10cc

10cc are an English rock band formed in Stockport in 1972. The group initially consisted of four musicians – Graham Gouldman, Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme – who had written and recorded together since 1968. The group featured two songwriting teams. Stewart and Gouldman were predominantly pop songwriters, who created most of the band's accessible songs. Godley and Creme were the predominantly experimental half of 10cc, featuring art and cinematically inspired writing.

Every member of 10cc was a multi-instrumentalist, singer, writer and producer. Most of the band's records were recorded at their own Strawberry Studios (North) in Stockport and Strawberry Studios (South) in Dorking, with most of those engineered by Stewart.

From 1972 to 1978, 10cc had five consecutive UK top-ten albums: ''Sheet Music'' (1974), ''The Original Soundtrack'' (1975), '' How Dare You!'' (1976), ''Deceptive Bends'' (1977) and '' Bloody Tourists'' (1978). 10cc also had twelve singles reach the UK Top 40, three of which were the chart-toppers "Rubber Bullets" (1973), " I'm Not in Love" (1975) and " Dreadlock Holiday" (1978). "I'm Not in Love" was their breakthrough worldwide hit and is known for its innovative backing track. Godley and Creme quit the band in 1976 due to artistic disagreements and became a duo act. Stewart left the band in 1995. Since 1999, Gouldman has led a touring version of 10cc.

First collaborations

Three of the founding members of 10cc were childhood friends in the Manchester area. As boys, Godley and Creme knew each other; Gouldman and Godley attended the same secondary school and their musical enthusiasm led to playing at the local Jewish Lads' Brigade.

1964–1969: Early bands

Their first recorded collaboration was in 1964, when Gouldman's band 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 members and name, becoming The Mockingbirds (including singer-guitarist Gouldman, bassist Bernard Basso and drummer Kevin Godley, formerly of The Sabres with Creme). The Mockingbirds recorded five singles in 1965–66 without any success, before dissolving. The guitarist in both The Whirlwinds and The Mockingbirds was Stephen Jacobson, brother of well-known writer Howard Jacobson.

In June 1967, Godley and Creme reunited and recorded a solitary single ("Seeing Things Green" b/w "Easy Life" on UK CBS) under the name "The Yellow Bellow Room Boom". In 1969, Gouldman took them to a Marmalade Records recording session. The boss, 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 issued as a single, credited to Frabjoy and Runcible Spoon.

Gomelsky (an ex-manager of The Yardbirds) planned to market Godley & Creme as a duo, in the vein of Simon & Garfunkel.Liner notes to ''Strawberry Bubblegum'' CD, written by David Wells, June 2003 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, penning " Heart Full of Soul", "Evil Hearted You" and "For Your Love" for The Yardbirds, "Look Through Any Window" and "Bus Stop" for The Hollies and "No Milk Today", "East West" and " Listen People" for Herman's Hermits.

1965–1968: The Mindbenders

Meanwhile, the fourth future member of 10cc was also tasting significant pop music success: guitarist Eric Stewart was 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" (released December 1965) 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" (released November 1967) and "Uncle Joe the Ice Cream Man" (August 1968). Those singles did not chart and The Mindbenders broke up after a short tour of England in November.

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 also 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, noted 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. In fact the song featured Gouldman on lead vocal, and 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.

Kevin 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 (all three with lead vocals by Godley), and "Susan's Tuba" by Freddie and the Dreamers (which was a monster hit in France and featured lead vocals by Freddie Garrity, despite claims by some that it was Gouldman).

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 in the UK charts 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.

Reverting to 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 (Backed With) "The Loser". Philips reworked their sole album, removed "Neanderthal Man" and added "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 also 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 (soccer) 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 Hotlegs track "Today" b/w new Stewart/Gouldman song "Warm Me" and released it 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.

1972–1976: Original line-up

Undeterred by Apple's rejection, the group decided to plug another song which had been written as a possible B-side to "Waterfall", a Godley/Creme composition titled "Donna". The song was a Frank Zappa-influenced 1950s doo-wop parody, a sharp mix of commercial pop and irony with a chorus sung in falsetto. Stewart said: "We knew it had something. We only knew of one person who was mad enough to release it, and that was Jonathan King." Stewart called King, who drove to Strawberry, listened to the track and "fell about laughing", declaring: "It's fabulous, it's a hit."

King signed the band to his UK Records

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