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In January 2020, the Herald Sun proclaimed Air Supply in the Top 5 of Greatest Aussie Bands of All Time, putting them in the stellar company of AC/DC, Bee Gees and INXS. They loved delighting these huge audiences, but when they returned home, it was as if everyone had forgotten them and “Love and Other Bruises.” As Russell recalls, “We were broke, dead in the water with no gigs in sight because there had been no PR in Australia about these young guys with a hit song touring the U.S.
with a legendary rocker. They had sort of the same name, were born the same week in mid-June a year apart, and had both seen the Beatles play in 1964. “It was the start of a three-month bus tour, and before the gig, around 6 p.m., there were all these trucks outside. And then Graham wrote the song that changed everything for us.”
The original version of “Lost in Love” – from Air Supply’s fourth, very appropriately titled album Life Support (1979) – also (in Graham’s parlance) “screamed” up the charts, reaching #13 in Australia and #3 in New Zealand.
This was our life now.
“We still feel that way now, almost 50 years later, with people coming to see us and selling out every venue we play,” he adds. It’s also been wonderful to work with and meet so many great people and to have had such a long friendship with Russell that is the envy of so many!” Russell adds, “We are so grateful to have a legacy that we can be proud of and that our music has meant so much to so many for this long.”
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Graham muses, “How a kid from Nottingham, a blue-collar town with the UK’s largest coal reserves, came to talk with the future king is surreal to me.But we learned that you can’t fight city hall or live in a dream of the past. Under musical direction of lead guitarist Aaron McLain, the ensemble includes Mirko Tessandori (piano/keyboards/vocals), Pavel Valdman (drums) and Doug Gild (bass). We’re very proud of the music we have created and happy to be remembered for being nice guys.”
As Air Supply pivoted and over the subsequent decades became one of the world’s most successful, enduring and impactful classic pop acts, they continued to record and release numerous acclaimed studio and live albums, starting with the million selling international hit The Earth Is (1989) and continuing with The Vanishing Race (1993), News from Nowhere (1995), The Book of Love (1997), Yours Truly (2001) and Across the Concrete Sky (2003).
Graham’s song “Love and Other Bruises” “screamed up the Aussie charts” (peaking at #6) and suddenly, in a country where hard rockers like AC/DC were all the rage, these guys with a big epic ballad were instant stars.
That same year, Rod Stewart brought the guys on board to open his Australian, U.S. and Canadian tours. Most importantly, it caught the ear of legendary music executive Clive Davis, President of Arista Records at the time, who enthusiastically signed them and released their U.S.
debut album Lost in Love. I had never seen anything like it. “We’ve never stopped believing in what we’re doing and still love what we do and never take it for granted. One even declared, “It’s over for these guys.” He says, “When you’ve had such a string of successful songs in a certain period of time, it’s hard to accept the fact that while still putting out great original music, it was as if we suddenly fell off the face of the earth.
We had to move on, day to day. Likewise, hearing Diana tell me that she owned several of our albums was unbelievable.” That first trip to China in 1995 and the Havana, Cuba show a decade later were exhilarating for them as well.
In 2023-24, they built momentum to their 50th Anniversary with shows in England, Ireland, Israel, Philippines, South Korea, Japan, Canada, the U.S. and beyond, including their first ever performance at the Hollywood Bowl.
Looking back on the incredible, still evolving journey they have been on since their days in the chorus of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, Graham and Russell express nothing but gratitude for their good fortune and the enduring support of their fans around the world.
After the show’s performances, they pooled their talents and ventured out to play pizza parlors, coffee bars and night clubs with just one guitar and two voices. Riding a wave of successful Australian artists of the era – Bee Gees, Olivia Newton-John, Little River Band, et al – Air Supply’s first Stateside track “Lost in Love” became the fastest selling single in the world, reaching #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart and #3 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The success of their 2010 Top 30 AC hit “Dance with Me” earned them a prominent feature article in Billboard titled “Still Supplying The Hits After 35 Years.” Testament to their enduring appeal, in 2011, they appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, performing their classic “All Out of Love.” Later that year, they released their live Jerusalem show for a DVD featuring two new songs, including “Sanctuary,” which was released as a single.
Passing their 5000th concert in 2019 with one of their many annual performances in Las Vegas, they released The Lost In Love Experience, one of their most popular live albums, recorded with the Prague Symphony.
We have left our stamp on the universe.”