Air Supply – 50th Anniversary Celebration

Other than Denial (The Nile) – that famous river in Egypt – no other global destination has a more well-known joke associated with itself than Carnegie Hall. A pedestrian on 57th Street sees a musician getting out of a cab and asks, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” Without pause, the artist replies, “Practice!”

If it’s true that practice makes perfect, then Graham Russell and Russell Hitchcock – beloved by their millions of fans across the planet as Air Supply – have had nearly half a century to hone their skills, harness their passion and unleash the beautifully intimate yet rockin’ romantic energy of those instantly identifiable 80s hits that made them global superstars.

As they close in on 50 years (exact date, May 12, 1975) since they met in the chorus of the Australian touring company of Jesus Christ Superstar, the duo is ever-present on the road in North America and overseas to the tune of 130 dates a year – and look forward to their 5500th show in October 2024 in Moncton, Canada. This run includes being the first Western group to tour China and several other countries who prior to their breakthrough would not allow pop music across their borders, as well as performing for a record 175,000 people in Cuba in 2005.

Air Supply’s overall sales and airplay stats are equally astounding, equaling their heroes The Beatles’ run of five consecutive Top Five Singles (“Lost in Love,” “All Out of Love,” “Every Woman in the World,” “The One That You Love,” “Here I Am”); selling a collective total of 20 million copies of their first three albums (Lost in Love, The One That You Love, Now & Forever) and the 1983 Greatest Hits collection; achieving multi-million radio plays for five of their hits (including “Sweet Dreams” and the Jim Steinman-penned “Making Love Out of Nothing At All”); and having Graham honored with a BMI Million-Air Certificate recognizing three million performances of “All Out Of Love.”

“I remember the first official show we did in the U.S. at Perkins Palace in Pasadena, CA October 1, 1980,” says Graham. “It was the start of a three-month bus tour, and before the gig, around 6 p.m., there were all these trucks outside. The smell of diesel was thick, but all I could think of is that these trucks and busses were here because of us. I had the incredible and deeply humbling revelation that Russell and I were creating an industry, employing many people and part of something bigger than all of us. Then we drove overnight 12 hours up to Portland, Oregon, got up and had a press conference at the Holiday Inn with 100 people. I had never seen anything like it. 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. “We’ve never stopped believing in what we’re doing and still love what we do and never take it for granted. There’s still something very current in the messages of our songs. Our fans needed our music in their lives then and seem to need it even more now. When we walk onstage, people stand up laughing or crying. It’s like, God, they’re really here in the flesh to see us!”

2025 will bring more seemingly nonstop rousing performances of the smash hits by their powerhouse band. Under musical direction of lead guitarist Aaron McLain, the ensemble includes Mirko Tessandori (piano/keyboards/vocals), Pavel Valdman (drums) and Doug Gild (bass). Graham and Russell will mark their milestone with exciting projects in a variety of media. These include a biopic titled All Out of Love: The Air Supply Story, a Broadway comedy-drama musical featuring their songs (Lost in Love) and an as yet to be titled autobiography by Graham and Russell. The duo will also be releasing their 18th studio album A Matter of Time, produced by Brian Howes, along with a very special vinyl compilation.

Most Air Supply fans know the basics of how Graham and Russell’s immediate connection during day one of rehearsals for JC Superstar in Sydney led to the birth of Air Supply. 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. 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. The duo quickly gained a reputation for great harmonies and for original songs that Graham was constantly writing.

Graham now adds the colorful detail that on that fateful first day of rehearsal, he fell and twisted his ankle and Russell helped him up. Russell says that in addition to being a chorus member, he was an understudy for the role of Judas and played the man who betrayed Jesus 40 to 50 times. He also filled in as JC twice, but the hard ass producer nixed any more performances, saying nobody wanted to see Jesus with an afro!

Knowing they had something special brewing between them, Graham and Russell made a demo on a cassette of two songs, “Love and Other Bruises” and “If You Knew Me” and took it to every record company in Sydney. Each one turned it down but one, CBS Records, which admired their unique style. 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. 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. One of my musician friends saved my life by giving me the opportunity to record jingles. 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. 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. 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. Their follow-up, Graham’s “All Out of Love” then reached #2 on the Hot 100.

Ask the guys to come up with their favorite moments along the way, and each relates voluminous colorful stories. Both agree that a high point was performing for Prince Charles and Princess Diana – and later talking to them at a luncheon – at the Bicentennial of Australia in 1988. 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. 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. Russell also cites a much earlier moment as significant: “When I held the first print of the Love and Other Bruises LP in my hand and told Graham, ‘This piece of vinyl is forever. Someone can listen to this long after we’re gone. We have left our stamp on the universe.”

The simple fact of pop stardom is that a band’s hitmaking heyday doesn’t last forever, and Russell remembers that one of the band’s lowest periods was when they released “The Power of Love” (later a #1 smash for Celine Dion) and, while they thought it would extend their string of hits, radio programmers didn’t bite. 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. But we learned that you can’t fight city hall or live in a dream of the past. We had to move on, day to day. We had always relied on being a live act to make our living, and all these years later, we’re thrilled about the way our songs have endured and still excite our fans. 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). In July 2005, the same month they played to record crowds in Havana, their live DVD It Was 30 Years Ago Today celebrated 30 years of success around the world.

That same year, the duo released The Singer and the Song, an acoustic album of many of their big hits, which received critical acclaim. 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. 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. 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. Graham says, “I’m grateful that I’ve had an incredible life so far and find it very fulfilling that our songs mean so much to people everywhere we travel. 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.”