Graeham Goble
1947-05-15
The Biography
Graeham Goble, one of Australia's most successful international songwriters, has been seriously writing songs since he was 16. At the age of 11 he learned to play piano and drums and began turning out simple ditties, sometimes one a day. As leader of Adelaide groups The Silence, Travis Wellington Hedge and Alison Gros, Graeham refined his craft and by the time he had set off to England with the soft-rock outfit Mississippi (who gave him his first taste of Australian chart success in 1972 with the top five "Kings Of The World"), he was an accomplished songsmith and musician. By 1976 he was in the American Top 30 with his "It's A Long Way There", the first International hit for Little River Band. Two years later he was on the Billboard Chart at Number Three with the delicate, haunting and memorable, "Reminiscing". As a founding member of Little River Band, Graeham participated in an extraordinary surge of success which resulted in more than 20 million record sales, 13 American Top 40 hits. At the heart of Little River Band's lush, layered, evocative and engaging sound was the vocal textures he conceived and the powerful, enduring songs he wrote. He penned eight U.S. Top 40 hits and earned two rare "Million-Air" awards from BMI for one million American broadcasts each of "Reminiscing" and "Lady". In the ensuing years, "Reminiscing" has become such a standard on American airwaves that it has been recognized by a "Four Million-Air" award, an absolute first for an Australian-based writer. "Lady" has passed Two Million Airplays, and "The Other Guy" and "Take It Easy On Me" have been added to his Million-Air tally, giving Graeham the distinction of being the only Australian writer to be awarded four "Million-Air" awards from BMI. Graeham Goble left the ranks of Little River Band in 1989 to pursue musical projects close to his heart. Considerable inspiration is evident in the songs that Graeham is now writing; songs which will once again present him as a leading song craftsman. The new songs are very much an endeavour under his own control. All the new recordings feature the talents of Melbourne's finest Jazz, Rock and World Session Musicians. He built a recording studio and learnt the technical side of sequencing and recording so that he could make the sort of recordings he wanted to make. "I always feel that my career is just beginning" he said, "There's so much that I want to do now and this is another beginning for me". .