Page 34 - April 2016

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10cc, circa 1977 jorGen AnGeL - GeTTy ImAGeS
Gary Katz brought in a slew of session musicians to steely Dan-itize 10cc’s sound. Much ballyhoo was made over the news the four original members were again collaborating, but in the end, Godley and Creme contributed no material and none of the instrumentation. Lol Creme sang backup vocals on half the tracks, while Kevin Godley, the mortal man with the voice of an angel, was tapped to sing lead on exactly one song.
Godley later recalled his time in the studio with eric and Graham to be a blast, but he sensed a growing distance between his old friends. Their former camaraderie was replaced by an icy professionalism, and it showed in the finished product. The resulting 1992 LP ...Meanwhile cost nearly a million dollars. It got no higher than #75 in the UK and none of its singles charted, a sad showing for a group with as many hits in Britain as 10cc.
stewart and Gouldman released one more 10cc record, Mirror Mirror, in 1995. There were no songwriting collaborations and no sign of Godley or Creme. eric and Graham recorded their individual tracks in different countries and did not appear on each other’s songs. The LP failed to chart in england. even a remake of “I’m not in Love” couldn’t save it.
10cc played europe and Japan in 1995, then eric stewart officially quit. Graham Gouldman reconstituted 10cc in 1999 and continues touring to this day with himself as the only original member. no further studio albums have emerged. Godley and Gouldman briefly collaborated in 2006 on a project called GG/06 and posted a few finished tracks online.
Kevin Godley recently designed wholeworldBand, an audio/visual global recording studio program for the iPad. Lol Creme formed the all-star cover band Producers in 2006 where he mixes newly written material with 10cc hits. In 2014, Graham Gouldman was inducted into the songwriters Hall of Fame in new York City. eric stewart released several solo LPs and moved to France, where he is currently building a studio. He and Lol Creme are still brothers-in-law.
eric stewart and Graham Gouldman shut down strawberry south in 1983 and sold strawberry north, which closed in 1993. The stockport Heritage Trust mounted a plaque on the site of the original strawberry studios in 2007, declaring it a building of notable historical interest.
In recent years, Godley and Creme’s disastrous Consequences LP has enjoyed a small critical reassessment. Mr. Blint’s Attic (suppertime.co.uk/blint) is a long-running Consequences fan site, which includes photos, trivia and interviews. Lol Creme’s memories are pleasant, Kevin Godley’s are not. Both admit they haven’t listened to the album since 1977.
even the ill-fated Gizmo has arisen from the dead. In 2013, the Gizmotron Restoration Project (gizmotron.com) began making replacement parts for the original units using modern manufacturing techniques. The newly redesigned Gizmo 2.0 is set to come on the market in 2016.
In several interviews, the members of 10cc have all expressed the wish that the original lineup had handled their success more maturely and stayed together. Kevin Godley regrets he and Lol Creme were not able to swallow their pride after the Consequences debacle and return to 10cc with lessons learned.
The legacy and influence of 10cc is not easy to plot, possibly because of the band’s intense eclecticism. stewart, Gouldman, Godley and Creme have wondered why they are never mentioned in the company of their 1970s rock & roll contemporaries. One reason could be 10cc’s music does not fall neatly into any genre.
The group’s meticulous perfection in the studio suggests a kinship with steely Dan, although the Dan utilized a large crew of session musicians while 10cc was always self-contained. Deep down, steely Dan were jazz heads while 10cc were devotees of pop. Queen is a closer comparison musically, although 10cc lacked a charismatic front-man like Freddie Mercury. Both bands had four contributing songwriters, instrumentalists and vocalists (except Queen’s silent bass man John Deacon who nevertheless wrote several of their big hits).
Both “I’m not in Love” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” were #1 singles in 1975, and both were six minutes in length (although 10cc had to edit theirs for radio). Queen and 10cc discovered their biggest hits were nearly impossible to replicate onstage, forcing both groups to use backing tapes live. The members of Queen have stated the mini-operetta concept of Godley/Creme’s
“Une nuit a Paris” and the massed vocal choirs of stewart/Gouldman’s “I’m not in Love” directly inspired Freddie Mercury to compose “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
10cc is sometimes aligned with catchy 1970s hard rock (David Bowie, T. Rex) or power pop (Badfinger, Big star). But 10cc was designed to be a top 40 hit machine (however twisted) while Bolan and Bowie et al saw themselves as serious Artists who just happened to have charting singles. Badfinger and Big star each developed a distinctive sound and stuck with it, while 10cc was all over the map, to the point where many of their songs sounded like different groups.
34 • APRIL 2016 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us
Oldies radio program directors file 10cc with good-time have-a-nice-day 1970s soft rock. To their ears, “I’m not in Love” is a great segue between Dan Fogelberg and John Denver. But what about such unsettling 10cc craziness as “Clockwork Creep,”“The Hospital song” or “I wanna Rule the world?” Good luck sandwiching one of those between “Laughter in the Rain” and “Muskrat Love.”
strains of 10cc can be heard in melodic new wave bands like squeeze and xTC, where the younger musicians eagerly imitate 10cc’s hooks but not their quirks. The majority of pop music bands are afraid to experiment and lose their seat on the gravy train, while 10cc were curious, willing to take chances, and unafraid of failure. And fail they did, impressively and publicly.
10cc’s experience as creators of bubblegum and their general love for Top 40 music separate them from heavily metallic peers like Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, who pretended their not-so- distant pasts as ruffle-shirted popsters didn’t even exist. when they wanted to, 10cc could turn up the guitars (“silly Love” and “The wall street shuffle”) and create chiseled-in-stone riffs (“The second sitting For The Last supper” and “Art For Art’s sake”), but could never wear the mantle of decadent rock stars like Robert Plant or Richie Blackmore did. And they never tried, thank God.
The complexity of 10cc’s early material places them near the realm of tuneful progressive rockers like Yes and Gentle Giant, except 10cc were never noodlers. The guitar solos of eric stewart and Lol Creme were complicated yet compact, always fitting within the framework of their songs. Indeed, Godley and Creme’s desire to be perceived as serious Artists was what drove 10cc apart. Once on their own, Godley and Creme were free to indulge their pretensions: Consequences just screams progressive rock and serious art — boring progressive rock and bad serious art, but still ...
Another possible reason 10cc has been ignored is fashion. Much of the public’s perception of rock stars is forever tied to their appearances: Bowie’s Ziggy stardust getup, Freddie Mercury’s leotard, Jimmy Page’s crushed velvet dragon bellbottoms, the flowing Adonis chest hair of Robert Plant and Roger Daltrey, elton John’s kooky sunglasses, KIss’s superhero makeup, etc.
The blue-collar garb of 10cc would lump them in with simple down-home folk like The Grateful Dead and The Band if their music were at all similar. when 10cc were first invited to appear on Top of the Pops, their manager gave them a choice: either go all-out glam with costumes and makeup or just play in their street clothes. The band opted for the latter. Upon arriving at the TV studio, the show’s producer exclaimed, “Good Lord, you guys are normal? what a great gimmick!”
Perhaps the most subtle and elusive trait, which separates 10cc from their peers, is their sense of humor. 10cc came on the scene a few years before punk, when the Rock star Myth was at its most inflated and begging to be punctured. 10cc crystallized this process with “The worst Band in the world,” a Creme/Gouldman composition from 1974 (this was written before they got the million dollars):
We’ve never done a day’s work in our life And our records sell in zillions
It irrigates my heart with greed
To know that you adore me
Up yours
Up mine
But up everybody’s that takes time
But we’re working on it **
Freddie Mercury or David Bowie wouldn’t be caught dead singing those lyrics.
The use of humor in popular music is a tricky proposition. If a band gets too silly, they risk becoming a novelty act. The temptation is to peg 10cc as the progenitors of They Might Be Giants and ween, but it seems like those groups set out to make goofy music on purpose while
10cc’s humor feels more like a natural facet of their personalities that flavors their songwriting. Do people come to your shows to have a good laugh or to rock out? Are you comedians
who happen to play music or are you musicians who happen to be funny?
The most obvious example is Frank Zappa. Through his entire career, Zappa used humor to mock, shock, entertain, educate, protest, and sometimes just to be ornery and irritate conservatives, which is always fun to watch. He gave instrumental tracks titles like “Don’t You ever wash That Thing?” and “I Promise not to Come in Your Mouth.” He managed to upset Christians and Jews, blacks and whites, rich and poor, men and women, Democrats and
Republicans, Americans and foreigners. nothing was sacred.
But Frank Zappa was always a musician first and buffoon/social commentator second.
The laughs and lessons were pretty good but the music was better. The fact Zappa could compose, arrange and shred on lead guitar gave him the license to be outrageous. He could say something off the wall and people would listen because he was Frank Zappa, the man who wrote “Peaches en Regalia,” “Black napkins,” “Inca Roads” and “watermelon In easter Hay,”
— one of the most beautiful guitar performances ever recorded.
10cc may have found a home at last. The integrity of their music was so strong the humor
resonated that much deeper and prevented the band from becoming a joke.
The problem is laughter is the killer of pretentiousness and therefore the enemy of the music business. Punk rock and This Is Spinal Tap notwithstanding, most musicians still take
themselves very seriously, as do their fans. Any artist who dares prick that balloon of self- righteousness risks becoming a pariah in the industry — just ask Todd Rundgren. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame might let 10cc in after all of them are dead, but no one’s holding their breath.
The original quartet was again brought together in 2012 to compile Tenology, the official 10cc box set. Three of the four discs focus on the 1972-1977 era, and a bonus DVD collects their television appearances and rare live footage. The four classic 10cc LPs have each been remastered with b-sides added, as have Godley and Creme’s solo records, except of course
Consequences, which was briefly available as a Japanese CD but is now out of print.
Anyone looking for a way in should try Sheet Music and Godley and Creme’s L as entry points.
You may be surprised.
* lyrics and music c.1978 Kevin Godley and Lol Creme ** lyrics and music c.1974 Lol Creme and Graham Gouldman
| Tony Ballz may give the Gizmo a try. music@thenoise.us