On April 14th, 1983, Little River Band, along with the cream of Australia's show business talent were invited to perform at the Royal Gala Performance, a televised live event from the Melbourne Concert Hall for Prince Charles and Princess Diana. The royal couple were on their first tour of Australia since their wedding in 1981. The band were asked to perform three numbers and of course everyone in the band thought they should be our most popular songs. I had just written a new song called "D" for which the inspiration came from my wife and her three sisters, all of whose names start with a "D"! The oldest to the youngest are named, Diane, Debbie, Donna and Denise and they had one brother, whose name was Doug. Basically the song is about a guy who keeps receiving postcards from various locations in the United States from a person who "signs her name with a D". Diane lives in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, Debbie lived in Denver as well as in Utah and Denise lived in St. Louis, so I used all of these places in the song to confuse the guy receiving the postcards. Finally, in the last verse of the song the explanation is made clear that he is not receiving these postcards from just one person but three women who all "sign their name with a D"! I told the guys in the band that this song would be perfect for our performance because of Princess Diana, another "D" name! At first they didn't think it was a good idea because it was an unknown song but I persisted and convinced them to perform it as part of our segment in the show.
Because of the special event this turned out to be, I had bought myself an Armani suit to wear for the occasion and decided not to wear the jacket during the actual performance. We played our set flawlessly including the up-tempo song, "D" which I knew would have people talking. After the show, every one of the performers were invited to meet and greet the Royal couple, and of course, for this particular moment I slipped on my jacket. One by one we all filed past the Royal couple, stopping briefly to chat with them about our performances and our careers. When it came to my turn to shake their hands and chat, Princess Diana said to me, "oh, I see you've changed clothes?" My first thought was how observant she was to notice this. I told her no, that I had simply slipped on my jacket in which I would have been too hot to perform. Well, I don't know why but it seems like we talked for the longest time and it was obvious I was holding up the show! When watching the video the next day, one of the commentators for the show on the Channel Nine Network said she wondered what Princess Diana could be talking to Beeb Birtles about as she sure was taking her time, adding also that she wondered whether Little River Band purposefully sang this song, "she signs her name with a D" for the Princess?" |
