ROYAL CONCERT HALL Art for art’s sake still paying dividends foor brilliant band
10CC Mark 3, as sole remaining founder member Graham Gouldman calls it, has been performing the best of the brilliant 70s group’s music for nigh-on a quarter of a century.
You’d never guess: the highlights of this show, overwhelmingly drawn from 10cc’s 1972-78 golden age, sounded fresh as a daisy.
And success keeps calling. Growing from a handful of Gouldman solo gigs at the turn of the century to a tightly disciplined team playing the Royal Albert Hall on tours reaching 100,000 people a year, the group is currently planning its first US tour in decades.
Kicking off with a rousing version of The Second Sitting For The Last Supper and a brilliantly rearranged Art For Art’s Sake. the band – featuring lead guitarist Rick Fenn, who joined in 1977, and drummer Paul Burgess, an even earlier recruit who’s been in the team since playing as back-up for singing drummer Kevin Godley on the band’s first gigs in 1973 – proved there was nothing on the band’s ornate multi-layered records it couldn’t pull off.
Whether it was the delicate beauty of Old Wild Men (my vote for best-ever 10cc song), the epic grandeur of the 12-minute, three-part Feel The Benefit or the eerie splendour of classic number one hit I’m Not In Love, nothing was beyond them.
Singer and multi-instrumentalist Iain Hornal coped with the departed Lol Creme and Eric Stewart’s haunting vocals and contributed Say The Word, an excellent multi-sectioned song co-written with Gouldman.
Keyboard player Keith Hayman was another master of versatility, singing and playing electric guitar and bass as well as tickling the ivories.
Gouldman himself was on fine form, his bass playing a constantly propulsive, melodic and tasteful delight.
Former 10cc bandmate Godley made his usual spectral contribution with the pre-show song and video Son Of Man, co-written with Gouldman, which tells the story of the original 10cc, and his video and soaring new vocal on Somewhere In Hollywood, the best song ever written about Marilyn Monroe, and one of five songs from the band’s masterpiece, 1974’s Sheet Music.
One criticism was the relatively static setlist. Apart from Floating In Heaven, a song Gouldman has recorded with Queen’s Brian May to celebrate the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope, this show was very similar to the one they played here on their last visit in 2022. It would have been nice to hear more deep cuts.
But with songs this good, it seems churlish to quibble. A great night out.