One of the oddities of the europhile-europhobe debate in the UK for decades has been the "save the pound" debate. By that I mean the lb not the £, as many of you will know I was not convinced about the euro, though I could have been, had it been set up as a proper currency. But it was always clear to me that the main measures for trade had to be uniform across the Single Market for it to operate. That would be the Single Market now so beloved by so many who don't believe Margaret Thatcher achieved anything worthwhile (er, well hello, what about the Single Market then??)
That said it always seemed daft to persecute shop keepers for selling by the lb, having exempted beer by the pint. Measures need to be people friendly in terms of numbers. So while I've got used to the idea that you buy 450g of mince, "a pound" is easier to ask for. Yes you could ask for a quarter of a kilo, but lots of people get confused by fractions. Numbers between 1 and 20 work best. For example a 10 ounce steak - what's that in grams? And nobody (in their right mind, anyway) would measure the gap between their kitchen units in thirty-seconds of an inch, rather than millimetres or centimetres. And I've never understood fluid ounces, so millilitres, or cc are fine with me.
Appropos of which we saw 10cc recently - a very good gig. Officially they are categorised as "art rock". It is indeed arty, with some clever lyrics. I wondered what else constituted the genre - apparently it starts with The Beach Boys Pet Sounds and The Beatles Sergeant Pepper, moving through The Velvet Underground and Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention to prog rock bands like Pink Floyd and Yes. Some folk have prog as a sub-category of art rock. A broad church, then.
Graham Gouldman is the only original 10cc member, though drummer Paul Burgess has appeared on every 10cc tour since 1973 and record since 1976 and guitarist Rick Fenn is a long term collaborator as well. So the current line up is a lot more than a tribute band. But musically the star is the multi-instrumentalist and singer Mick Wilson. He has to be, covering for Lol Creme and Eric Stewart's very different lead vocals - Gouldman does his own and between them they cover for Kevin Godley's remarkable range of backing vocals. But more than that, Wilson brings joy to the audience from the transparent joy he gets from performance. We've seen this line up 3 times now and the highlights are 'I'm Mandy Fly Me' and 'I'm Not In Love', neither easy songs to do justice to live. Wilson is superb on both, singing for all he's worth on Mandy with a guitar slung high round his neck for the prominent, fast acoustic riff, so that he can reach the keyboards and additional percussion he needs to access to complete the soundscape. (Yes, there's another guitarist and another keyboard player but the song has two overlapping guitar and keyboard parts).
Manchester born Gouldman is an interesting character, having written his first big hit at 19, For Your Love. Gouldman's band had a record deal with Columbia, but they turned down For Your Love. Gouldman's manager loved the song and suggested offering it to The Beatles. Gouldman proferred that they 'seemed to be doing ok in the songwriting department', but it found its way to The Yardbirds for whom it became a top 10 hit in 1964. Strangely, Gouldman's band had a warm up slot for an edition of Top of the Pops being broadcast from Manchester and he watched The Yardbirds being mobbed, singing his song. A song which led to Eric Clapton leaving the band because he felt they had sold out by releasing it.
By the time he was 21 Gouldman had a string of top 10 hits under his belt as a songwriter, including Heart Full of Soul and Evil Hearted You for The Yardbirds, Look Through Any Window and Bus Stop for The Hollies and No Milk Today for Herman's Hermits, while working by day in a gentlemen's outfitters and gigging with his band at night. He wrote songs for the producer Mickie Most and then at a minor Tin Pan Alley in Manchester before the American producers Kasenetz Katz (think bubblegum like Yummy Yummy Yummy, I've got love in my tummy and Simon Says) offered him secure earnings writing for them in New York. What he later described as a creative low point led him to the verge of a nervous breakdown hacking out more than a song a day. Eventually he convinced his paymasters that he could work from the UK and, moreover, he could save them money by recording the songs with his chums, Creme, Godley and Stewart at a studio they had invested in at Stockport, called Strawberry, after Stewart's favourite Beatles track. KK gave them a 3 month contract to record the songs and Godley later recalled "20 tracks in about 2 weeks....we used to do the voices... everything....even the female backing vocals" (which explains a lot about the 10cc backing vocal range!)
At the end of the contract, Gouldman returned to New York and, while he was away, Creme and Godley had a hit as Hotlegs with Neanderthal Man. On his return, the 4 got together again and took a song to Apple, who rejected it. They then turned to a Godley/Creme composition, which they'd had in mind as a B-side, Donna. The only producer they thought might be interested was the egregious Jonathan King, who fell about laughing when he heard it, saying "it's fabulous, it's a hit". King signed them and coined the name 10cc. (If you're not familiar with why, look it up on Wikipedia, but suffice to say it's more than the average for a man). Donna, now wonderfully sung acapella style as the encore, was indeed a hit and more followed, including Rubber Bullets and Gouldman's The Wall Street Shuffle along with a breakthrough album, Sheet Music, but the band remained skint and decided to split with King. They took a new song to Phillips Phonogram who "freaked" when they heard it and offered to buy out King's contract and give the band a 5 album deal for "serious" money. The song was the Stewart/Gouldman composition I'm Not In Love, which went on to be one of the biggest hits of 1975 and won 3 Ivor Novello awards in 1976, including Best Pop Song.
Gouldman was inducted into The Songwriters Hall of Fame in New York in 2014. But he still seems a fairly normal chap and the band mix freely with punters at the end of their gigs. And the music still seems fresh. Indeed, when we first saw 10cc just a few years ago, supporting Status Quo, who surprisingly we also hadn't seen back in the day, we thought 10cc came over as a much more powerful band, with Quo, entertaining though they were, sounding not just one dimensional but also a bit tinny and thin, with their songs sung in a rather high register. 10cc had started with Stewart and Gouldman's Wall Street Shuffle and, if you doubt what I say, dig it out, crank the sound right up before the needle hits the groove and get blown back by the riff and those power chords. The words still work now, too:
Do the Wall Street Shuffle
Hear the money rustle
Watch the greenbacks tumble
Feel the sterling crumble
Dreadlock Holiday, the band's last number one in 1978 was another Stewart/Gouldman effort, as was Art for Art's Sake, with its refrain Money for God's sake. It was inspired by a saying of Gouldman's dad. Indeed I was going to call this post Art for Art's Sake - a much more appropriate title - but experience shows fewer people would view it.
10cc's tour performing Sheet Music (which I'm sure is a word play) and their hits doesn't have many dates left but see them if you possibly can.
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