Little River Band will ’always be an Adelaide band at heart’
The founding member of legendary Australian group Little River Band says he was in his early 30s before he finally wrote a song he thought might be worthwhile – arguably his band’s biggest hit.
Confidential
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While most musicians were worshipping at the alter of Lennon-McCartney and Bob Dylan, the young Graeham Goble was praying to different songwriting gods.
Alone in his Adelaide bedroom, the young Goble (who then went by the more traditional spelling of Graham – he changed it later due to his belief in numerology) was influenced by those who came before – Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer and Irving Berlin. He could never be accused of not setting the bar high enough.
And while the songwriting started in his very early teens, Goble was in his early 30s before he produced something he thought might be worthy of comparison with those idols – the Little River Band smash hit Reminiscing. The song remains the most played Australian song ever on US radio, and was John Lennon and girlfriend May Pang’s special tune.
Goble may have finally nailed a song he was completely happy with, but it was – if you’ll pardon a fairly obvious pun – a long way there.
There were young bands. First The Silence, then Travis Wellington Hedge, Allison Gros, and Mississippi, whose West Coast-influenced soft rock sound and vocal harmonies formed the basis of what would become the Little River Band.
LRB, of course, went on to conquer the charts both here in Australia and in the much more challenging American market, selling more than 30 million albums and recording tunes that have become rock standards – the aforementioned Reminiscing, Lady, The Other Guy, Take It Easy on Me and scores more.
Goble knew from very early on that it was going to be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve his dreams based in Adelaide. Melbourne beckoned, but a permanent move to the East Coast meant leaving behind family, friends … and Yo Yo biscuits.
“When I left Adelaide in 1972 I didn’t really want to live in Melbourne and I used to come back every three weeks,” Goble laughs.
“Adelaide has Arnott’s Yo Yos and other things that don’t exist in Melbourne, and I couldn’t let go of that so every three weeks or so I would drive to Adelaide and do my grocery shopping and drive back again.
“I loved Big Sars and Golden North ice cream – there were many things that you could only get in Adelaide. It took me a long time – more than a year – to let go of those things. I realised if I wanted an international career we’d have to be based in Melbourne … and give up the YoYos.”
That said, however, Goble says he’s completely fine with Adelaide claiming Little River Band as one of its own.
“Absolutely we’re an Adelaide band,” he says. “I still have a great love of Adelaide. I have to say that there is some disappointment that I ever left Adelaide, but once you have children you become connected to other places. But I’d probably rather live in Adelaide than anywhere else in the world, it’s a fantastic place.
I have a sister and a brother that live in Adelaide, but I don’t get over there very much.”
While Goble may not get “home” very often these days, he says he’s still astounded by the standard of the bands he saw as a kid in the City of Churches.
“I have to say that it was a lot to do with the immigration policies of the time, and the migrants that came out from England in particular,” he says.
“In the case of the Little River Band, I was the only Australian-born founding member. Beeb (Birtles) came out from Holland when he was about 12 and lived less than a kilometre from where I lived, but we never met! Glenn (Shorrock) was, of course, from England.
“There were so many amazing bands and musicians coming out of Adelaide. I saw (Shorrock’s band) The Twilights once, but my favourite Adelaide band apart from The Twilights were The Harts. I loved The Harts. But really, I never really participated. I was mainly in my bedroom writing songs.”
Goble says his first serious attempts at songwriting started when he was just 13 years old. He was, he says, aware of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who and all the other bands blowing up in England at the time, but unlike other young songwriters he never tried to copy them.
“The thing about being a songwriter and doing original work is that you really have to pull it out of the ether yourself,” he says. “You can’t try to be anyone else. Record companies today, which are run by lawyers and accountants, they think just because there is one Adele – for example – that they should find another Adele. It really doesn’t work like that.”
Later, as a mild-mannered public servant working at the Public Buildings Department off Victoria Square, Goble was introduced to the music of Dylan and Sinatra – in the same week!
But it was always those that came before – Porter, Mercer and Berlin – that the young Goble put on a pedestal, never trying to emulate them but holding them up as the gold standard. He was obsessed with the art of songwriting for songwriting’s sake, not as the means to an end.
“A lot of people got into music to get famous or meet chicks or whatever, but for me I just loved the art of songwriting,” he says. “It’s been the greatest companion in my life.”
NOW fans of Goble’s songwriting have much more to explore with the release of dozens of unheard and little-known archive tracks from Little River Band and Mississippi on all streaming services, as well as his entire solo catalogue for the first time.
The releases have been timed to coincide with the launch of the Shorrock-Birtles-Gobles virtual museum, and incredible online resource dedicated to the three musicians.
It also marks the culmination of a long-running effort to separate the original recordings of the Little River Band from later efforts by the American band that now carries that name.
For years Goble, Shorrock and Birtles have expressed frustration that the name of their old group now belongs to an American band with no original members.
The US-based LRB, led by Wayne Nelson, claims that the band never folded, and while earlier members left or were fired the name continued to belong to the remaining members. The courts found in their favour, a fact Goble finds upsetting.
“We call them the fakers,” he says.
“The impostor band, the American band, have traded on our legacy and history and we’ve been erased from that history. They even sign our records at gigs. They have no shame.
“But what was frustrating us was that if you went to Spotify and searched for LRB you would get all their crappy recordings in with ours – if you put an LRB playlist on you might get their version of Reminiscing or Cool Change. So what Victor (Adelaide-based LRB archivist Victor Marshall) has been able to do is to separate all of our recordings into one channel and the American band onto another. Now people can hear the difference.
“America is such a huge country that people have no idea they’re not seeing the real Little River Band. We were a bit faceless – there’s not a Don Henley or a Paul McCartney in our group – so people over there don’t realise.”
In response, Mr Nelson told the Sunday Mail, “Stephen Housden, myself, and the rest of Little River Band recognise and are grateful for the contributions Mr Goble has made to LRB’s continuing history and legacy.
“Thirty years ago when Graeham decided to leave the band to pursue his solo career, we decided to carry on … just as LRB had always done when, one by one, the founding members left the band.
“Little River Band continues to tour and record successfully for its fans worldwide.
“As to the ‘issues’ you mention regarding use of the band’s name and music, those are matters that were amicably and publicly settled following court proceedings 18 years ago and agreed to by all parties. We make every effort to comply with those agreements.”
WHILE there is a trove of recorded material to wade through, visually LRB and Mississippi’s legacy is less comprehensive, mainly due to the scarcity of videotape in the 1970s.
“The disappointing thing about those early years is that so many of the performances were on tape and they were taped over,” Goble says.
“Ernie Sigley’s Adelaide Tonight, IN-TIME with Noel O’Connor and all those shows, there’s no footage anywhere of most of those performances. Some of our first appearances on Countdown were taped over – can you believe it? And what has survived only gets better with age. I was embarrassed by some of it for 20 or 30 years, but now I think it’s fantastic!”
So while a TV Hits DVD might be unlikely, there is still plenty to come on the streaming services.
“The work Victor’s done for Little River Band has been incredible, and there’s a lot more to come, including some very big news that I can’t talk about yet,” Goble says.
“There’s even a complete album of LRB demos that will go up that nobody’s ever heard.”
You can visit the new online museum devoted to Graeham, Glenn Shorrock and Beeb Birtles at shorrockbirtlesgoble.com
