{"id":1323,"date":"2021-08-20T22:52:21","date_gmt":"2021-08-21T02:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/?p=1323"},"modified":"2021-08-21T11:11:59","modified_gmt":"2021-08-21T15:11:59","slug":"its-been-a-while-but-the-love-still-flows-from-the-bellamy-brothers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/its-been-a-while-but-the-love-still-flows-from-the-bellamy-brothers\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been a while, but the love still flows from the Bellamy Brothers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There’s a reason for the sun-shining sky<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there’s a reason why I’m feeling so high<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Must be the season<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When that love light shines all around us<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLet Your Love Flow\u201d \u2014 The Bellamy Brothers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every once in a while, I need a little yay-hoo in my yee-haw. Thanks to the Bellamy Brothers \u2014 Howard and David \u2014 that itch was scratched for the first time in quite a while.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Howard and David Bellamy perform Aug. 19, 2021, at the American Music Theater in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s been 18 months since I (and the rest of the world) have had the opportunity to attend a concert at an indoor venue (thanks pandemic, you rat bastard) and that\u2019s a long time to go without live music. But I finally got the chance Aug. 19, 2021, at the American Music Theater (AMT) in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. (By the way, if you\u2019re anywhere near southeastern Pennsylvania, make it a point to see a show the the AMT. The seats are wide, the leg room is plentiful, the tickets are reasonably priced, there\u2019s not a bad seat in the house and the ushers don\u2019t bother non-intrusive picture-takers like me.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Opening the evening was Gene Watson, whose career has included five number one hits, 21 Top 10 hits, and 48 charted singles. He is most famous for his 1975 hit \u201cLove in the Hot Afternoon,\u201d his 1981 No. 1 hit \u201cFourteen Carat Mind,\u201d and his signature 1979 song \u201cFarewell Party.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No disrespect to Mr. Watson, but I was there for the Bellamy Brothers. Just a couple of good old boys from Florida, I\u2019ve liked the Bellamy Brothers since I first heard their hit \u201cLet Your Love Flow\u201d in 1976.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s not much between-song banter between songs from Howard and David. Lucky for me, though, I\u2019ve interviewed Howard for The Vinyl Dialogues series and he has shared with me the backstory behind \u201cLet Your Love Flow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the early 1970s, the Bellamy Brothers headed to Los Angeles, not knowing anybody. To make ends meet they worked local gigs and tried to get noticed enough to get a record contract.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the meantime, they were hanging out with the artists in the Los Angeles music scene at the time \u2014 Bob Dylan, James Taylor, Van Morrison \u2014 as well as West Coast country rock groups like the Byrds and Poco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Howard Bellamy
(Photo by Mike Morsch)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, the brothers did get noticed and signed a deal with Warner Brothers Records\/Curb Records in 1975. They also started sharing the stage with the likes of the Beach Boys, the Doobie Brothers and Loggins and Messina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the early friends the brothers made in Los Angeles were a record producer named Phil Gernhard and members from Neil Diamond\u2019s band, most notably Dennis St. John, Diamond\u2019s drummer. A roadie for Diamond, Larry E. Williams, had written a song for Diamond, but the singer declined to record it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johnny Rivers, who had a string of hits in the 1960s, including \u201cSecret Agent Man,\u201d \u201cPoor Side of Town\u201d and \u201cBaby I Need Your Lovin\u2019,\u201d and had followed that in the 1972 with another hit single, \u201cRockin\u2019 Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu,\u201d also passed on the Williams song.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

St. John, however, thought it was perfect for the Bellamy Brothers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe [St. John] came over to our house one night and said he had a song that really sounded like something we would do. That\u2019s just kind of how it happened,\u201d said Howard Bellamy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The song was \u201cLet Your Love Flow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd I thought it was the best song that I had ever heard,\u201d said Bellamy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bellamy Brothers did indeed decide to record the song, but they weren\u2019t the first. Despite the fact that Diamond and Rivers had passed on \u201cLet Your Love Flow,\u201d not everybody did. Singer-songwriter Gene Cotton \u2014 who had four Top 40 hits between 1976 and 1978, including \u201cYou\u2019re a Part of Me,\u201d a duet with Kim Carnes \u2014 had recorded the song but had not secured the rights to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
David Bellamy
(Photo by Mike Morsch)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019d written most of our own songs, but this song just felt like our song when we heard it,\u201d said Bellamy. \u201cIt\u2019s so important to have the right marriage between a song and an artist and this one was just the song for us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But not everybody was as excited about the song, especially record company officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe really had to push to get it out. I\u2019m still surprised that we won out on that. We didn\u2019t win many battles in those days. They [record company officials] really didn\u2019t want us to record the song. They weren\u2019t as hot over it as we were. But we kept on and kept on and finally we talked them into it.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The persistence paid off. Not only did Curb Records officials relent and let the Bellamy Brothers record \u201cLet Your Love Flow,\u201d but the company also decided to release the song as a single.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was so pumped about the version that we had,\u201d said Bellamy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And his instinct was right. The song took off like a rocket, first in Europe, and then back around in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bellamy Brothers had a monster pop hit on their hands. And it had created a few more complications for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, the record company wanted an album on which it could place the big single. Secondly, the record company really didn\u2019t know how to market the Bellamy Brothers. \u201cLet Your Love Flow\u201d had raced up the pop charts to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles, but had also made it as high as No. 21 on the Billboard Hot Country singles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Were they a pop group or a country group?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for an album, the Bellamy Brothers were nowhere ready to make one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
(Photo by Mike Morsch)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was like, oh my, we\u2019ve got a monster record, what do we do now? The song had made such an impact, we had to scramble to put our career together to go with it,\u201d said Bellamy. \u201cIn those days, singles were the big thing. You\u2019d get these producers that put more emphasis on singles \u2014 and the situation that we were in was kind of that way. We were more album-oriented, but we were in a big head-butting situation with the label. We didn\u2019t really agree with them on anything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, though, the Bellamy Brothers\u2019 debut album, also titled \u201cLet Your Love Flow,\u201d was completed in 1976. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe got the other songs done, but we scrambled to do them. No one could imagine the battle we were going through with the record company at that time. It was unbelievable,\u201d said Bellamy. \u201cWe were just two farm boys from Florida saying \u2018What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?\u2019 Thank goodness there were two of us. We just battled through it and somehow survived.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Produced by their friend Gernhard, the album contained 10 songs, including the song \u201cInside of My Guitar,\u201d co-written by David Bellamy and Jim Stafford that had been on the B side of the \u201cLet Your Love Flow\u201d single.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

David and Howard wrote all the other songs on the album with the exception of one, \u201cSatin Sheets,\u201d the first song on the A side of the album written by Willis Alan Ramsey. In 1972, Ramsey wrote and recorded the song \u201cMuskrat Candlelight,\u201d covered in 1973 by the band America, which had a minor hit with it, and again in 1976 by The Captain & Tennille, both with the revised title \u201cMuskrat Love.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, the label didn\u2019t know didn\u2019t know what to do with \u201cLet Your Love Flow.\u201d In fact, one of the most popular songs of the era that followed \u201cLet Your Love Flow\u201d to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in 1976 was \u201cDisco Duck,\u201d a satirical novelty dance song performed by radio personality Rick Dees & His Cast of Idiots. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t start out as a country act, even though we were country. The people that we were involved with, they didn\u2019t know what in the hell we were,\u201d said Bellamy. \u201cThat was one of big problems. And people still don\u2019t know what the devil we are. We\u2019ve never fit into any particular mold.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the \u201cLet Your Low Flow\u201d single was a chart-topper, the album itself didn\u2019t do nearly as well. It got to No. 21 in the United Kingdom, but only to No. 69 in the U.S. and No. 75 in Canada. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the course of their 40-plus-year career, Bellamy estimates that he and his brother have performed \u201cLet Your Love Flow\u201d more than 8,000 times onstage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne great thing about our careers \u2014 and there are a lot of great things, even though it\u2019s been as crazy as anybody\u2019s career how it happened \u2014 we have songs that have had long lives,\u201d said Bellamy. \u201cAnd people still get excited. When you go and do one-nighters with new faces, I can honesty say that singing \u2018Let Your Love Flow\u2019 has never gotten old.\u201d
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
(Photo by Mike Morsch)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a reason for the sun-shining sky And there’s a reason why I’m feeling so high Must be the season When that love light shines all around us \u201cLet Your Love Flow\u201d \u2014 The Bellamy Brothers Every once in a while, I need a little yay-hoo in my yee-haw. Thanks to the Bellamy Brothers \u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":1324,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tvdbook"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1323"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1323"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1332,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1323\/revisions\/1332"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}