(Australian 1975 - Present)
Little River Band (LRB) are a rock band originally formed in Melbourne, Australia, in March 1975. The band achieved commercial success in both Australia and the United States. They have sold more than 30 million records; six studio albums reached the top 10 on the Australian Kent Music Report albums chart including Diamantina Cocktail (April 1977) and First Under the Wire (July 1979), which both peaked at No. 2. Nine singles appeared in the top 20 on the related singles chart, with "Help Is on Its Way" (1977) as their only number-one hit. Ten singles reached the top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 with "Reminiscing" their highest, peaking at No. 3. Only First Under the Wire appeared in the top 10 albums on the Billboard 200.
Early members were Beeb Birtles, Ric Formosa, Graeham Goble, Roger McLachlan, Derek Pellicci and Glenn Shorrock. Most of the group's 1970s and 1980s material was written by Goble and/or Shorrock, Birtles and David Briggs (who replaced Formosa).
Little River Band have received many music awards in Australia. In May 2001 the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA), as part of its 75th anniversary celebrations, named "Cool Change", written by Shorrock, as one of the Top 30 Australian songs of all time. The 1976 line-up of Birtles, Briggs, Goble, Pellicci, Shorrock and George McArdle (who replaced McLachlan), were inducted into the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Hall of Fame at the 18th Annual ARIA Music Awards of 2004.
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| Original cover of their debut LP |
Little River Band have undergone numerous personnel changes, with over 30 members since their formation. None of the musicians now performing as Little River Band are original members, nor did they contribute to the success the band had in the 1970s. In the 1980s, members included John Farnham, David Hirschfelder, Stephen Housden, Wayne Nelson and Steve Prestwich. Currently the line-up is Nelson with Rich Herring, Greg Hind, Chris Marion and Ryan Ricks. Two former members have died, Barry Sullivan in October 2003 (aged 57) and Steve Prestwich in January 2011 (aged 56).
An Australian sextet, Little River Band's debut album sounds as American as anything by the Eagles or the Doobie Brothers, and is driven by "It's a Long Way There" -- whose eight and a half minutes of crunchy electric guitars, luminous acoustic guitar, and smooth harmonizing is spread across a musically dramatic arc that is worth every second of its running time. This is an astonishingly strong debut album. There aren't any surprises, just seven more eminently enjoyable if slightly looser structured mainstream rock songs in the same vein, inventive where they had to be (like on the solos or the variations on the extended choruses), all more modestly proportioned than the hit and thoroughly enjoyable.
Guitarist Graham Goble dominated the songwriting with the single and "I Know It," but drummer Glenn Sharrock contributed significantly with the delightfully exuberant "Emma" and the hauntingly beautiful movie-within-a-song "The Man in Black," and guitarist Beeb Birtles showed himself no slouch in the ballad department with "I'll Always Call Your Name," which overstays its welcome by about 30 seconds but is otherwise nice and catchy.
50+ years ago on March 20, 1975, Little River Band played their first ever gig together at Martini’s in Carlton, Victoria, Australia. The rest they say is history, and what an incredible and illustrious history it is. But exactly how did LRB come about, you might ask ? Well, Jeff Apter (an Australian Author) has recently discussed this in his book entitled 'Up From Down Under - How Australian Music Changed the World'. The following is an extract from this book:
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| Glenn Wheatley |
The Greyhound pub in Earls Court, London, was dark, dingy and sparsely populated, a real dive. When Glenn Wheatley’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, he sensed there were more people on the small stage than inside the pub itself, or so it appeared as he peered through the smoke that seemed to hang in the air like a fog.
Wheatley (pictured left), until recently the bassist for Melbourne band the Masters Apprentices, recognised some of the musos up on stage: singer-songwriters Beeb Birtles and Graham Goble. Drummer Derek Pellicci, too. The band was called Mississippi, straight out of Adelaide, of all places. And from what Wheatley could observe, they were seemingly on the same path as so many Aussie bands in the UK at the time — the road to nowhere. It was 1974 and times were tough.
Wheatley knew that empty feeling only too well. The Masters Apprentices had arrived in London in 1970, full of hope and fire, yet within a few years had crashed and burned, yet another Oz rock casualty. He’d recently shifted away from performing, learning the music industry ropes in LA and London, working for the Gem Toby Organisation. Wheatley was in a unique position; he understood how things operated on-stage and off; he identified with a musician's struggle but was also coming to grips with the intrigue and small print that was a key component of the music business. Over time, these qualities would prove incredibly helpful for Wheatley and the band he’d come to manage. And there was something about Mississippi that Wheatley liked: the songs were strong, the sound was good — and those harmonies. Wow. There was one song in particular, ‘A Long Way There’, that really had potential. But they could use a lead singer. No disputing that.
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The single release of "It's A Long Way There" was an edited version (4:16)
while the album version is (8:43) which I prefer much more |
Singer Glenn Shorrock was also in London in 1974, sniffing out a solo career in the wake of the demise of his band Axiom, who’d travelled to the UK from Adelaide only to dissolve when their drummer decided to quit. (Just two weeks earlier they'd finished recording an album with UK hitmaker Shel Talmy.)
Shorrock, for a time, had sung back-up vocals for Cliff Richard, Olivia Newton-John’s buddy. And Shorrock was a big fan of the songs Goble had written for Mississippi, especially the haunting ‘Kings of the World’, an Australian hit, and ‘Early Morning’. He liked their soulful pop grooves and deep harmonies.
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| Shorrock & Birtles |
Shorrock was a vastly different person to Goble — he was a piss-taker, mouthy, whereas Goble was pedantic and detailorientated, with a keen interest in numerology and matters spiritual — but Shorrock sensed a kindred musical spirit and a fellow traveller. Shorrock once boasted, ‘I come from a long line of show-offs.’
As a kid, he’d mimed Elvis Presley’s ‘All Shook Up’ with a guitar made of cardboard and the rock’n’ roll bug bit him hard, much to the horror of his opera-loving father. When he handled a real guitar, it was a revelation. ‘It was like seeing the wheel for the first time, Shorrock said. He loved American rock’n’ roll, Elvis, Little Richard: the masters. There was an aggressive quality to Shorrock when he stood on stage and sang. As his future bandmate, guitarist David Briggs, came to learn: ‘To see him working, I saw a guy who knew how to project all the way to the back of the room. He was an incredibly charismatic performer.’
The shaggy-haired, bespectacled Goble, meanwhile, was a dead ringer for Bill Oddie from British comedy team the Goodies. Goble was quiet and thoughtful, introspective. He and Shorrock were worlds apart.
‘Glen and I saw things from very different perspectives, Goble admitted, perhaps understating the case. As for handsome Dutch-born Birtles, whose real name was the challenging Gerard Bertelkamp, he’d been a member of Oz pop-rockers Zoot. Rick Springfield was his bandmate and close buddy. Although a supercharged rendition of the Beatles’ ‘Eleanor Rigby’ had been a huge hit in Australia for the Zoot, they, too, fell apart in the early 1970s. It was a familiar pattern: Oz band breaks out at home and then breaks up after a failed offshore sojourn.
Better to burn out than fade away, or so it seemed. ‘I call those years,’ Beeb Birtles now says with a wry chuckle, ‘my apprenticeship years.’
Things had played out well for Springfield, however; his winsome folk ditty ‘Speak to the Sky’ was a US Top 10 in 1972, launching a meteoric (if occasionally bumpy) career Stateside.
Birtles, meanwhile, played to a succession of empty rooms in London. Birtles’ career, just like the Greyhound pub, had seen better days. Wheatley was only passing through London in 1974; he was about to slowly make his way back to Australia, travelling for a few months. But before he left he hastily set up a meeting with Goble and Birtles, who agreed that their band needed a lead singer, at the very least. Wheatley also reached out to Shorrock. It was pretty clear that Mississippi was about to run dry, Wheatley acknowledged, ‘But why don’t you guys try working together?’
Wheatley also identified that the USA was a better target for the new band. He’d seen way too many groups fall apart in the UK, including his own. ‘America, he told the trio. ‘That’s where you should be looking. Forget England.’ It was sage advice. By the time that Wheatley and the four musicians (including drummer Pellicci) reconnected back in Australia, their master plan was in place: America or bust. ‘It was all such chance,’ Birtles said of their union, ‘because Glenn Shorrock had had enough of getting nowhere in England and Glenn Wheatley was passing through London.’
It didn’t take long for Birtles, Goble, Pellicci and Shorrock to find common musical ground. They also bonded over poverty and ambition, especially ambition. Everyone, Wheatley included, had served their apprenticeship: it was time to put together a band with the requisite skills as players and writers to sell some records. A great commercial band with great commercial songs. And when their voices joined in harmony, well, it was pretty special. They also had a good stock of new songs ready to unveil.
They didn’t have a new name — they were still using the Mississippi tag — but they had a sound that seemed tailor-made for the US market. ‘We were unified through the music we were writing and performing, said Birtles. ‘We were also friends in those early days because we started with nothing between us.’ Shorrock had a slightly different take on their roots. ‘I knew these were the best songs that I'd come in contact with and I was able to sing them very well with these guys. [But] these two guys and me, we weren't brothers. ‘This wasn’t a marriage born of love; it was a marriage of convenience. And a good marriage. I felt pretty confident, and my feet were on the ground still, and I was ready to give it another crack.’
It was duly decided: they'd break America in a bigger way than any other Australian band. And Wheatley would be their manager. But what to call the group? Mississippi was rooted in the past.
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The current sign on the Geelong/Melbourne Highway, but
not the original one that
the band would have seen back in '75 |
The same dumb luck that connected the four musicians with Wheatley continued when they were back in Oz. The as-yetunnamed group were driving through rural Victoria, not too far from Geelong, when a road sign caught everyone's eye. It read: ‘Little River’.
‘That, someone said, ‘would make a great name for a song.’ ‘No, said another voice. ‘That's the perfect name for a band.’
It was simple, stark and absolutely perfect. They pulled over to the side of the road and made a pact: ‘We're now the Little River Band.’
[LRB discuss this historical moment in the following interview]
While still on the dole — seemingly another rite of passage for a struggling Aussie band with big dreams — they played their first gig under this new name at Melbourne's Martinis Hotel on 20th March 1975. By the end of April they'd already played 20 shows. They'd barely stop to take a breath for the next 10 years, playing more than 1300 concerts and recording 10 albums, a hefty load that would break the toughest of bands. Yet LRB, as they came to be known, seemed to revel in the work, and truly demonstrated how Australian Music could change the world. [extract from "Up From Down Under - How Australian Music Changed the World" by Jeff Apter, 2013 p85-91]
This post consists of FLACs ripped from CD and includes full album artwork for both CD and Vinyl.
Although I own both vinyl releases, I much prefer the reissue cover (see top) rather than the cartoonish original cover which only appeared on vinyl, as it depicts a more serious band and probably better suited the American market anyhow.
01. It's A Long Way There
02. Curiosity (Killed The Cat)
03. Meanwhile...
04. My Lady And Me
05. I'll Always Call Your Name
06. Emma
07. The Man In Black
08. Statue Of Liberty
09. I Know It
Band Members:
Graeham Goble - Vocals/Guitar
Beeb Birtles - Vocals/Guitar
Derek Pellicci - Drums
Roger McLachlan - Bass
Ric Formosa - Guitar
Track listing
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