Lost In Love

The legendary record man Clive Davis is famous for developing the careers of Whitney Houston, Aerosmith and Alicia Keys, but Air Supply was one of his greatest success stories. "Lost In Love" was a hit in the group's native Australia in 1979, but Davis released it in America and unleashed these soft rock superstars on an international audience. Graham Russell, who is Air Supply's guitarist and songwriter, told us: "Clive bought the rights to 'Lost In Love' for Arista Records. 'Love In Love' had already been a hit in Australia, and I think he was waiting for the turn of the decade, so he released it very early in January, I think the first week. Initially he just had the single. And I saw the single being reviewed in Cash Box magazine when I was overseas trying to scrape money together to live, because I was broke. It said, 'This song is destined to go all the way to Top 5.' I couldn't believe it. So I called Clive up, and he said, 'Yeah, it's happening.' We didn't even know we had a release coming out, that it had been picked up. So I was on my way back to Australia, and I came through Los Angeles, and I saw Clive, because I wanted to see if it was real. And he said, 'Oh, yeah. It's all happening. You've been signed to Arista. You need to go back and make the album,' because we hadn't done the album. So that's how it all went down. It was kind of strange. But he was very into the band in those early years, very much so."

According to Graham Russell, he wrote this song in just 15 minutes. He told us: "'Lost In Love' is such a simple song. I think about the songs before I start to write them, and I think about where they're going to go. I'm very aware that when that inspiration comes, it comes very quickly: it's like a dart, and it doesn't last a long time, that real initial impulse. So when it comes I know that the thoughts are going to be scattered, and they're going to come really fast, and I need to get them down quickly, so I need to think about the song first when I know it's coming. When a song is coming I get a weird feeling, and then I kind of drift somewhere on my own to think about it. But when I actually play the piano or pick the guitar up, it'll come really quickly. But my songs, too, are very simple. I mean, I'm not into jazz, and I'm not into fusion or anything like that. My songs are really straight ahead, real simple chords, the simpler the better. So a song like 'Lost In Love' with four chords, there's only two parts to it. There's really no chorus. There's just a verse and a bridge. So something like that shouldn't take longer than 15 minutes to write, you know." (Check out our interview with Graham Russell.)