10cc Hits

[Glynis Waughtal]

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.

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 their playing at the local Jewish Lads' Brigade.[7]

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".[10] 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.[11] The song, "I'm Beside Myself" b/w "Animal Song", was issued as a single, credited to Frabjoy and Runcible Spoon.

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.

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.[13]

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.[14] In October 1968, the studio was moved to bigger premises and renamed Strawberry Studios, after the Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever".[15]

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.[12]

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.

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 hit in France and featured lead vocals by Freddie Garrity, despite claims by some that it was Gouldman).[12]

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,[13] 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.

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 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.[17]

It was Neil Sedaka's success that did it, I think. We'd just been accepting any job we were offered and were getting really frustrated. We knew that we were worth more than that, but it needed something to prod us into facing that. We were a bit choked to think that we'd done the whole of Neil's first album with him just for flat session fees when we could have been recording our own material.[18]

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."[13]

Once again a four-piece, the group re-recorded the Hotlegs track "Today" (b/w a new Stewart/Gouldman song "Warm Me"), which was released under the name Festival.[19] 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.

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."[13]

King signed the band to his UK Records label in July 1972 and dubbed them 10cc. By his own account, King chose the name after having a dream in which he was standing in front of the Hammersmith Odeon in London where the boarding read "10cc The Best Band in the World". A widely repeated claim, disputed by King[20] and Godley,[21] but confirmed in a 1988 interview by Creme,[22] and also on the webpage of Gouldman's current line-up is that the band name represented ten cubic centimetres, a volume of semen that was more than the average amount ejaculated, thus emphasising their potency or prowess.

"Donna", released as the first 10cc single, was chosen by BBC Radio 1 disc jockey Tony Blackburn as his Record of the Week, helping to launch it into the Top 30. The song peaked at No. 2 in the UK in October 1972.

Although their second single, a similarly 1950s-influenced song called "Johnny Don't Do It", was not a major chart success, "Rubber Bullets", a catchy satirical take on the "Jailhouse Rock" concept, became a hit internationally and gave 10cc their first British No. 1 single in June 1973. They consolidated their success a few months later with "The Dean and I", which peaked at No. 10 in September. They released two singles, "Headline Hustler" (in the US) and the self-mocking "The Worst Band in the World" (in the UK) and launched a UK tour on 26 August 1973, joined by second drummer Paul Burgess, before returning to Strawberry Studios in November to record the remainder of their second LP, Sheet Music (1974), which included "The Worst Band in the World" along with other hits "The Wall Street Shuffle" (No. 10, 1974) and "Silly Love" (No. 24, 1974). Sheet Music became the band's breakthrough album, remaining on the UK charts for six months and paving the way for a US tour in February 1974.

At that point in time we were still on Jonathan King's label, but struggling. We were absolutely skint, the lot of us, we were really struggling seriously, and Philips Phonogram wanted to do a deal with us. They wanted to buy Jonathan's contract. Our manager Ric Dixon invited them to listen to what we've done. Head of A & R Nigel Grainge came up to our Strawberry Studio, heard the album and freaked. He said "This is a masterpiece, it's a done deal!". We did a five-year deal with them for five albums and they paid us a serious amount of money. It was Grainge's idea to release 'Life Is A Minestrone' as the first single holding back the big one to give us more longevity for the album.[24]

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