There are no original members remaining of pop-rockers Little River Band, which doesn’t really say or mean much in 2017, says Wayne Nelson.
Heck, it didn’t even mean much back when Nelson joined the band in 1980.
“I was the eighth bass player to work with Little River Band within five years,” he said, and then emphasized his broader point that it’s not the players but the songs that matter for bands that have been around as long as LRB.
“I bet if we played six hits and decided that we were going to walk off the stage, I’m positive that a very large portion of the audience wouldn’t know that we were leaving the stage without playing ‘Night Owls’ or ‘Cool Change.’
“We get toward the end of the set and we play ‘Lady’ and people are freaking. ‘Oh my God, we forgot that one,’” he said.
On any given night, LRB’s ubiquitous hits, including “Reminiscing,” “Take it Easy,” “Happy Anniversary,” “Man On Your Mind” and “Long Way There” could fall on unsuspecting ears.
“There would be a cross-section of people in the audience that will have forgotten the bulk of what we’ve done. It’s a good problem to have that people don’t remember how many songs there are in the book,” said Nelson, who’s fronted the band for much of the 2000s.
Nelson joined the band in 1980, five years after the Australian-born pop-rock outfit started in Melbourne. By the time he arrived, the revolving door of members was in its third or fourth rotation.
But none of that mattered. There was no distinctive face or name behind the melodic outfit that was lumped into a bin with a slew of other faceless, nearly nameless pop-rock bands of the day.
“There was a sound, and because of FM radio, we were part of a large wash of people doing vocals and guitar harmonies like Orleans and Ambrosia and America and Eagles,” explained Nelson, who took a three-year hiatus from the LRB in the late 1990s. “When (radio) started doing 20 and 30 (songs) in a row, we had hit songs in there that people didn’t know which band was doing them.”
Egos were surely bruised in the 1970s and ’80s, but today Nelson sees it as a godsend.
“There is no definitive personality, like a Jagger or Glenn Frey,” he said. “We showed up with different people. When I showed up, I was singing on two singles and nobody hardly cared. It didn’t matter. It was all about the music, how it relates to people.
“Regardless of who was going on stage, the show has always been a quality show with good singers and respect for the songs and what they meant to people and never taking that for granted. That’s been the core for us, how we got to year 42.”
