Air Supply began 50 years ago in Australia, with the nucleus of singer-songwriter Graham Russell and vocalist Russell Hitchcock. The “Russells” had their U.S. debut 45 years ago with their Lost in Love album on Arista, containing the first three of their seven consecutive U.S. Top 5 singles: “Lost in Love,” “All Out of Love,” and “Every Woman in the World.” Of their eleven U.S. Top 40 hits between 1980 through 1985, almost half had “love” in the title, making Air Supply’s music a great match for this year’s Goldmine Valentine’s Day article.
Graham Russell took a break from their 50th anniversary tour to talk with Goldmine about their love songs, first meeting Russell Hitchcock as members of the Australian touring company of Jesus Christ Superstar, working with Arista’s Clive Davis, and much more.
Air Supply: Graham Russell and Russell Hitchcock, photo by Denise Truscello
GOLDMINE: Welcome to Goldmine. Let’s go back 50 years to you meeting the curly-haired Russell Hitchcock, performing in the rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, a favorite of my family.
GRAHAM RUSSELL: When we were in Jesus Christ Superstar, we quickly became friends. Over a few days, we realized that we had a lot in common. We both wanted to be in a band, but I didn’t want to be a lead singer, and Russell wasn’t interested in writing songs, so our foundation was based on that. Russell had the best voice in the show and everybody knew it, but he was just an apostle and then a soldier in the cast. He was hardly singing in the show until everybody figured out what a great voice he had and then he became a big part of the show, but not the lead role, as he was told, “Nobody wants to see Jesus with an afro.”
It was almost predestined that Russell and I would get together. We came from different backgrounds; he was from Melbourne, Australia and I was from Nottingham, England. It was bizarre, like our meeting had already happened and we were re-living it. While we were in Jesus Christ Superstar, we made a couple of demos of my songs, and we took them to a couple of record companies in Australia and managed to get a deal with CBS. We recorded a single, but we didn’t have a name, and we were told that we had to have a name by the following morning. That night, Russell and I decided that whatever we came up with independently had to be our name. The following morning Russell let me know that he didn’t have anything. I told him that I had a dream that night where there was a big billboard which was pure white, and, on the perimeter, there were flashing lights, going off quickly. In the middle were two words in big black letters that said, “AIR SUPPLY.” He said that he didn’t know what that meant, but it is the only thing that we’ve got, so we went with it.
GM: On the last weekend of the ‘70s, my wife Donna and I married, and as the ‘80s began, we moved to Dallas, Texas. On the radio I heard a new song with your gentle voice on the first verse, then harmony on the second verse, joined by another voice, and then the other voice came in on the bridge, and surprised me: this group has two lead singers on the same song, “Lost in Love.”
GR: That song was recorded a year before you and Donna married, in 1978. With any of our songs we never decide who is going to sing what, we just play in the studio, and whatever sounds best is what we go with. At the end, Russell leapt up an octave. We didn’t know he was going to do that and that sealed the deal. It was undeniable that it was going to be a hit.
GM: If that love song wasn’t great enough in the spring of 1980, when summer came, and we had a record setting heat wave in Dallas, I heard “All Out of Love,” and I said, that’s it, I have got to buy their album on cassette so that I can drive around with it, but certainly make sure I don’t ever leave that cassette in the car, or it will melt. I enjoyed the power of the chorus, “I’m all out of love. I’m so lost without you.”
GR: Originally it was “I’m all out of love. I want to arrest you,” meaning that I want to get your attention. When I look at that now, I think it was quite a silly lyric, but the song had already been a hit in Australia with that lyric. Clive Davis said that it didn’t matter that it had already been a hit there, and that in the U.S., people wouldn’t understand what that meant. He offered, “I’m so lost without you” to replace the “I want to arrest you” line and I said OK. Of course, he was always right, as we were to learn. It was the beginning of a great relationship with Clive, and “All Out of Love” sold more copies than “Lost in Love,” becoming our first gold single.
GM: The “lost” lyrics continued on the Lost in Love album. There was “Lost in Love,” “I’m so lost without you” on “All Out of Love,” and as the first side of the album ends with “Having You Near Me,” there is the line “You’re brave to say that you get lost in love,” bringing that whole first side together, which also includes the third single “Every Woman in the World,” which had “Having You Near Me” on its flip side, my favorite flip side of yours.
GR: I always thought that “Having You Near Me” was a great song for Russell to sing on his own and he needed to do that. I thought that the world needed to hear Russell sing on his own. His voice was so incredible, and he used to sing everything in one take, amazing the producers we worked with.
Air Supply
Fabulous Flip Side: Having You Near Me
A side: Every Woman in the World
Billboard Hot 100 debut: October 25, 1980
Peak position: No. 5
Arista AS 0564
GM: Did Russell sing all the words to “Making Love Out of Nothing at All” in one take?
GR: Yes, he did, and it impressed its songwriter Jim Steinman so much, who said that it was magic. He wasn’t used to people singing his songs in one take.
GM: Our daughter Brianna, who is a big Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf fan, was born in 1983, which was such a great year for Jim’s work outside of Meat Loaf with Barry Manilow, Bonnie Tyler, and you having Top 40 hits with his songs. I spoke with Eric Troyer, who sang background vocals on “Making Love Out of Nothing at All,” and he said it was a busy night in the Power Station studio in New York City with Jim assembling his usual cast of characters for his compositions, some of the people who were on Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell album, for example.
GR: I was a huge Meat Loaf fan, too. When Clive brought us this song, we knew it was a Jim Steinman classic. I have always said that Russell should sing the greatest songs that exist, not just my songs all the time. I’ve never been one to say that I only want to record my songs. That’s not where we come from because, like I said before, Russell has a voice that should be heard on all levels by everyone. Clive didn’t have to twist our arms to record this song. It was just fabulous. We met Jim at Rumpelmayer’s ice cream parlor in New York. He was a warm and quiet person. He told us that he had everybody planned for the session and that he was looking forward to it. We had great musicians: Rick Derringer on guitar, Roy Bittan on piano and Max Weinberg on drums, both from the E Street Band, and more. We cut his eight-minute song down to five minutes, and Jim wasn’t happy about that, but Clive insisted, so that Top 40 radio stations would play it. The song went to number two because we couldn’t beat Jim’s composition “Total Eclipse of the Heart” performed by Bonnie Tyler in the top spot.
GM: Your new Prague Symphony version is back to the eight-minute mark. Brianna loved it and told me how much she enjoyed Russell’s vocals being front and center, then the piano and orchestra coming in, enhancing it, and creating a perfect balance.
GR: I wanted to do an orchestral album for some time. Booking agents for The Prague Symphony came to us in Las Vegas to see our show and let us know that they had a few dates when the symphony would be available if we wanted to use them, and I jumped at it. We went to Europe. The studio was from the 1940s where they recorded a lot of soundtracks including Lawrence of Arabia. The symphony played everything from top to bottom without starting and stopping in the middle of our songs. They were pretty much senior players in their 70s and 80s, and they were just rocking out.
GM: Speaking of rocking out, who played the guitar solo on “Sweet Dreams” in the ‘80s? Was it David Moyse or was it Rex Gob?
GR: They played it together. In those days, we had two lead guitarists, which was unusual. They were two of the best players in Australia. We couldn’t decide which one to have in the band, so we invited both to join. It created the beautiful sound you heard on “Sweet Dreams” and more of our tracks.
GM: The video for your 2022 song, “Be Tough,” highlights the song’s importance and encouragement.
GR: I thought the video was cool. We hadn’t had a single out for a while and hadn’t had an album out for even longer. It was a different slant on a love song. “Be Tough” is not a message people would expect in a ballad.
GM: Last Christmas we featured “The Eyes of a Child” from The Christmas Album on our annual Christmas radio show. It is such a beautiful song and an angelic finale with Russell reaching those high notes.
GR: When we released the album in the ‘80s, rock and roll bands weren’t making Christmas albums and we got a little bit of flack for recording one. Now, everybody does Christmas albums and even more than one. I always thought it was a gorgeous album and “The Eyes of a Child” is beautifully sung by Russell.
GM: I am also looking forward to promoting your upcoming album A Matter of Time.
GR: It’s all finished, and it sounds beautiful. Brian Howes produced it, Chris Lord-Alge mixed it, and Ted Jensen, from Sterling Sound in Los Angeles, mastered it. Thank you for having me as a guest for your Goldmine Valentine’s Day article, because, of course, Valentine’s Day is associated with us. I look forward to seeing you soon on our tour.
