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