what are you doing there? Get back to Australia.
Speaker 2: We need that album. He said, Lost in Love's going
Speaker 2: to be the biggest song of the year. But as
Speaker 2: soon as I heard that, I knew everything was going
Speaker 2: to be okay. But on my way back, I went
Speaker 2: through Los Angeles. I said, can I come and meet
Speaker 2: you to tell me that this is all for real?
Speaker 2: And he said, yeah, come on, we'll have lunch. I
Speaker 2: went to the Bevery Hills Hotel and his bungalow lunch
Speaker 2: and he kept it and said, you've got to get
Speaker 2: out of it. Get back to Australia, get that album
Speaker 2: right now. And so I went back. We made the
Speaker 2: album and then everything after that became history.
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, Just a couple of questions after the
Speaker 1: Rod Stewart tour, Yeah, did you and Russell think you
Speaker 1: were going to continue?
Speaker 2: No? We well, we weren't going to give up, but
Speaker 2: we just had no money. You know. Russell was working
Speaker 2: on videos with other artists with a fog machine, sticking
Speaker 2: a fog machine in a bass drum. And he was
Speaker 2: actually on a little riverband video for reminiscing, and he's
Speaker 2: sticking the fog machine in the base room. And they
Speaker 2: knew he was a singer, and they said, and what
Speaker 2: are you doing here? You need to get to the
Speaker 2: US because they were a huge little rivermand But I
Speaker 2: just needed to earn some money. I had two children,
Speaker 2: you know, and I wasn't making any money. I needed
Speaker 2: to do something. So the only thing I should think
Speaker 2: of was to sell songs. And somebody recorded Lost in
Speaker 2: Love in Europe, a Greek artist called Demise Rusos, and
Speaker 2: it was a big hit all over Europe. So I
Speaker 2: made a little bit, a few thousand dollars from that.
Speaker 2: But I thought, I've got to sell all the songs.
Speaker 2: I've got to earn a living, you know. But that
Speaker 2: was the only way I could think of. I had
Speaker 2: no skills. I wasn't a tradesman or anything. I had nothing,
Speaker 2: you know. The only skill I had was I knew
Speaker 2: how to write songs, but I was unknown. Nobody wanted
Speaker 2: to buy songs from me, I was unknown.
Speaker 1: How did it end with your first wife?
Speaker 2: Well, when I went with Rod, you know, she knew
Speaker 2: I was going to be gone for six months, which
Speaker 2: I was, and we kind of knew it was going
Speaker 2: to come to an end, you know, we both realized it.
Speaker 2: And once I was there for a month and two months,
Speaker 2: you know, she said, I'm going to go back to
Speaker 2: England and she went back to England with the kids
Speaker 2: and we were okay with it. I said, yeah, it's
Speaker 2: a different vibe now, isn't it. She said, yeah, it is.
Speaker 2: But she was never antagonistic. She was always very supportive
Speaker 2: and I must give her that, and I always have.
Speaker 2: You know. She was wonderful and the only thing that
Speaker 2: was important to us was the children, making sure they
Speaker 2: were okay, and they were, you know, I would see them.
Speaker 2: I went to England to see them. I threw them
Speaker 2: out to Australia all the time, and I always wanted
Speaker 2: to maintain a great relationship with them. And now they're
Speaker 2: in the fifties, so I have a great relationship with them.
Speaker 1: You know, what are they doing.
Speaker 2: My son lives in Tennessee. He works on a big
Speaker 2: ranch actually, and my daughter lives in Brisbane, Australia, and
Speaker 2: she worked for the government on ecosystems and things like that.
Speaker 2: So they're doing really well. They You know, I have
Speaker 2: six grandchildren, so life has been good to me. You know.
Speaker 2: There was that time around Rod's time where I thought,
Speaker 2: oh god, I've got no money, I'm losing my family,
Speaker 2: I've got no prospects. But right when it was darkest,
Speaker 2: there was a light shining. You know.
Speaker 1: So are those the only two kids you have?
Speaker 2: Yeah? They are. Yeah. I didn't want to go through
Speaker 2: it all again, you know, but you ultimately got red, Ma,
Speaker 2: I did. Yes.
Speaker 1: So how did you meet your new wife?
Speaker 2: She was at a show in Rockford, Illinois with her mother.
Speaker 2: She was quite young, and somehow she got backstage and
Speaker 2: we swapped her dresses and I said I'd love to
Speaker 2: She was like sixteen. I said I'd love to write
Speaker 2: to you, you know. And we wrote to each other
Speaker 2: for two years. And when she was nineteen, they were
Speaker 2: looking for somebody to shoot the video of making love
Speaker 2: out nothing at all, and they couldn't find anybody. And
Speaker 2: they said to me, do you know anybody this young
Speaker 2: blonde lady that's kind of very good looking and attractive
Speaker 2: and I said, as a matter of fact, I do,
Speaker 2: and they called her and they said we want, we
Speaker 2: want you to come out and be in that video.
Speaker 2: And when she came out, we we final in love
Speaker 2: because we were thrown together for the first time to
Speaker 2: fun in Love. We got engaged and we got married
Speaker 2: when she was twenty one and ever since.
Speaker 1: Wow, just one other thing, going back to Rod's do
Speaker 1: it you did all those dates, no one came up
Speaker 1: and said, wait, wait, I don't want to sign you.
Speaker 1: There's something going on here.
Speaker 2: Well, we were signed to CBS because we were signed
Speaker 2: to CBS Australia and CBS in the United States were
Speaker 2: really handed us. They were given us. They had to
Speaker 2: look after us, you know, and they really didn't want to.
Speaker 2: They didn't see any future for us. So you know,
Speaker 2: our album wasn't in the stores. We never did any
Speaker 2: press or any interviews. They just didn't want anything to
Speaker 2: do with us. We just happened to be on their
Speaker 2: label and they were handed us and that they had
Speaker 2: to do something with us, but they never did. There
Speaker 2: was nobody that came to the show said hey, guys,
Speaker 2: let's release a single. They never released anything. The album
Speaker 2: was released, but nothing happened. They just didn't want anything
Speaker 2: to do with it, you know.
Speaker 1: And then you know, it was a typical opening act deal.
Speaker 1: The money was so poor that at the end of
Speaker 1: the tour there was nothing.
Speaker 2: Left, nothing left. I think we made maybe five hundred
Speaker 2: dollars a show. But I must say Rad and his
Speaker 2: entourage really did the right thing. You know. We never
Speaker 2: had a sound check. We were just got thrown on.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is his show, you know. But we
Speaker 2: were fortunate enough to be opening for the biggest act
Speaker 2: in the world. We didn't make any money, but we
Speaker 2: became good friends with his whole entourage. We would he
Speaker 2: we would have dinners with them all night, so you know,
Speaker 2: suddenly we'd be I mean, we were nobody, you know.
Speaker 2: Then we'd be having dinner with the biggest act in
Speaker 2: the world at a posh hotel and we'd never been
Speaker 2: used to eating whatever we felt like or drinking fine wise,
Speaker 2: and we would say, you know, we can we have
Speaker 2: this this or that, and they say, whatever you want,
Speaker 2: you know, And it was pretty much two or three
Speaker 2: nights a week was like that. So we really were
Speaker 2: looked after, and they did the right thing with us,
Speaker 2: which was incredible. They could have just you know, they
Speaker 2: didn't need to have us open for them. They didn't
Speaker 2: need us. We needed them. And you would imagine that
Speaker 2: we would break after doing sixty shows with them, but
Speaker 2: we just didn't. And it was meant on reflection that
Speaker 2: it was meant for us to get in the trenches,
Speaker 2: go back and learn your craft. We'd learned a lot
Speaker 2: from Superstar, we'd learned a lot from being with Rod.
Speaker 2: Now we had to learn to be ourselves and to
Speaker 2: get ready for the success that was coming our way.
Speaker 2: But we didn't even know it.
Speaker 1: You know, Well, we've learned a lot here, Graham. Today,
Speaker 1: I think that we've covered the surface at least of
Speaker 1: what's going on, and I think we're gonna stop it here.
Speaker 1: I want to thank you for taking the time with
Speaker 1: my audience, Bobby.
Speaker 2: It's been such a pleasure. Thank you for the invitation.
Speaker 2: When they first had always it's going to be two hours,
Speaker 2: I thought, God, I don't know if I can sit
Speaker 2: still for two hours, but I managed to do it
Speaker 2: and it's been fantastic. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, once we hit the groove there, you know,
Speaker 3: it's like you you start telling this stray, I can
Speaker 3: as I say we can talk all day. I got
Speaker 3: a few more questions, but we're gonna leave it here
Speaker 3: for now.
Speaker 1: Hopefully I'll see on the road at some point, I hope.
Speaker 2: So, I hope you come and see how show it again?
Speaker 1: Right? In any event, till next time. This is Bob
Speaker 1: Leftstock