HELLO GOODBYE
It began in Stockport thanks to Neil Sedaka. And ended with on-stage onanism in front of 250,000 peopleÉ
Kevin Godley on the crazy chemistry of four intense 10cc years.
We were essentially already a band. We just didn’t know it yet. Myself, Lol Creme, Graham Gouldman and Eric Stewart were a production team and the house band at Strawberry Studios in Stockport. A few years prior to that, myself, Lol and Eric were briefly in a group, Hotlegs, and we had one hit record, Neanderthal Man, and a flop album. The idea of doing a band again hadn’t really cropped up.
We were doing an album for Neil Sedaka, called Solitaire. Why was he working with us? Good question. But we got on extremely well. One day we were probably in the live area of Strawberry – drum kit in one corner, microphones, amps, grand piano at the other end – talking about the next take, and as part of the general conversation, Neil Sedaka says, “You guys are great, you play really well together, why don’t you form a band?” A moment of silence, four lightbulbs go on…
There wasn’t much of a discussion. Eric and Graham were virtually the owners of Strawberry, so it was, Let’s use some downtime and see what happens. We went in and recorded a track, Waterfall, a quite nice pseudo-Crosby, Stills & Nash kind of song written by Eric and Graham. Apple knocked it back, but while we were waiting for a response, Lol and I came up with a B-side called Donna, which sounded like an old doo wop song. It was throwaway, a pastiche written in half an hour. Eric knew Jonathan King [of UK Records] who freaked out and said, “This is a smash!”, as they used to do in those days, and signed us up.
I think what you might call, I dunno, the ‘audio identity’ of 10cc began to exist with Donna. We thought, This has got something – it was some kind of crazy chemistry, as all these things are. We had no sense of how far it could go. It was great fun. And then suddenly we were pop stars, and that in itself was a bit of a thrill.
It was a very intense four years. The last gig we did was supporting The Rolling Stones at Knebworth [on August 21, 1976]. We were going on later than normal, because we’d got some new lights, and suddenly a stark-bollock-naked guy ran onto the stage and had a wank in front of a quarter of a million people… a fitting end. Was it a tribute? Either that or he was saying, ‘don’t watch this band, they’re wankers!’
Two things had happened. When we recorded the How Dare You! album [1976], Lol and I became aware that we were about to move into an era where we knew what we were supposed to be doing – a long song, a slow one, a funny one, a complicated one… to us, not knowing was what was exciting. The album turned out really well, but when it came to the album after [Deceptive Bends, 1977], Eric and Graham played [Lol and I] a new song, either The Things We Do For Love, or People In Love, I’m not 100 per cent sure. Frankly, we were underwhelmed. We were not jumping around.
Both songs are absolutely fucking fine and good, but we were in a different place. Prior to this, Lol and I had spent a couple of weeks experimenting with this device we’d invented called the Gizmo, which was designed to play guitar strings and make them sound like an orchestra, and it was very exciting. Had the inevitable not happened, I’m sure the Gizmo album [1977’s Godley & Creme Consequences, a triple concept LP starring Peter Cook and Sarah Vaughan] – which was insane, our grand folly – would have turned out to be a one-off vanity project.
I think the last time we met was at our manager Harvey Lisberg’s house in Prestwich, near where we lived. It was, you’re in or you’re out, boys, and we just decided to bale [Stewart and Gouldman carried on]. There was disappointment, rather than anger. It was very sad. Afterwards, we probably just went home. But it had to be done, because had we not left, all the adventures after that would never have happened.
In 1992, Lol and I performed a little bit on Eric and Graham’s final album, Meanwhile, which was lovely. The memory of how it used to be instantly worked again, and all the bad vibes were forgotten. Graham still takes a touring version of 10cc out on the road, so the music’s still out there. In a sense, it doesn’t really matter who’s playing it.
As told to Ian Harrison
Tracks from Kevin Godley’s debut solo album (with crowdsourced collaborations) Muscle Memory will be released every two weeks until the LP’s full release on December 17.
“It was, you’re in or you’re out, boys…” KEVIN GODLEY