Little River Band: An Australian Supergroup Aimed at America

When Little River Band formed in Melbourne in March 1975, it counted as an Australian supergroup. Beeb Birtles had been bass player in Zoot, the pop-rock band that launched Rick Springfield. Graeham Goble had led the folk-rock group Allison Gros, later Mississippi, with Derek Pellicci joining on drums. Glenn Shorrock had been lead singer of the Twilights and then of the country-rock group Axiom.

They had also all been through disappointment. Both Axiom and Mississippi had moved to the United Kingdom to break into the market and failed, and Shorrock had sung for the progressive outfit Esperanto and provided backing vocals for Cliff Richard. In late 1974, Birtles, Goble and Pellicci met manager Glenn Wheatley in London, auditioned Peter Doyle as lead singer, and chose Shorrock. Given their mixed British reception, they decided the new band should establish itself in America.

It worked. LRB sold more than 30 million records, and ten singles reached the top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100, with “Reminiscing”, written by Goble, peaking at number three. At home, “Help Is on Its Way” in 1977 was their only number one, and albums such as Diamantina Cocktail and First Under the Wire both reached number two. Songs like “Home on Monday”, “Lady” and “Lonesome Loser” filled out a harmony-rock catalogue.

Shorrock wrote “Cool Change”, which APRA named in 2001 among the top 30 Australian songs of all time. The 1976 line-up entered the ARIA hall of fame in 2004, and “Reminiscing” received a BMI citation for five million broadcasts in 2020. Over the decades the personnel changed constantly, with more than thirty members, including John Farnham as lead singer after Shorrock first left in 1982. None of the musicians now performing as Little River Band are original members, and the 2000s saw legal disputes over the name. But the songs from the original harmony-rock line-up remain the band's real legacy.