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via Jerusalem Post

Australian-British rock outfit Air Supply is coming back, for the fourth time, to perform some of their seemingly endless string of definitively melodic numbers and, while they’re at it, spread some much-needed good vibes around. The ambiance should be suitably charged when they appear at the Haifa Convention Center (May 27) and Live Park in Rishon Lezion the next night (both 9 p.m.).

“For some reason, the music means a lot to people,” says songwriter-guitarist-vocalist Graham Russell. “You see it when we step on stage. People stand up, and they’re crying and they’re laughing and they have a great time. So, something’s going on,” he adds with a chuckle.

Something has been “going on,” admittedly with a few early stutters, for 47 years. Russell and Australian singer Russell Hitchcock first met up, in 1975, when they were in the cast of the Australian production of hit musical Jesus Christ Superstar. It seems the fates summarily threw them together. “I think we were predestined to meet. And I’m a big believer in that. We were just thrown together,” says Russell who hails from what he calls “a small working-class village near Nottingham,” in England. “I could have gone down the coal mines, likes everybody else where I lived. Thankfully, I didn’t.”

Thankfully. Had that happened, not only would Russell would have had a far less healthy means of making ends meet, millions of adoring fans, around the world and across the generations, would have been deprived of such timeless classics as “Lost In Love” and “All Out Love,” which came out in 1979 and 1980 respectively.

Both were huge hits and cemented the duo’s place as one of the world’s biggest rock acts. Since Air Supply started life, in 1975, the group has put out 17 studio albums, 13 compilation albums, 4 live albums and 27 singles, racking up sales of in excess of $40 million in the process.

But it might have been so different had Lady Luck, eventually, not smiled down on Russell and Hitchcock and opened up some crucial doors for them.

The pair’s initial rendezvous was the result of circumstance. “We were the only two people in [Jesus Christ] Superstar who didn’t know anybody,” Russell recalls. “The rest of the cast were all actors and musicians, and they’d all been in other shows. It was like the first day at school for Russell and me. You know, when you’re in the playground and you don’t anybody, you go and hide behind a brick wall. That was both of us. So, by chance, we sat next to each other.”

THAT MEANT they were in adjacent earshot and Russell was able to appreciate Hitchcock’s vocals from close quarters. The Brit heard his new Aussie pal singing and complimented him on his voice. A lifelong friendship and an enduring hugely successful professional liaison were in the making. “There are certain moments when Russell and I are traveling, we wonder what would have happened in that scenario. We’ve always thought the Universe threw us together. I’m a great believer in that.”

Russell notes all sorts of interfaces between them. “We were both born in June, we’d both seen The Beatles when we were 14 – that was the first concert I ever went to. And, when we met, Russell said ‘hey, we’ve got the same name!’” The Fab Four and the music his parents played at home – the likes of George Gershwin, and Rodgers and Hammerstein – laid the solid foundation for the songwriter’s enduring love affair with close harmony and strong melodies.

During Jesus Christ Superstar’s 18-month run the two got together to try out numbers Russell was writing, and began doing late-night rounds of the local pub and other cozy music venue scenes. Their initial close harmony group morphed into Air Supply and their first single, “Love and Other Bruises,” made number 6 on the Australian Billboard chart.

That wasn’t quite the big time, but things stepped up incrementally when, after Air Supply released its second album, British megastar rocker Rod Stewart asked them to open for him Down Under. Stewart was suitably impressed and the Australian circuit was followed by a five-month stint with Stewart around the United States. Russell and Hitchcock felt they’d made the big time, playing on the grandest stages America had to offer, including Madison Square Garden in New York.

But the pair was in for a rude wake-up call. “We came back to Australia and we discovered we’d been forgotten,” Russell recalls. “They didn’t know who we were.” Things hit rock bottom when, at one gig in Sydney, no one turned up.

It could have gone completely and irretrievably pear-shaped but, somehow, they managed to turn things around. Russell headed for home, in Adelaide, to write some songs, hoping against hope that his muses would deliver. Three months later, Hitchcock made the long trek over from Melbourne to see what his pal had come up with. “He came down, I think it was by bus, and I played him ‘Lost In Love.’ Russell said: ‘That’s the one. That’s going to change everything.’”

HITCHCOCK WAS spot on, even though there were a few more challenging twists to be negotiated, including Russell being confined to his hotel room for three days, with food poisoning, after scraping together a few pennies to get to the Midem music industry trade fair in Cannes, France. He missed the whole event, including a bunch of meetings with industry leaders but– unbeknownst to Russell and Hitchcock – word of “Lost In Love” and other charts Russell had penned during his Adelaide stint had gotten out to the world, via the Australian arm of the CBS record company. Clive Davis, of Arista Records had gotten in on the act, and the rest is now history.

“There is never a day that goes by without me and Russell feeling grateful for what has happened to us, and Air Supply, over the years,” the songwriter says. “We could have packed it in back then, on more than one occasion, but we kept going and we got our luck.”

Close to a half a century on, Russell and Hitchcock are still playing to adoring fans all over the globe. It appears to work well, on all levels. That, Russell feels, is largely down to their live and let live ethos. “The great thing about our relationship is that Russell doesn’t want to write songs. He doesn’t know how to write a song. And I don’t want to be a singer, because I’m not a lead singer. I’m a songwriter that sings and he’s a lead singer. We both love our roles.”

While one revels in getting into the nitty-gritty of the creative machinations, the other just gets on stage and pumps out the mellifluous vocals. “I love working on production, and putting everything together. Russell just likes to come in and sing. But when he does, everything changes. When he sings the songs I write something happens. I can do demos, but when Russell sings it, it goes to another level.”

The pair is also perfectly happy to keep on playing those yesteryear hits, along with some newer material from across their extensive discography. They also have the knack of being able to perform numbers time and again, year after year, without getting staid.

“The nucleus of our show is all the big hits. Fortunately, we have a lot of them,” Russell says without a hint of hubris. He is a great believer in entertaining. “People come to our show, and they want to hear ‘I’m Lost In Love’ and ‘All Out of Love,’ and we play them. And we don’t just play them. We love playing them. We’ve played over 5300 shows in our career, and there’s never been one time when I’ve thought ‘Oh dear, here we go again.’ We just love every moment.”

Russell and Hitchcock also like playing here. “I think Israel is a great place,” says the 71-year-old Brit. “We love coming there. There is just such a diversity of people and cultures. People say aren’t you worried about going to Israel. We are not worried. We are just coming to spread love and bring people together.”

Sounds like a cue for an Air Supply song.

For tickets and more information: Haifa – (04) 837-7777 and https://barak-tickets.co.il, Rishon LeZion – *9066 and https://www.eventim.co.il, and www.airsupplyIsrael.co.il.

Traditionally, in the music industry, acts like Air Supply were only as good as their next hit. But for people like Air Supply’s Graham Russell and Russell Hitchcock, times are changing. In 2020, Bob Dylan sold his entire catalog to Universal Music for a reported $300 million. Bruce Springsteen sold to Sony Music a year later for about $550 million.

Larry Mestel’s company, Primary Wave, has been buying music catalogs since 2006. “Can you imagine Sony without Bruce Springsteen as part of their roster?” he told correspondent Kelefa Sanneh. “They were gonna have to pay whatever they had to pay to keep Bruce Springsteen.”

Two years ago, Air Supply sold a portion of their music rights to Primary Wave. The company places hits like “All Out of Love” in TV shows (like “Young Sheldon”), and in commercials, such as this ad for AAA Insurance.

Watch the segment at CBSNews.com

Music legends Air Supply are returning to Australia for special anniversary tour! We spoke to the iconic duo of Graham Russell and Russell Hitchcock about their incredible career ahead of the shows later this year.

via Daily Commercial

THE VILLAGES — Air Supply hits the stage this weekend with the “The Lost in Love Experience” at the Sharon L. Morse Performing Arts Center.

Get Off The Bus Concerts is presenting the show, which begins at 7 p.m. Saturday. Tickets for the concert are on sale now and will benefit the Leesburg Center for the Arts.

“We’re looking very forward to it. We’ve played it a couple times already so we’re familiar with the venue,” said Russell Hitchcock, lead singer of Air Supply. “We suggest that people that haven’t seen us before come and see the show, it’s a great show. And for people that have seen us before they know what to expect but it’s going to be a good time for all — that’s for sure.”

The ‘Lost in Love Experience’
Graham Russell and Hitchcock will be performing their “Lost in Love Experience” at the Sharon, featuring some of their most popular hits from the “Lost in Love,” “The One That You Love,” “Now & Forever” and “The Greatest Hits” albums.

“We’ll obviously be featuring all the songs people are familiar with like ‘Lost in Love,’ ‘Here I Am,’ ‘Sweet Dreams,’ ” Hitchcock said. “We have a really cool song in the middle of the show – it’s when I get to go grab a glass of water and chill for a few minutes (laughs).”

Hitchcock says that the band is incredibly talented and it’s a show that audiences are going to love.

“It’s going to be a rock n’ roll show. It’s not going to be two guys with acoustic guitars and easy listening, that’s for sure. It’s very dynamic, there’s a lot of energy,” he said. “The light show is usually great depending on what we have to work with, but I guarantee there won’t be anyone disappointed with the show.”

Joe Bamford, owner of Get Off The Bus Concerts, is excited to have them return to the Sharon for another show.

“We had them two, almost three years ago, and the people that came to that show just absolutely loved them,” Bamford said. “They were singing along with them and they’ll walk right up into the audience and let people sing with them and stuff. It’s pretty cool. So we really wanted to bring them back.”

Supporting local arts
Maria Stefanovic, executive director of the Leesburg Center for the Arts, said she is thrilled to see the concert benefit local arts.

“We’re excited to partner with Get Off The Bus Concerts and Joe Bamford to bring Air Supply to the Sharon Performing Arts Center as a benefit to the Leesburg Center For the Arts programs,” Stefanovic said. “Dollars that we raise will be used to provide art programming throughout the year for artists, creatives and dabblers of all ages.”

Hitchcock said he, too, shares this same passion for supporting the arts.

“Life without art, music, and anything creative would be horrible,” he said. “Of course, if it was never there you wouldn’t miss it, but the fact that there are artists being creative in any form — entertaining people and educating people at the grassroots level, which is the kind of support for these places, makes it possible for the community to get involved,” Hitchcock said.

via Naples News

No matter where you go, Graham Russell has gotten there first.

You like to ski? He lives in Park City, Utah.

You’re thinking about cutting down on meat consumption. He’s a vegan.

He even got to your radio ahead of you. The day you’re due to interview the songwriting half of Air Supply, you click to the SiriusXM’s Yacht Rock station and “Even the Nights Are Better” comes on.

It’s one of the group’s many hits — songs like “Two Less Lonely People in the World,” “Every Woman in the World” — that become Post-it notes in your head. And those notes are likely reminding you to get tickets for their live show Saturday, March 26, at Paradise Coast Sports Complex. (For details, see the information box.)

Graham Russell, Russell Hitchcock and their current band can roll out a litany of chart climbers linked by the word “love,” and they’re proud of it. Three years away from a 50-year anniversary, Air Supply’s material has kept its focus on a universal need: “Lost in Love,” “All Out of Love,” “Making Love Out of Nothing at All,” “The One That You Love.”

But those who come to their outdoor concert will get some surprises, Russell promised.

“In the ’80s, certainly the record companies paid for big ballads. But there are a lot of other kinds of things that I composed. When people come to see us live they say ‘Wow, I didn’t expect that,’ because it’s quite varied,” he said. “But we always play the big hits.”

A dedicated writer who works every day, Russell has composed everything from folk tunes to musicals.

“I’m on my fifth musical right now,” he said. “They’ll all be performed, but in secondary markets, like Salt Lake City, Denver, places like that. One of these days I’ll break through to Broadway, I hope.

“But I don’t do it because I want to get on Broadway. I just love it.”

Russell has been composing since age 13, but a sense of purpose with his works didn’t hit until he saw his first concert at age 14, a rising young band called The Beatles. They were playing in a local cinema, and the concert galvanized him.

“Suddenly everything made sense. It was incredible. I can’t describe it. And that was the beginning of my journey,” he recalled.

If The Beatles inspired Russell, Jesus Christ brought him and Russell Hitchcock together. So to speak. Russell and Hitchcock were both working on the Australian production of “Jesus Christ Superstar” when they struck up a friendship. Before the tour had ended they already had formed a band.

Other musicians have cycled in and out of Air Supply, but the duo consider it a two-person band. They have a strict division of labor that keeps Russell writing and harmonizing and Hitchcok singing his clarion tenor leads. The two have played all over the world; even after their spate of ’80s chart toppers cooled, the demand for their romantic pop and love ballads never did.

The two could do a week of concerts and never repeat themselves.

“We’ve recorded 25 albums, so that’s 250 songs right there,” Russell observed with a bit of pride.

“We’ve done the extremes. We were the first band to tour China, Vietnam, Taiwan, simply because they asked us to come. We have a great relationship with Asia. They’re very loyal audiences.”

They have a loyal fan base overall whom are affectionately referred to as Air Heads.”Some of the fans have been watching us for decades,” Russell said.

“They know all the songs, not just the hits. They like to get in the nooks and crannies with those obscure songs. So we play them, too.”

A niche favorite with fans: “Never Fade Away.”

If you offered Russell a ticket to someone else’s concert? He’d see Bob Dylan, “whom I think is the greatest American songwriter ever.” But he likes the music of Ed Sheeran, and, during their brief two-disc life, a duo called Civil Wars.

Russell’s go-to music at home is classical, the ultimate chart toppers in his estimation: “A lot of these great masters, Chopin, Debussy, Mozart — some of them are 300 years old but I still get inspiration from them. It doesn’t get any better.”

Russell also is modest about having been everywhere before you have: to the ski lifts, the vegan lifestyle, the stardom. At 71, “I don’t ski downhill any more. I cross-country ski instead,” he said.

And he admits touring can get tricky with his vegan philosophy. Airport food is off his list: “I take my own food. I try not to eat on planes unless it’s a long haul. Then I’ll take some wraps with me that I’ve made myself.

“I grow a lot my own food,” he continued. Part of the reason Air Supply makes shorter hops these days is because, as he put it: “I have a massive greenhouse that’s almost as big as my house so I have to look after that.”

But Russell is a man grateful for his career, and retirement is not a word in his vocabulary.

“We do it because we love it. In our career we’ve done almost 5,300 shows. It’s just what we do,” he said. “Russell and I said years ago, ‘We’ll stop playing when the people stop coming.’

“Stepping onstage is the greatest thrill of your life. It’s wonderful. That’s why we do it.”

Air Supply were planning a tour to celebrate their 45th anniversary two years ago, but like many performers had to delay due to COVID restrictions.

They’ve announced they will continue with their tour, albeit in their 47th year, and will be performing in Auckland in December this year. Jesse speaks to Russell Hitchcock about the band’s longevity and legacy.

Listen now at RNZ.Co.NZ

via Florida Today

Despite their best-known mellow hits, don’t mistakenly think that Air Supply delivers a mild, “lite rock” live performance on stage, singer-guitarist Graham Russell warns.

“Because a lot of our big hits would be ballads, people presume that that’s all there is. But there’s a whole cache of other genres that we play, and have played, throughout our career,” Russell said.

“Our show is definitely not soft rock. It’s hard-edge. The band is on fire, and they’re the best in their profession. And it’s a rock and roll show,” he said.

“It is loud, and it is passionate. They hit you right in the chest. So if people haven’t come, there’s some surprise: ‘I had no idea you were like that,'” he said.

Air Supply will visit the Space Coast on Saturday, March 5 for a concert at the Maxwell C. King Center for the Performing Arts, which is fresh off a $4 million modernization project.

Air Supply plays at the Maxwell C. King Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday.

The pop duo of Graham Russell and Russell Hitchcock met in May 1975 in Sydney, Australia, during rehearsals for the musical “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

After forming Air Supply, they scored seven straight Top 5 hits (equaling The Beatles’ historic run) starting in 1980, including “Lost In Love,” “All Out Of Love” and “Even The Nights Are Better.”

The band performed its 5,000th concert in 2018 in Las Vegas, and the calendar is fast approaching Air Supply’s 47th anniversary.

The band will play a Friday concert in San Juan, Puerto Rico, before traveling to Melbourne. Next week, they play five shows in Hawaii. Then they will return to Florida for shows at Paradise Sports Complex in Naples on March 26 and the Sharon L. Morse Performing Arts Center in The Villages on March 27.

“We’re kind of like full-tilt now. But with COVID, we didn’t play for 18 months — and it was very unusual, very unique. But we went with the flow,” Russell said.

“So we’re back all over the world again, which is wonderful,” he said.

Asked about his impressions of Central Florida, Russell shared a story detailing an unexpected brush with nature.

“My keyboard player lives in Orlando, so I’ve been there several times. He lives not far from Disney, and recently I was visiting him at his house. And about 15 minutes from his house, we rented canoes — and suddenly we were in this world of lagoons, and this beautiful waterway. It was like a paradise tucked away,” Russell said.

“It was just incredible. I can’t remember where it was, but it went from miles and miles. So we were in these canoes with these mangrove swamps, and turtles, and all kinds of beautiful, natural things. It was beautiful. I had no idea it was there,” he said.

In late February, Air Supply co-headlined the weeklong ‘70s Rock & Romance Cruise, which sailed from PortMiami with stops in St. Maarten and St. Thomas.

One of the cruise’s feature acts was the Little River Band, which plays The King Center on Monday, March 7 at 7:30 p.m.

“It was great. They’re good friends of ours, the Little River Band. We’ve known them for years and years, because they began in Australia,” Russell said.

“The cruise was great. It’s just a wonderful experience. There are bands on from 11 in the morning till two in the morning, and it’s just a great vibe, you know? Everybody’s there for one reason: to listen to great music. And it’s just a wonderful experience.”

Graham joins CBS 8 to talk about Air Supply’s biggest hits.

via Rolling Stone

Whether you’re “Lost in Love” or just lost for ideas this Valentine’s Day, Air Supply is here to help. The beloved Aussie rockers have teamed up with Edible (formerly Edible Arrangements) on a new collection of Valentine’s Day bundles, which pair one of Edible’s popular gift sets with an exclusive download of Air Supply’s unreleased new album, Love Letters. Your recipient also gets access to an HD broadcast of Air Supply’s live performance of Love Letters at the Florida Theatre in Jacksonville, FL.

The new collaboration is part of Edible’s “Edible Music” offerings, with the choice of a “Songs for Your Sweetheart Bundle” (a platter of fresh and chocolate-dipped fruit); a “Songs & Strawberries Bouquet” (with chocolate-dipped strawberries); and a “Songs & Dessert Platter” (with cookies, cheesecakes, and chocolate-dipped berries).

Edible will deliver the gift set of your choice in time for Valentine’s Day, along with a code to download Love Letters, a new live album that features performances of Air Supply’s most popular love songs, like “The One That You Love” and “All Out Of Love.” Love Letters marks the first release from Air Supply since their Ultimate Collection compilation album, which was released in 2012.

Edible says Air Supply was the perfect “cross generational” group for them to partner with, aligning with Edible’s goal of offering Valentine’s Day gifts for everyone.

We are thrilled to be partnering with the iconic band Air Supply,” says Cheikh Mboup, President and COO of Edible, in a press release. “The band’s lineup of rock hits will be a great addition to our ‘Edible Music’ collection and will no doubt be a welcomed gift purchase this Valentine’s Day.”

“We are honored to partner with Edible Arrangements this Valentine’s Day to celebrate love, which resonates strongly with our music and fans,” adds Air Supply singer/guitarist Graham Russell. “We couldn’t imagine a better partner and platform for Love Letters, our live album and virtual concert experience.”