10cc
10cc are an English rock band formed in 1972 by four musicians who had written and recorded together at their own studio, Strawberry Studios, in Stockport near Manchester since 1968. The group initially consisted of Graham Gouldman, Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley, and Lol Creme. The four members contributed to songwriting, working together in various permutations. Godley and Creme’s songwriting has been said to be inspired by art and cinema. The four members were multi-instrumentalists, singers, writers and producers. Most of the band's records were recorded at their own Strawberry Studios in Stockport and Strawberry Studios in Dorking, with the majority of those engineered by Stewart.
From 1972 to 1978, 10cc had five consecutive UK top-ten albums: Sheet Music, The Original Soundtrack, How Dare You!, Deceptive Bends, and Bloody Tourists. 10cc had twelve singles reach the UK Top 40, three of which were the chart-toppers "Rubber Bullets", "I'm Not in Love", and "Dreadlock Holiday". "I'm Not in Love" was their breakthrough worldwide hit, and is known for its innovative backing track.
In 1976, Godley and Creme left 10cc to concentrate on developing an electronic music device, "The Gizmo", and being in video production and music as Godley & Creme. Stewart left the band in 1995, after which they did not record or release any further studio albums. Since 1999, Gouldman has led a touring version of 10cc.
1963-1968: Early days; The Mockingbirds; The Mindbenders
, Kevin Godley, and Graham Gouldman were childhood friends in the Manchester area. As boys, Godley and Creme knew each other, and remained in touch while studying at separate art colleges; Gouldman and Godley attended the same secondary school, and their musical enthusiasm led to their playing at the local Jewish Lads' Brigade. Eric Stewart was born in Droylsden, a housing overflow area for neighbouring Manchester, and now part of Greater Manchester. Godley and Creme studied at art college until 1968. Creme was at Birmingham School of Art where he gained a BA degree, while Godley was at Stoke-on-Trent Regional College of Art.While at art college, Godley played briefly in local band The Sabres, while in 1963 Gouldman formed The Whirlwinds, which in 1964 released the first collaboration between any of the four future 10cc members when Gouldman and The Whirlwinds recorded the Lol Creme composition "Baby Not Like You", as the B-side of their only single, "Look At Me". The Whirlwinds then changed their name to The Mockingbirds, with Gouldman on bass, and Godley joining as drummer. The Mockingbirds recorded five singles in 1965 and 1966, including "That's How ", without any success, before dissolving.
Guitarist Eric Stewart became a member of Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, a group that hit No. 1 with "The Game of Love", and scored a number of other mid-1960s hits. When Fontana left the band in October 1965, the group became known simply as the Mindbenders, with Stewart as their lead vocalist. The band scored a hit with "A Groovy Kind of Love" and made an appearance in the 1967 film To Sir, with Love with "It's Getting Harder All the Time" and "Off and Running". In March 1968, Gouldman joined Stewart in the Mindbenders, replacing bassist Bob Lang and playing on some tour dates. Gouldman wrote two of the band's last three singles, "Schoolgirl" and "Uncle Joe the Ice Cream Man". Those singles did not chart, and the Mindbenders broke up after a short tour of England in November.
In June 1967, Godley and Creme got together and recorded a solitary single under the name "The Yellow Bellow Room Boom". In 1969, Gouldman took them to a Marmalade Records recording session. The boss of Marmalade Records, Giorgio Gomelsky, was impressed with Godley's falsetto voice and offered them a recording contract. In September 1969, Godley & Creme recorded some basic tracks at Strawberry Studios, with Stewart on guitar and Gouldman on bass. The song, "I'm Beside Myself" b/w "Animal Song", was released as a single, credited to Frabjoy and Runcible Spoon.
Gomelsky planned to market Godley & Creme as a duo, in the vein of Simon & Garfunkel. Plans for an album by Frabjoy and Runcible Spoon faltered, however, when Marmalade ran out of funds. Solo tracks by Godley and Gouldman, however–both involved Stewart and Creme–were released on a 1969 Marmalade Records compilation album, 100 Proof. Gouldman's track was "The Late Mr. Late"; a year later, Godley's song "To Fly Away" reappeared as "Fly Away", in the debut Hotlegs album, Thinks: School Stinks.
Gouldman, meanwhile, had made a name for himself as a hit songwriter for The Yardbirds, The Hollies, Herman's Hermits, and Jeff Beck, writing hits such as "Heart Full of Soul", "For Your Love", "Look Through Any Window," "Bus Stop", and "No Milk Today".
1968–1970: Birth of Strawberry Studios; the bubblegum era
In the dying days of the Mindbenders, Stewart began recording demos of new material at Inner City Studios, a Stockport studio then owned by Peter Tattersall, a former road manager for Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas. In July 1968, Stewart joined Tattersall as a partner in the studio, where he could further hone his skills as a recording engineer. In October 1968, the studio was moved to bigger premises and renamed Strawberry Studios, after the Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever".In 1969, Gouldman began using Strawberry to record demos of songs he was writing for Marmalade. He had become much more in demand as a songwriter than as a performer. By the end of the year, he too was a financial partner in the studios.
By 1969, all four members of the original 10cc line-up were working together regularly at Strawberry Studios. Around the same time, American bubblegum pop writer-producers Jerry Kasenetz and Jeffry Katz of Super K Productions came to England and commissioned Gouldman to write and produce formulaic bubblegum songs, many of which were recorded at Strawberry Studios, and were either augmented or performed entirely by varying combinations of the future 10cc line-up. Among the recordings from this period was "Sausalito", a No. 86 US hit credited to Ohio Express and released in July 1969. The track had Gouldman on lead vocals, with vocal and instrumental backing by the other three future 10cc members.
In December 1969, Kasenetz and Katz agreed to a proposal by Gouldman that he work solely at Strawberry, rather than move constantly between Stockport, London and New York. Gouldman convinced the pair that these throwaway two-minute songs could all be written, performed and produced by him and his three colleagues, Stewart, Godley and Creme, at a fraction of the cost of hiring outside session musicians. Kasenetz and Katz booked the studio for three months.
Godley recalled:
We did a lot of tracks in a very short time – it was really like a machine. Twenty tracks in about two weeks – a lot of crap really – really shit. We used to do the voices, everything – it saved 'em money. We even did the female backing vocals.
The three-month project resulted in a number of tracks that appeared under various band names owned by Kasenetz-Katz, including "There Ain't No Umbopo" by Crazy Elephant, "When He Comes" by Fighter Squadron and "Come on Plane" by Silver Fleet, and "Susan's Tuba" by Freddie and the Dreamers. Lol Creme remembered: "Singles kept coming out under strange names that had really been recorded by us. I've no idea how many there were, or what happened to them all."
But Stewart described the Kasenetz-Katz deal as a breakthrough: "That allowed us to get the extra equipment to turn it into a real studio. To begin with they were interested in Graham's songwriting and when they heard that he was involved in a studio I think they thought the most economical thing for them to do would be to book his studio and then put him to work there – but they ended up recording Graham's songs and then some of Kevin and Lol's songs, and we were all working together."
1970–1971: Hotlegs; Doctor Father; The New Wave Band; Festival
When the three-month production deal with Kasenetz-Katz ended, Gouldman returned to New York to work as a staff songwriter for Super K Productions and the remaining three continued to dabble in the studio.With Gouldman absent, Godley, Creme and Stewart continued recording singles. The first, "Neanderthal Man", released under the name Hotlegs, began life as a test of drum layering at the new Strawberry Studios mixing desk, but when released as a single by Fontana Records in July 1970, climbed to No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart and became a worldwide hit, selling more than two million copies. Around the same time, the trio released "Umbopo" under the name of Doctor Father. The song, a slower, longer and more melancholic version of the track earlier released under the name of Crazy Elephant, failed to chart.
Using the successful band name Hotlegs, in early 1971 Godley, Creme and Stewart recorded the album Thinks: School Stinks, which included "Neanderthal Man". They then recalled Gouldman for a short tour supporting the Moody Blues, before releasing a follow-up single "Lady Sadie" b/w "The Loser". Philips Records reworked their sole album, removing "Neanderthal Man" and adding "Today", and issued it as Song. Stewart, Creme and Godley released another single in February 1971 under yet another name, The New Wave Band, this time with former Herman's Hermits member Derek "Lek" Leckenby on guitar. The song, a cover version of Paul Simon's "Cecilia", was one of the few tracks the band released that they had not written. It also failed to chart.
The band continued outside production work at Strawberry, working with Dave Berry, Wayne Fontana, Peter Cowap and Herman's Hermits, and doing original compositions for various UK football teams. In 1971 they produced and played on Space Hymns, an album by New Age musician Ramases; in 1972–73 they co-produced and played on two Neil Sedaka albums, Solitaire and The Tra-La Days Are Over. The experience of working on Solitaire, which became a success for Sedaka, was enough to prompt the band to seek recognition on their own merits. Gouldman—who by 1972 was back at Strawberry Studios—said:
Stewart said the decision was made over a meal in a Chinese restaurant: "We asked ourselves whether we shouldn't pool our creative talents and try to do something with the songs that each of us was working on at the time." Once again a four-piece, the group re-recorded the Hotlegs track "Today", which was released under the name Festival. The single failed to chart, and the band moved on to record a Stewart/Gouldman song, "Waterfall", in early 1972. Stewart offered the acetate to Apple Records. He waited months before receiving a note from the label saying the song was not commercial enough to release as a single.