"Let the blood of all our
writers spill upon the page
But hits and chart
positions cannot pacify the rage
Will you stand with me
when the time has come?
Will you stand with me or
will you run?"
Penned in an attic in the
dead of night, in between the unprecedented
multi-million-selling global success of Little
River Band and an uncertain solo future, Will
You Stand With Me is a powerful assertion of
Glenn Shorrock's vocation as a singer-songwriter
which resonates more strongly through the years.
"'I am the willing critic,
I'll cut you down to size/ I'll pounce on
mediocrity but I’ll cherish the surprise'. I
think that's the best lyric I've written," he
says today. "That was on my first solo album,
Villain of the Peace, but I put it right at the
end. This time I wanted to put it first. I
wanted it to say what it says."
Meanwhile, of course, a
dozen of Glenn's hits have morphed out of the
charts and into the permanent fabric of popular
song. Meanwhile, Help Is On Its Way, Emma and
Seine City were his before he joined LRB, the
band that took them to the world. Home On
Monday, Cool Change, So Many Paths, Rock'n'Roll
Soldier and Soul Searching all came later.
All are reclaimed here
with the immediacy of acoustic performance,
produced by Glenn, mixed by Michael Costa,
performed with the key sidemen that have
accompanied him on the road for the last decade
– keyboard player Stewart Wilkinson and
guitarist Pip Joyce – with an intimate cast of
accomplices playing rhythm, violin and slide
guitar.
Needle In A Haystack, one
of the few here Glenn did not write, is an
affectionate memento of his first band, the
Twilights, who made it #1 in Melbourne in 1966.
Seine City is his original acoustic demo,
recorded in England when Axiom broke up in 1972.
"Unrequited Love was an
old demo I did when I left LRB in '82," he says.
"My wife always liked it and she said 'You
should do that one'. There's a lot of those
kinds of circles involved in this album and I
think that's why I enjoyed it so much. It feels
good. It feels right."
Other surprises include a
version of Emma that's closer to the CSN-inspired
demo Glenn took to LRB in '75, and a gospel
piano version of his first solo hit of '79,
Dream Lover. "And Reminiscing is really bare
bones," he adds. "I'm interested to hear what
(author) Graeham Goble makes of it."
The world, one suspects,
will make of it much the same as it always has:
a memory that's forever vital and always
welcome. "They all still work," Glenn concludes.
"That's why I keep doing 'em. It's called body
of work, which I think is a mark of a
performer's worth."
Timeline
1964 Glenn fronts
Beatles copyists The Twilights in Adelaide
1966 Band moves to
Melbourne, where Needle In A Haystack hits #1
Hoadley's Battle of the
Bands win includes trip to UK
1967 Abbey Road
recordings produce more hits back home
1968 Second album, Once
Upon a Twilight…
1969 Glenn joins
Australian supergroup Axiom
1970 Fool's Gold LP
followed by US-produced album, If Only...
1971 Axiom splits in UK
1972 Glenn demos future
LRB hits, joins Esperanto
1973 Statue of Liberty
appears on debut Esperanto album
1975 Little River Band
forms, self-titled album hits #12
1976 After Hours LP
spearheads LRB's first international tour
American debut
album spawns first US Top 20 hit
1977 Diamantina Cocktail
LP has unprecedented US sales of half a million
Help Is On Its
Way, penned by Glenn, is LRB's first #1
1978 Sleeper Catcher LP
breaks US one million mark
Reminiscing is
US Top 5 smash
1979 First Under the
Wire is 2nd million seller: #2 at
home, #10 in USA
Glenn has
first solo hit with Bobby Darin's Dream Lover
1980 LRB concert albums,
Backstage Pass and Live In America
1981 Time Exposure is
Glenn's last album with LRB
1982 Debut solo album,
Villain of the Peace, made in LA with members of
Steely Dan, Little Feat, the Band, the Eagles
Rock'n'roll Soldier reaches Australian Top 40
1983 We're Coming to Get
You (with the Bushwackers) is #6 hit
1986 Twilights, Axiom,
LRB, solo songs on The First 20 Years
compilation.
1988 LRB reunion album
Monsoon hits #7
1991 Glenn inducted into
ARIA Hall of Fame
1993 Tours and records
with Brian Cadd as The Blazing Salads
1996 Leaves LRB for
second time
First of
several solo stage shows, One For The Money
2000 Spin Me Round solo
album
2002 Glenn reunites with
LRB founders as Birtles Shorrock Goble
