Some songs from the Gould mine

JUST as DIY these days can turn some folk a tidy fortune on the housing market so 10cc legend Graham Gouldman learned writing your own songs could set you up for life.

But the Manchester-born musician says he fell into songwriting because no-one would give him a song.

“I was growing up at a very interesting time and a good time to be inspired,” he says a generation on. “As a young teenager I was listening to Cliff, Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry and then the Beatles. And I was like ‘I’ll have a go at that’. I had a gift and it encouraged me. I had been dabbling and it spurred me on.”

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Millions of 10cc fans will be grateful he did. As will followers of The Hollies, Herman's Hermits, Jeff Beck and The Yardbirds, among the other bands towards which Graham directed his skills.

But it is for iconic songs such as Dreadlock Holiday and I’m Not In Love for which he is best known. Those singles, along with Rubber Bullets, gave 10cc three number ones while they also troubled the top 10 with eight others, including Art For Art’s Sake, Donna and The Things We Do For Love.

“I remember a time with 10cc when whatever we put out was a hit. If we put it out it was validated,” says Graham, who picked up his first guitar aged 11.

“But with 10cc we got our subject matter from very odd places or we wrote about things other people didn’t write about. Who would write about a bomb on an airplane?.”

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As a ‘70s commercial success story 10cc were the creative sum of fellow musicians Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme, but it is Gouldman who continues to tour the world under the band's moniker, finding Sheffield City Hall on November 8.

“I have never stopped doing it and it really just evolved into the version of the band you have now. We started touring an acoustic situation which I really enjoyed but then I wanted to have some bass, bass drum and some electric in there.

“We started doing one off festivals in Europe which have grown and grown and over the last couple of years people have become more interested in live music again. Now there’s a lot of young people coming to our gigs who have grown up in a family that listened to 10cc.”

Further evidence of their impact can be found in some of 2007’s modern stars such as saccharine rock-pop act The Feeling who cite 10cc as an influence.

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“There are some really good people around today but when I drive my daughter to school in the morning and she’s flicking through 12 radio stations with most of them I’m going ‘no thank you’. One can usually sense if you are in the presence of something interesting.”

Graham served his apprenticeship in several Manchester bands from 1963, including The High Spots, The Crevattes, The Planets, Whirlwind and The Mockingbirds. The latter were signed to Columbia Records and were the warm-up band at the taping of one-time Manchester-based BBC TV show Top Of The Pops. He later went on to supervise recordings for legendary New York punks the Ramones and singer-songwriter Gilbert O'Sullivan before joining Andrew Gold in the duo Wax.

But Graham had his first top 10 hit at the age of 19 with the haunting For Your Love, recorded by The Yardbirds. Yet his true musical guile along with the innovation of his colleagues in the early 10cc was tested as they turned ideas into reality via limited technology.

“When we started we didn’t have synths. If you wanted to produce a sound you had to find it yourself,” he confirms.

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“Now you go to a bank of sounds everybody else is accessing. But then, if you made it, it was yours. It was more fun as well. If we recorded I’m Not In Love today we would get the voices from some sort of synth. We had to re-record and re-record and overdub. If you wanted a tabla player then you got one in and he might have an idea and it might lead to you changing something. Now you’ve got to pay him when you can get the sound elsewhere.”

The current show comprises mainly 10cc songs, of course, with a short section featuring some of Graham’s ‘60s tunes. The line-up features Paul Burgess (drums) and Aussie-based Rick Fenn (lead guitar) with Keith Hayman and Mick Wilson completing.`