The Bellamy Brothers First Heard Themselves on the Radio in a Cow Pasture
The Bellamy Brothers have enjoyed incredible success throughout their career, earning numerous No. 1 hits on both the pop and country charts, but they're perhaps best known for their song "Let Your Love Flow." Their signature song and debut single, "Let Your Love Flow" became a massive hit across the globe following its release in 1976; in 2009, the song received BMI's Five Million Performance Award.
Below, David Bellamy recalls to The Boot where he and his brother Howard were the first time they heard their (then-future) smash hit on the radio.
The first time that we heard "Let Your Love Flow" on the radio, we were actually home in Florida. We had moved out to California, and Howard and I were two farm boys living in the middle of Beverly Hills. We had recorded that song, and it broke in Europe. I had come home for Thanksgiving; we had just come back to Florida on the red eye from California to see our mom and dad.
Howard had an old 1949 Buick that we used to ride around in, just a couple of hippies. So we were riding around in that old Buick on a Thanksgiving holiday, and we heard it on the radio while we were out and about. It was a pretty neat setting because we were sitting out in the cow pasture at the time. It came on the radio, and, man, we jacked that thing up as loud as it would go! I think we almost blew the speakers out of it.
It's an indescribable feeling because you're like, did just one guy put this on? Does just one guy like the record, or is it actually breaking [on radio]?
We had heard it was breaking in Europe. We had one of those mushroom record deals -- keep you in the dark and feed you a lot of manure [laughs] -- [so] we never knew, because nobody ever told us anything. We were just the lowly artists! Then we went to Europe, and the record broke huge, and then it broke huge here.
This story was originally written by Pat Gallagher, and revised by Angela Stefano.