After reading about how Air Supply looked during their Meet-and-Greet session with fans just after flying in from Manila, you’d think that the 2 tired old men wouldn’t be able to handle a 2-hour-long concert.

You’d be so wrong.

They didn’t just sing; they raised the rafters.

Better Than Before

Performing on June 21 at the Max Pavilion at the Singapore Expo to a near sell-out crowd, the 32-year-old soft-rock band was here on the Singapore stop of their From The Heart Tour 2008.

Fronted by the ever-familiar guitarist-vocalist 58-year-old Graham Russell and 59-year-old lead vocalist Russell Hitchcock, the Australian band showed Singapore what live performances ought to be like.

There were no expensive props, no dangerous stunts, no guitars set ablaze, no fancy pyrotechnics, no lavish costumes and thankfully, no decapitated bats. Just the basic instruments, their instrumentalists, and of course, soulful, pitch-perfect singing from the heart.

Making It Right

The concert was slated to start at 8pm and began a forgivable 10 mins later than that. As the lights dimmed, a musical video montage of previous tours and some rather amusing behind-the-scenes footage of the band came on the 6 large projector screens around the hall.

As the video ended, Graham and Russell came on the stage and took their positions discreetly together with their band. When the lights came on and to the cheers of the audience, they wasted no time in starting on the 1st song of the night – “Sweet Dreams” from their debut self-titled album.

UrbanWire was surprised at how fresh and energetic Graham and Russell looked on stage. Not content to stand stagnant in fixed positions, the duo filled up every inch of stage space with paces, leaps and runs which bellied their ages.

We were also amazed at how they managed to elicit responses from the usually laidback Singaporean concert crowd, rallying it with plenty of waving, pointing and inviting everyone to sing along with them.

Dressed in an all-black ensemble of slacks and a long-sleeved shirt with sleeves casually rolled up to his elbows, Graham seemed to have grown even more charming with the years.

Looking at him cradling his electric guitar and whipping it around with pizzazz, you’d think that he was still a rocker barely out of his 20s, if not for the telltale wrinkled forehead and receding hairline. His husky voice seemed even stronger than in studio recordings, with beautiful intonations that made every woman in the audience swoon.

Russell on the other hand, didn’t appear to have aged too gracefully. His trademark curls had turned silvery-white, and framed a slightly puffy face that was beginning to sag off his high cheekbones. The dressy jacket he wore over a white shirt and black leather pants barely hid his bulging paunch.

His one-of-a-kind, uplifting tenor voice was also not as distinctly unique as it was 20 years back, though hints of straining were heard as he hit the high notes. But it was still clear and, and being slightly lower than his heyday in the 80s, complemented Graham’s voice better now.

More importantly, there was no hint of the cough he just a couple of days before.

Hitting invisible drums and dancing his fingers across imaginary keyboards in the air, Russell’s stage antics hadn’t changed one bit from the 80s, but were still met with the audience’s approval.

Unfortunately, the Singaporean audience didn’t seem to maintain their energy level after the first couple of songs, lapsing intoweak cheers during the less familiar tunes like “Just As I Am”, “A Little Bit of Everything” and “Chances” , and only showing signs of life upon Graham’s plucking of the first notes of evergreen hits like “Here I Am” and “The Power of Love” on his guitar.

Russell, with his superb crowd management skills, noticed this and teased the audience into getting more involved in the concert. Pointing his microphone at the audience to make them sing along and refusing to sing the last notes of “Goodbye” until they cheered loudly enough for him, he proved what Graham said about Air Supply being better performers than before.

Two Solos and A Chat

During the concert’s only costume change, Graham proved that he and Russell weren’t totally inseparable. As the rest of the band moved backstage, he grabbed an acoustic guitar off a rack on the side of the stage and settled down alone on an elevated swivel stool in the middle of the stage – which promptly sank under his tall frame.

After repeated attempts to sit down without sinking and plenty of amused chuckles from the audience, Graham gave up, plopped himself down and sank with the seat.

“Do I look small? ‘Cause I’m really not!” he asked the audience jokingly.

“Oh well, I’m closer to you guys then,” he added as an afterthought, much to the appreciation of everyone.

The Briton then proceeded to prove all the critics wrong by showing how he still had the talent for writing beautiful songs that touch hearts with their sincerity and humility.

Singing “Me and The River” from the band’s upcoming album while plucking less than 5 different chords on his guitar, he used “simple words, a simple melody and a simple chorus” to raise delightful goosebumps on the skin of everyone listening. His voice, so earnest and soulful, filled the hushed auditorium with its captivating sound. As he finished the song, many a jaw was left hanging in awe and his last notes were drowned out by the heartfelt applause of the audience.

After Russell rejoined him, wearing an unbuttoned black shirt over a black V-necked tee, the duo began reminiscing the old days like an old couple.

From talking about singing for their soup in coffeehouses when then first started performing together, the conversation drifted to some tongue-in-cheek comments on their performing habits

“We have nobody to look at when we sing, so we look at each other. In the old days, it used to generate a lot of rumours,” Graham joked.

But before the crowd got too excited, he added cleverly, “ It’s an art – We’re not singing TO each other; we’re singing WITH each other,” going on to sing “Two Less Lonely People In The World”.

As Graham snuck backstage for his costume change, Russell serenaded the crowd with his cover of “Without You” , originally performed by Welsh group Badfinger.

Recently popularized by singer Mariah Carey and infamously mutilated by a contestant on reality TV talent search show Bulgarian Idol, it proved to be a crowd favourite.

Russell scored full marks for his rendition. Backed by a solo pianist, he sang the lower melodies with emotion and soared over the impossibly high notes effortlessly, reminding fans of how they simply “can’t live” without Air Supply.

Graham then reappeared in a white top together with the rest of the band and they launched into high-energy piece “The One That You Love” .

By this time, the audience had already been fired up by the 2 beautiful solos and the entertaining chat session. Many were even seen getting on their feet and dancing along to the music.

A Rocking Finale

Then Graham and Russell did something which no one expected – they came downstage mid-song and made their way into the crowd while singing and strumming away.

That did it for the mostly Generation X and baby boomer crowd, and they were transformed back into a bunch of squealing teenagers. People from all over the auditorium started moving to the front to catch a close-up view of their idols.

UrbanWire tried to join in the melee but got overtaken by many a screaming fan, singing along deliriously with camera flashes blazing away and making a mad dash for the excited mobs thronging both Graham and Russell.

We’d never seen so many joyful Singaporean smiles in one place before. Not even during the fireworks display of National Day.

Even as the duo returned to the stage to perform their favourite songs, “Lost in Love” , none of the fans were intending to go back to their seats, choosing instead to crowd at the foot of the stage and along the aisles. All this while, streams of starstruck fans kept making their way to the front in a scene reminiscent of altar calls at megachurch gospel rallies. The security personnel, who’d been rather successful at keeping photo-taking fans away from the stage at the beginning of the concert, found themselves helpless in the human wave and could only stand by and watch with weary eyes.

Pretty soon, there was barely enough standing room in the first-class area. Those who paid good money for the priciest seats found themselves having to stand on their chairs to catch a glimpse of the finale.

Sadly, the fans had taken a little too long to warm up. After singing along at the top of their voices to “Every Woman To The World” and the ever-popular “Making Love Out Of Nothing At All” , they found themselves bidding farewell to Air Supply as the concert drew to a close.

There was also a discontented murmuring around the place as many fans realized that the group hadn’t performed quite a number of their greatest hits that night. For most who had just gotten into the party mood, disappointment was written all over their faces as they stared anxiously at the empty stage, hoping that it was some mistake and that their idols would return.

Finally, after a couple of minutes, the audience realized what it had to do to get its idols back on stage and a chant for an encore ensued. Much to the delight of all, the band trooped back on stage and gave new meaning to the phrase “saving the best for last”.

Making all the hype worthwhile and promising to leave the audience with “a flame that nothing can extinguish”, Air Supply closed the night with a final rendition of what’s arguably their most popular song of all time, “All Out Of Love” , which had everyone up on their feet, swaying and singing along.

Young People Need Air Too

After the concert, UrbanWire realised that quite a number of young people who didn’t quite fit in the age demographics of the crowd were filtering out of the doors too. This was rather intriguing because most of the songs that night were recorded even before they were born. So why were they there?

“Their music moves hearts of all ages. It even gets the older ones on their feet,” 20-year-old undergraduate Foong Sook Ching told UrbanWire.

Despite professing a hardcore fan of modern music like R&B and Hip-hop too, she’s one to prove that youths of today aren’t all about street music and extreme genres like Screamo.

After all, most of them were probably conceived with good old rock music, like Air Supply’s, playing in the background.

So for the record, Air Supply is not all out of love of the fans yet, are not has-beens, and definitely wouldn’t be outdated in the near future

Rock on, mates!