There Will Be No Original Little River Band Reunion Tour 'In This Lifetime'

The convoluted and acrimonious history behind the Little River Band moniker received a fresh airing last night when Channel Seven program Sunday Night delved into the bitter dispute over the band's name between the founding Australian members and its present US-based line-up. 

Over the course of the episode, rights-holder Stephen Housden emphatically told the program that he would not allow the founding trio of Glenn Shorrock, Graeham Goble and Beeb Birtles to perform under the name 'Little River Band' for any planned reunion tour.

"Not in this lifetime," he said. "They'd use it as a grandstand to send more rubbish towards us. I can't see why I should give them a platform to do that."

The disagreement over the use of the Little River Band name only recently found itself in the headlines, when Housden's outfit — he no longer plays with the band, but continues to hold ownership over the rights — were due to appear on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to celebrate LRB's 40th anniversary — despite the total lack of original members.

That performance was eventually cancelled after the US Little River Band were denied permission to perform any songs written by Shorrock, Gobles or Birtles, which not coincidentally includes most of the band's hits. At the time, Shorrock made his displeasure about the planned appearance clear before it was consequently cancelled.

"They are promoting a newly recorded album of their own material, or whatever material they have got," Shorrock said at the time. "They should do that rather than pretend they are the band that sold 30 million albums."

Housden, however, has stuck to the same rhetoric since final founding member Derrick Pellicci walked out in 1998: "I don't think they have any rights," Housden told Sunday Night. "If you walk away from the band, you're abandoning the band. I just stayed with the band."

Despite the open schedule for use of the Little River Band name Down Under, however, we wouldn't be holding our breath for a US-version sojourn this way any time soon either, not least of all because it generally seems like local fans simply do not want a bar of it.

"I still to this day get death threats ... 'Don't come back to Australia because you have stolen this thing from us,'" current vocalist (and ex-bassist) Wayne Nelson said.

For Housden, though, the issue always seems to come back to the founders' departures from the band over the years.

"I am not sure why anyone who left the company and left the band thinks they have any right to the name," he said. "I wouldn't be coming back 30 years later and saying, 'That is my band'. I just don't get that. It's not the way I operate, anyway."