Still In Love

On May 12, 1975 an aspiring young songwriter named Graham Russell fronted up to an audition for a new production of the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice musical, Jesus Christ Superstar, being presented in Melbourne that year. In the biographical profile he presents on Air Supply's website, he admits he'd only decided to give it a try on the advice of an elderly psychic friend who “felt it would change [his] life forever”.

At the audition was another young hopeful, Russell Hitchcock. They got chatting, discovered a mutual passion for The Beatles and, having both successfully auditioned, joined the cast and began singing together after their Jesus Christ Superstar performances, with bass player Jeremy Paul soon joining them. CBS A&R man and producer Peter Dawkins heard a demo cassette that included a track called Love And Other Bruises, signed them up, and a re-recorded Love And Other Bruises became their debut single, peaking at number six nationally in October 1976. Now a six-piece that included another Superstar cast member, Mark McEntee, Air Supply released their self-titled debut album in December. McEntee left soon after.

Their second album, The Whole Thing's Started, released in July 1977, peaked at number 32, and the band scored the support on Rod Stewart's Australian tour. Stewart was impressed enough to invite Air Supply to open for him across North America.

Air Supply went into the studio in LA while on tour, Jeremy Paul quitting during the recording and returning to Sydney, where he managed and played in the band McEntee had pulled together, Divinyls. The Love & Other Bruises album, released exclusively in the US later in 1977, failed to ignite the charts. Soon after their return to Australia, the band took a break.

Air Supply released the Life Support album in March 1979, which included Lost In Love, a copy of which somehow found its way to Clive Davis in New York, who signed them to Arista. Lost In Love became the title track of their next album, released in June 1980. It was radio rather than any memories of their performances on the Rod Stewart tour, however, that finally broke Air Supply in the US, as Russell recalled in a previous interview with The Drum.

“By the time we toured [in the States] – our first date was October 1, 1980 – Lost In Love [single] was already #3, so the record came in front of us. In fact, I saw it in a magazine when I was in Cannes in the south of France. We didn't even know it had been released. So by the time we got there it was all happening, and it was wonderful because we never had to play in any more little clubs or anything. We couldn't believe it – it was like a small-scale Beatlemania. I mean, people were screaming all over the place. That first concert, we didn't know what the American crowds were going to be like, but before the show I went out to the backstage and just stood on my own for about 20 minutes and looked at all the buses and the big trucks and all the gear going in and everything and I thought, 'Wow! It's really happening'.“

The One That You Love finally took Air Supply to the number one spot in the US singles charts in July 1981. The next, Here I Am, reached number five in the US in September, securing Air Supply Best Group at the 1982 American Music Awards.

“I think the fact that we were Australian was a lot of the appeal,” Russell suggested in the aforementioned interview. “Certainly it was in 1980 when we first hit in the US. It was very hip then to be Australian because Olivia [Newton-John] was having success and it was very cool to be from Australia. Yet of course I was British! I'd been living in Australia 17 years and it was a bit strange, it really was, because I'd always wanted to achieve success in England as a kid and a teenager.

“Europe and Britain were always slower for us. We'd tour into Italy, Germany and the Scandinavian countries, but our main focus, for the first five or six years, was the US and Japan, and then South America, and now it's all over Asia again.”

In 1983 came a greatest hits album that included one new track, a cover of Making Love Out Of Nothing At All. It sold seven million copies in the US and topped the Australian chart. In November 1987, Russell and Hitchcock opted to take a break from the band.

“We don't sell any records here [in America] any more, except to our fanbase. All the records we sell are overseas in Asia, South America and Europe. But we still live here in the US, and we get played a hell of a lot, but they don't play any of the new stuff. It's all more the old stuff.”

Since Russell and Hitchcock reconvened in 1991, they've released another seven albums, most recently 2010's Mumbo Jumbo, and several concert CD/DVDs. They perform around 150 concerts a year and will play a handful while they're here to be inducted as 2013 ARIA hall of famers.