Читать книгу Every Day of My Life - Beeb Birtles - Страница 9

prologue

Sometime in late 2001 I received a phone call from Graeham Goble. He asked me if I was open to a Little River Band (LRB) reunion of what fans were calling the classic lineup: David Briggs, George McArdle, Derek Pellicci, Glenn Shorrock, Graeham Goble and myself. We were going to call ourselves the Original Little River Band.

By then, it had been eighteen years since I quit the band. I told him that I would be interested because, in my mind, time had healed many things. I was also keen to hear Glenn and Graeham’s voices with mine after all these years.

The reunion idea had actually come from Paul Rodger.

In Paul’s own words:

In 2001, Stream AV started providing DVD authoring services to Warner Vision, which was, at the time, the largest producer and distributor of concert DVDs in the world. I was travelling to Sydney every other week to see them and on one of those visits I was talking with Warner Vision’s production team about how successful the Eagles’ Hell Freezes Over DVD was. I said that we should do a similar thing in Australia.

Darryl O’Connor, the managing director of Warner Vision, laughed and asked me who would be big enough and have the appeal to that market to make it worthwhile. I said I thought LRB would be a great choice and the room fell silent. Darryl said that LRB would be the right fit for them but how could we get it to happen? Warner Vision said if we could pull it together they would fund the production.

LRB had carved out a place in world music history and were the first Australian band to have a gold album in the USA, paving the way for other Australian artists. We informed Stephen Housden (LRB member from 1982) that we intended to perform under the name ‘The Original Little River Band’. Stephen’s lawyer, Thomas Stevens, claimed we didn’t have any rights to the Little River Band trademark anymore and he sent us a ‘cease and desist’ order. He claimed Stephen Housden now legally owned the LRB name and trademark. What was about to unravel would cost us — Graeham Goble, Glenn Shorrock and I — more than $300,000 in legal expenses.

As reported by Nui Te Koha in the Herald Sun on December 14, 2001:

A musician trading as the Little River Band has vowed to block plans by the group’s original members to tour the US under the name.

Stephen Housden, a member of the Little River Band since 1982 and who bought the worldwide rights to the famous band name four years ago, says he will not allow a re-formed version of the group to use the LRB name in any shape or form.

“I can tell you now, there’s no hope of them coming to America because I own the trademark in America and I own it for the world,” Housden told the Herald Sun from his home in Ireland yesterday. “I’ve been working in America for the last 20 years in the Little River Band and this new group just cannot happen.”

This ‘new group’ consisted of original members of LRB, first formed in 1975. I had not been paid for the loss of the name or any goodwill associated with the name of the band we had created.

On October 17, 2004, ‘The Classic Lineup’ was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame. Stephen Housden almost prevented this from happening but eventually agreed to issue a 24-hour licence to the original members, allowing us to perform one song at the awards and use the name Little River Band.

In 2005, the historical story of the Little River Band, a DVD titled It’s A Long Way There, was manufactured, pressed and scheduled for release by EMI/Capitol, but Stephen Housden and Wayne Nelson threatened to sue EMI Records and the product was withdrawn. It was never released.

We had lost all rights to the LRB trademark that we had thought would be ours forever…