I'm Not In Love: The Story of 10cc

MUSIC: The Worst Band In The World by 10cc

# It's one thing to know it But another to admit

# We're the worst band in the world But we don't give a... #

It was like a scientific lab, really, 10cc, where we were

encouraging each other to push the limits of what a pop song could be.

# Load up, load up, load up... #

We were a completely self-contained band.

We just did what we wanted to do.

We were not in the slightest bit interested in anybody else.

# With rubber bullets... #

I believe that, musically at least,

we achieved a lot in a very short space of time.

MUSIC: I'm Not In Love

10cc was definitely on its own planet.

We would experiment on every song we ever took in the studio.

And I think we did open up some avenues that people had never

thought of trying.

PAUL GAMBACCINI: And when you look back at 10cc now and if you look

through their whole careers, not just while they were part of the group,

you realise that it was an amazing meeting of so much talent.

-SIR TIM RICE:

-They have influence beyond the obvious influence of nice

songs and hit records.

And more than almost any other group,

they have branched out into lots of different areas,

particularly electronics, videos, great songwriting.

I mean, they're much more than just an ordinary pop group.

MUSIC: You Stole My Love by the Mockingbirds

# I give you all I have to give... #

The Manchester scene was amazing,

because there were so many clubs, so many venues for bands to play in.

And every Saturday I'd go out with my mates and we'd just go

and see bands. We'd just go from club to club.

We saw at these clubs, before they had hits,

the Stones and all those Liverpool bands.

So there was a very lively, healthy, music, sweaty club scene.

A bit of publicity and a bit of action was coming out of Manchester,

sort of early '60s.

And most of the kids of that period wanted to be in a band.

I don't know why, but they did, everyone wanted to be in a band.

And it was just a real hoot.

One of the first groups I was with was called the Emperors Of Rhythm,

and we went to an audition at the BBC,

and on stage walked these four guys

who had leather jackets and jeans on.

It was the Beatles. And I sat there looking at these four guys, saying,

"These guys are incredible! They're so different."

And I talked about it to my mates in the Emperors Of Rhythm,

and they were all saying, "No way, man, no way.

"Cliff and the Shads are the best.

"Cliff and the Shadows, yeah. These guys are never going to make it."

They failed the audition. The Beatles failed the BBC audition!

We passed, with all our Shadows footsteps.

When I was 14 and underage and going to these clubs, I saw Eric Stewart

in the Emperors Of Rhythm, and he later went on to join Wayne Fontana

and the Mindbenders and became a pop star, y'know, before we even met.

APPLAUSE

The first record we released went to number 46.

And because we were now a chart group, I was suddenly earning

more than my father was, in one night, than he would earn in a week.

Then Game Of Love was number one in Britain,

number one in America in 1965. I would have been 19 then.

# So come on baby, let's start to play

# Come on, baby, let's play the game of

-# Love

-Love

-# Love

-Love

# La-la la-la la-love... #

But after that, Wayne wanted to go solo,

and he walked out on us one night on stage!

He just suddenly turned round and said, "It's all yours, guys,"

and disappeared offstage!

So we just carried on, and we went down a storm.

We went back to the studio to see the A&R man again and said,

"Wayne's left the band."

He said, "Well, it's funny, Eric, I've got a song here

"that I think would suit your voice. It's called Groovy Kind Of Love."

We recorded it. It was number one everywhere.

# When I'm feeling blue

# All I have to do

# Is take a look at you... #

I was first aware of Eric Stewart as a Mindbender,

and it was one of those interesting phenomena where the backing band does

better than the lead singer after the lead singer and the band split.

And the Mindbenders had this massive hit in America, and I think it got

to number two in England, Groovy Kind Of Love, which was just a great song.

# Wouldn't you agree

# Baby, you and me

# Got a groovy kind of love?

# Groovy kind of love

# We got a groovy kind of love... #

It's amazing to think that Eric was in the Mindbenders.

I don't think people register this at all,

because of course they associate the group with Wayne Fontana.

But it's important to see that these people were just all

bees in this big hive that was

the northern scene in the '60s in this country and such an important,

vibrant part of what was called the British Invasion In America.

I started writing seriously when I was about 18.

I was in a band with Kevin called the Mockingbirds.

I was so inspired and turned on by the Beatles that I thought,

"I'm going to really do some serious songwriting."

And I came up with a couple of songs that were recorded,

one of which was For Your Love.

And our record company turned our version of it down,

and it eventually found its way to the Yardbirds,

and that became my first hit as a songwriter.

-# For your love

-I'd give you everything and more

-# And that's for sure

-For your love... #

When I think back on what I wrote before For Your Love,

it was pretty crass, I think,

but For Your Love was different, and I sort of entered a different

era of my songwriting.

Particularly '65, '66 were very, very productive

for me as a songwriter - I mean, every year is productive,

but I mean productive in the very successful songs.

People don't appreciate the depth of the catalogue that

Graham Gouldman assembled.

The world hits that he churned out for the Yardbirds -

both For Your Love and Heart Full Of Soul were American top ten records.

And then Herman's Hermits,

a million-seller with Listen People, number three in America,

and No Milk Today, which was the flip of There's A Kind Of Hush.

# No milk today It seems a common sight... #

And then of course the Hollies' Bus Stop,

which was their first American top ten record and is in

the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.

When we first met Graham Gouldman, he looked like he was 12,

but he must have been, like, 15 or something.

He sat down, he picked up a guitar and he goes...

# Bus stop, wet day She's there, I say

# "Please..." #

Now, from the opening line,

if you're smart at all you know that this is a great song.

And not only is it a great song, but it could be a single,

it could be a hit, a smash.

# All that summer We enjoyed it

# Wind and rain and shine... #

So he gets to the end of the song and we go, "Great!

"What else have you got?"

He goes, "Well, I've got this song that I wrote about a week ago.

"It goes like this.

"# Look in any window, yeah..."

# What do you see?... #

And so we wanted that song, too,

because we knew what the Hollies could do to that song.

# Look through any window, yeah

# What do you see? #

There's no doubt about it, that we

recognised in Graham Gouldman that he was really a formidable writer.

And that little kid that we met changed my life

for the better, you know,

because Bus Stop was a smash for the Hollies, Look Through Any Window

was a smash for the Hollies, and that set us

off on a trajectory that I've been on ever since, you know?

So in a very profound way, Graham Gouldman changed my life.

No doubt about it.

He's a good kid. We knew that the moment we met him.

I do remember one or two articles about Graham Gouldman

in the very early days saying,

"He's written four or five megahits for other acts but he can't

"seem to write one for his own band," which was the Mockingbirds.

And they were a good group, but for some reason the other groups

seemed to nab the really commercial songs.

But he had enormous variety in his songwriting way before he began

displaying that in 10cc.

Graham was a top-rate writer.

He may not have realised it at the time because he was so young

and he was just doing it as his job, but the fact is he has one of the

best catalogues in this country, and he should be recognised for that.

# Let me tell you about this girl I've met... #

I always wanted to manage Graham, because I thought Graham was

brilliant, and I used to go and meet him and try and encourage him.

I knew Kev and Lol, as well.

We were from a tight community, we all lived near each other.

Kev and Lol were crazy. I loved Kev and Lol! They were inseparable.

They were like students. They always had mad ideas.

Kevin and I had become such close chums doing crazy projects

together, art projects and music projects, and through Graham,

we met Eric and really liked Eric.

And that was the first time

we started a relationship with Eric Stewart.

Eric was a bit of a star in his own right,

but I think, more than anything else, he wanted to be a producer,

an engineer, and very smartly he sort of partnered with a guy in

the local music shop,

and they laboriously set up what became Strawberry Studios.

We'd found this old building in the middle of Stockport

and started to turn it into a studio.

We were doing it ourselves with hammers and nails.

It was incredible.

And we started with a very little control desk and two stereo

machines, and Strawberry Studios opened and we started getting work.

So I went from the Mindbenders to being an engineer at Strawberry.

For some reason, he got in touch with myself and Lol to come

and help him test the first version of the studio, and we just

tried some stuff, really to test the capabilities of the new equipment.

SONG: Neanderthal Man

He needed somebody that would bang drums endlessly,

for hours on end, while he fiddled and, you know,

finessed the noise to get a good drum sound.

Even Kevin was beginning to fade!

So I went in and I sat on the floor with an acoustic guitar

and I sat in front of the bass drum,

and I started strumming any old stuff

just to keep Kevin buoyant, really, so that he could keep banging.

Eric was very enthusiastic, and said, "Just a bit more!

"Just a bit more!"

And at some point, to keep me occupied,

I started singing this nursery rhyme that sort of came spontaneously.

It was simply a test, but a guy, a music publisher,

swanned by and heard what we were doing and said, "It's a smash."

People actually did say things like that in those days.

And we promptly wiped it by mistake,

erased it and had to start again from scratch!

# I'm a Neanderthal man... #

We got it slightly better, because we knew what we were doing, a bit,

and indeed that's how Neanderthal Man was made.

And it was released, and it was a hit everywhere!

# I'm a Neanderthal man

# You're a Neanderthal girl

# Let's make Neanderthal love

# In this Neanderthal world... #

The studio was getting more professional.

After Neanderthal Man was a hit, we were being booked all the time.

And Graham Gouldman had been working in America.

When he heard that we were actually working together with people,

he joined our backing-group team.

Actually, we were four disparate guys who became a house band

for the various acts that came

through the door of Strawberry Studios.

MUSIC: The Boys In Blue by Manchester City

It was more like Broadway Danny Rose than rock and roll.

Some pretty bizarre people came through that door.

We found ourselves doing music for football teams

and TV producers' girlfriends,

ventriloquists and God knows what else.

So it was a crash course in being versatile.

I remember Harvey Lisberg, Graham's manager, persuaded Neil Sedaka,

who had had his hits in the '50s and had a pretty dry run in the

'60s - he was pretty much out of favour -

he'd sold Neil on these great guys at Strawberry Studios

in Manchester that could produce wonderful material for him.

Neil was actually due to make a new record and had all this material.

I think the idea was he'd come over and do, like, two or three songs.

But it worked like magic, and we all got on very well,

and Neil did the whole album.

# That's when the music takes me... #

We did five hit singles and a couple of hit albums.

He came back again.

And it was Neil who said, "You should keep working on your own

"material, because you deserve to have some hits. You're good."

And he encouraged us.

I've no idea why we never thought of it before, but we didn't,

and it was only after we'd finished the album with

Neil Sedaka that we decided that we should become a band.

MUSIC: Waterfall by 10cc

Eric and I had written a song called Waterfall, that Apple Records,

the Beatles' record company, were interested in putting out,

so we thought, "Well, in case they do, let's get everything ready."

And because Eric and I had written the A-side,

we thought it'd be fair that Kevin and Lol should write the B-side.

So we went next door to the control room and knocked out Donna.

We came and recorded it, and everyone, when we'd finished that,

we thought, "Well, maybe this is

"even more commercial than Waterfall."

# Oh, Donna... #

Donna was a sort of pastiche of '50s doo-wop,

and Eric had the bright idea of asking

Jonathan King to come down and have a listen to it, which he

subsequently did and, again, said, "It's a smash."

People still said those kind of things.

I said, "Are you serious?"

He said, "Yeah. It's a smash. What's the name of the band?"

I said, "We haven't got a name."

So he said, "Well, this is really weird, Eric.

"Last night, I had a dream, and I saw a poster, and it said,

"'10cc, the greatest group in the world'."

I said, "OK, sounds great to me, 'the greatest group in the world'.

"I'll ask the guys."

And they said, "Yeah, OK. Is he offering us a deal?"

I said, "Yeah."

He offered us a deal, and we signed up with him.

And he released that record, Donna, a number two, from nowhere!

# You make me sit down, Donna

# Sit down, Donna

# Sit down

# You make me stand up

# Donna, I'd stand on my head for you... #

After Donna, we put out another single called Johnny, Don't Do It!

that completely bombed. It was in a similar vein to Donna.

It was another pastiche, and maybe we were,

"Enough with the pastiche, already! You did it once."

So we cleared the slate to start again,

and the next thing we wrote was Rubber Bullets.

And that just seemed to have a life of its own when we recorded it

and we finished it, and it was an even bigger hit.

Donna went to number two, and Rubber Bullets actually went to number one.

It was our first number one.

# Well, the band were playing and the booze began to flow

# But the sound came over on the police-car radio

# Down at Precinct 49

# Having a tear gas of a time

# Sergeant Baker got a call from the governor of the county jail... #

Rubber Bullets I always loved.

I think it's just a hilarious song and really smart and really clever...

and, yeah, something joyful about it.

# ..load up, load up with rubber bullets... #

It's that kind of brilliant, superb, poppy...

with this nuts idea for a song.

You know, like, it's a crazy idea lyrically.

# Roll up with rubber bullets... #

It's like, "What are you on about?" It's mad! But brilliant.

Y'know? Why would you do that in a pop song?

But they did, and they got away with it.

# There's a rumour going round Death Row

# That a fuse is gonna blow

# At the local hop at the local county jail

# Watcha gonna do about it, watcha gonna do?

# Watcha gonna do about it, watcha gonna do?... #

The actual amazing directions that we were taking, musically,

came mostly from Godley and Creme.

They would just come up with the most ridiculous idea,

but eventually you would not say, "Er, we can't do that,

"that's ridiculous," you would say, "Let's try it!"

It was a very sort of energised atmosphere in the studio,

because we had these sort of... basically, two writing teams.

And Eric and I would be in one room, Kevin

and Lol would be in another room,

and, like, whoever finished the song first would go, "We've got one."

We'd listen to it and play it to the other boys

and they'd come up with suggestions and changes.

It certainly was a chemical reaction. And we were lucky.

But I think part of the reason it worked out so well is

because we positioned ourselves so that no-one could interfere.

MUSIC: The Dean And I

We were out of the limelight, we were away from London,

we were a little studio in Stockport, of all places.

And probably no-one even knew we were there,

so we could just mess around and play and experiment.

# But in the eyes of the dean, his daughter

# Was doing what she shouldn't oughta

# But a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do

# The consequence should be... #

I remember listening to The Dean And I when Kevin and Lol

played it for us. It was just such an amazing song.

I could almost say if anything represented 10cc, it was that song.

It had everything. I mean, there are so many musical changes in it.

The chords are amazing. I've never heard anything like it since.

I hated that song.

I hated The Dean And I,

because I really wasn't very, very fond of American musicals.

I always thought they were a bit cheesy.

# What have we got? We ain't got dames... #

And all that...stuff.

And I thought, "All right, I'm going to go along and record this,"

because we were a very democratic group.

I thought, "But how can I do something different in this?"

So I put some blues guitar in it.

And it fattened it up and it put some balls into it.

It's so anti his influences, which are sort of rock and roll and blues.

This came from Doris Day and South Pacific, and Rodgers and Hammerstein

and that whole genre, so it was a world away!

And we didn't see any barriers,

we didn't see any reason why we shouldn't.

We wrote those songs because we wrote...

I don't know why we wrote songs like that.

But what we were into was harmony.

We liked singing, we liked testing our...

And we had the facility, we had the time to try and get harmonies right.

We didn't have anybody breathing down our necks.

We just sort of gravitated towards that kind of stuff, just naturally.

# And then I kissed her

# Ooh-ooh-ooh... #

We just did stuff. There was very little thought.

It was about doing as opposed to thinking.

And the first album, I think, was written and recorded in three weeks,

which sounds crazy these days,

because people labour and craft and hone and carve, smooth and polish.

We didn't, we just did it!

And it was all the better for it, because what came out was pure us.

# It's a wonderful world when you're rolling in dollars

# Rolling in dollars

# Rolling in dollars

ALL: # Now! #

The writing of the songs was very important to us all

in those days, and it became the form that

when you had a separate kind of colour in the writing,

it was worth trying a different vocal colour.

By that, I mean either a harmony or a different lead voice or any

combination that we could figure out.

We used to have a system of...

Because we'd all like to try out for the vocals,

mostly, but to save time we'd go into the studio and someone would sing

on this particular song, then we'd have a sign that just said "Next".

You would hang your head in shame and go back into the control room,

and the next person would go in and have a go at singing the song!

And that's the audition process for 10cc's lead vocals!

# Do the Wall Street shuffle

# Hear the money rustle

# Watch the greenbacks tumble

# Feel the sterling crumble... #

Eric and I tended to write more...

I think there was kind of a sort of pop influence,

whereas Kevin and Lol were more into experimenting.

But then, they needed, I think, more of our steadying influence on them.

Sometimes, the songs would benefit from our rearranging them.

They would do one brilliant part

and never, ever repeat it. It would drive me mad!

I'd say, "You've got to repeat this somewhere else.

"Here, maybe you could do it like this."

# Gotta be cool on Wall Street... #

There's something that you get a certain extent with the Beatles,

as well, different voices and different ideas coming through.

But with 10cc it was that slightly cut-and-pastey feel to the

albums and even to their songs.

It was, in many ways, quite ahead of its time.

You get that quite a lot in modern pop songs nowadays.

You're noticing, like, shifts of mood really quickly, and there

are certain modern songwriters who've taken a lot from that.

# Oh, Howard Hughes... #

It's quite obvious that there are the two main inputs,

the traditional songwriting, as represented by Graham and Eric,

and then the art-school background, as represented by Lol and Kev.

And when you bring more than one source of material to a group,

you make the group richer, and so 10cc had a wider and deeper

catalogue than they would have had they been just one or the other.

# You buy and sell, you wheel and deal

# But you're living on instinct

# You get a tip, you follow it

# And you make a big killing... #

To me, if there was one album that epitomises 10cc, it's Sheet Music.

We got a lot of very, very good reviews for that album.

And I think rightly so - he said modestly!

After Sheet Music, which was a big seller - we had hits, big hits,

worldwide we were getting bigger sales -

we were stone broke.

10cc were skint, because our contract was paying us 4%.

I called Jonathan King.

I said, "Jonathan, we've been with you three years now, we've got

"two years to run on our contract.

"4%, I'm sorry, we can't survive on it. We're skint!"

He had this kind of public-school attitude.

"You've signed the contract.

"We're going to the letter of the contract, we're not changing it."

He was just rigid. So the boys were sort of, "We've got to get away.

"We've got to get another label."

It had become a bit of a meat market, really.

Bids were coming in from every record company for 10cc,

because it was decided we were changing labels.

It was only a matter of who we went with. Every label was after us.

In our minds, it was a done deal,

because we'd met Richard Branson and he wanted us to be on Virgin.

That was very exciting,

but even more exciting was the fact that he proposed to release us

in America through Atlantic, and we were thrilled about that,

because that was the best label out for America.

And we hadn't cracked America yet.

Unfortunately, we weren't all there at the same time to sign

the contract, so Lol and I left power of attorney

with our management to sign with Richard Branson's Virgin Records.

The idea was that the boys in the band would all go on their holidays

the next morning, and Eric and I, with our wives, who are sisters,

were going off to St Lucia in the West Indies for a really

well-earned holiday, because we were absolutely knackered.

Got off the plane in St Lucia, and as I'm walking from the plane

a man comes up to me and he said, "Mr Stewart? Mr Eric Stewart?"

I said, "Yes, that's me." He said, "I've got a telephone call for you."

I picked the phone up, I said, "Hi, this is Eric."

A voice on the other end says, "This is Richard from Virgin Records.

"Your management have signed you with Philips Phonogram."

I said, "W-What?! I'm sorry, I don't know anything about this.

"Can I get back to you?"

He said, "You'd better do that," and slammed the phone down.

And the reason for that was that after the boys had left

the office, yet another phone call had come in from...Polyglot

and made another offer, added an extra, y'know,

whatever it was to the sum of money, and the managers,

with their power of attorney, had said, "Yes. We'll take that."

And I can only speak for myself,

I was absolutely horrified, embarrassed and disgusted.

And to this day, I still am.

There was a lot of money involved in this deal. A lot of money.

And, er...

it was the security and the future of the band financially that

depended on this deal.

And with hindsight of course we're all geniuses and probably

would have been right to go with Virgin now, having looked back.

At that time, you had the choice between either you're going to

secure your future or you're going to have a gamble.

And a gamble two ways - you don't

even know the record's going to sell, because the record

company Virgin had had one hit, Tubular Bells. That was it.

They were nothing! I mean, now, yeah, they're a huge corporation,

and everything's gone smoothly.

If I could see the future, y'know, I wouldn't need to manage a band,

really, would I?

MUSIC: Life Is A Minestrone

I was driving home and I thought I heard somebody on the radio say,

"Life is a minestrone."

I don't think they had said that, but it sounded like that,

and I thought, "Well, there's a philosophy."

# I'm leaning on the Tower Of Pisa

# Had an Eiffel of the tower in France... #

And if life is a minestrone, to me... I hate cold food,

I can't eat cold food.

So death is a cold lasagne, to me.

And Eric and I had our turn at writing together.

We came up with that bit of nonsense.

That was the first track, because the record company wanted to

go with something safe, with this new album,

this new act that they had.

And it seemed like a more obviously commercial song, Minestrone.

# Life is a minestrone

# Served up with Parmesan cheese

-# Death is a cold lasagne

-Baby...

# Suspended in deep freeze... #

I think by the time we got into Original Soundtrack,

we'd shown that our way of doing things could be successful.

So we were left alone to crack on with things.

And we were trying a bit harder

to push our boundaries in different ways.

There was always still this desire to go one better

with a song and do something different with it.

Hence I'm Not In Love.

The way that song developed, looking back on it,

it was astounding we ever released it,

we ever got it out, we ever got it finished.

The title was Eric's.

We'd been discussing writing a love song,

but I don't think we wanted to write a, y'know, a cliche.

And I'm Not In Love was the perfect title.

I wrote all the words, completely, and I took it into the studio,

and Graham Gouldman said, "I'll finish it with you.

"I think there's a great idea there."

So we sat down and we completed it.

Graham put some lovely chords into it.

And we went into the studio to record it as a bossa nova!

Congos and things, bongos.

# I'm not in love

# So don't forget it

# It's just a silly phase I'm going through... #

When we heard it back, everyone was, erm,

"underwhelmed" I think is the best word, and nobody had the real

enthusiasm to carry on with it, it sounded so underwhelming.

I hated it. I hated it.

I didn't like it, particularly. I didn't get it, particularly.

There was something in there.

And we all recognised there was something in there,

but that treatment didn't really bring it to life.

We weren't really sure what we could do with it.

I think I said at the time, "Well, why don't we do it with voices,

"no instruments, just all a tsunami of voices, a wash of voices?"

Probably out of desperation, really,

trying to come up with SOMETHING to make this thing come to life.

I said, "What, you mean a cappella?" You know, we sing without a backing.

He said, "No, the backing track, let's do the whole backing track

"with voices, like a massive choir, the biggest choir you can imagine."

I said, "Great! How do we do it? How do we do that?

"There's only four of us."

And Lol said, "Tape. Tape loops."

VOCAL BACKING FROM I'm Not In Love

I said, "Great. All right. Let's do it."

And we spent three weeks recording three of them in the studio,

Kevin, Lol and Graham, singing "Ahhh...",

as long as they could hold their breath.

They did that 16 times on the 16-track machine,

copied all that across to a stereo machine, and we had 13 notes to

choose from, a chromatic scale with a top C and a bottom C,

and 624 voices were there at our disposal.

I then played them back through the 16-track machine,

through the control desk, and I gave each of us a set of three faders

to go up and down when the chords were changing for I'm Not In Love

and the little "Ah-ah ah-ahh..."

BACKING VOCALS FROM RECORDING

All of us worked the desk and played it like a keyboard, and when we had

all the notes playing together, you got that lovely, abstract "ahhh...",

because it's a mass of harmonics all bleeding together.

So we kept all of the notes in to a certain degree with

a piece of masking tape, so that the faders were all at a certain level.

And that's what made that in-tune, harmonic sound

but with an extra something, and it made something really special.

Originally, I think we were going to do it with just voices,

nothing else, so we recorded a rhythm track,

which we thought was going to be temporary.

And I think the idea was that we'd sing to that

and do all the vocals, then we'd take that off and we'd be left with

this song recorded with just the choir and the vocals.

but there was something about it that was magic about it.

And of course, once we'd put the other voices on,

we didn't want to touch anything, we didn't want to take it out.

# I'm not in love

# So don't forget it

# Ah-ah ah-ahh

# It's just a silly phase I'm going through

# Ah-ah ah-ah ah-ahhh... #

I did the lead vocal again, but the guide vocal I'd done was

so good we kept it.

So it was basically finished, and then you come to the Godley

and Creme moment again - "What shall we do next?"

Just as we said that, the secretary at the studio, Cathy Redfern,

popped her head round the door.

She said, "Eric, there's a phone call for you."

And then they said, "That's it."

So I immediately turned round and ran back to the reception area.

I thought, "No way!"

And Lol came back to me, actually, and took me in and they said,

"We want you to do something for us."

All the time, I'm thinking, "No! I can't sing! I can't do this."

And I remember Kev came in with me into the studio and then said,

"You've just got to whisper,

"'Be quiet. Big boys don't cry. Big boys don't cry. Big boys don't cry.'"

FROM RECORDING: Big boys don't cry. Big boys don't cry.

In those days, we tried everything.

If someone had an idea, it got tried. It didn't always work,

but I think it was just one of those sessions where whatever you

added to it after a certain point, it just kept on getting better!

Y'know? Astonishing.

# I keep your picture... #

The thing was, when we'd recorded it, we used to turn the lights off in

the control room and just lie down on the floor and play it to ourselves.

But not one of us said, "Oh, this could be a hit."

It was only when we took it out of the studio

and played it to our friends and family

and the record company that everyone said, "This should be a single.

"It'd be a big hit."

It was just so wonderful to be involved with that track,

and it's been THE best track that I have ever had

the pleasure of being involved with, really.

It was just, y'know, you look up to the gods and say thank you

when something like that comes in front of the speakers.

# Ooh, you wait a long time for me... #

Fabulous song. I still love hearing it now.

I don't think you ever get fed up with it, actually.

It just stops you in your tracks, really.

No-one would think that you'd still be hearing it all those years later.

# I'm not in love... #

The first time I ever heard I'm Not In Love, I thought

it was absolutely brilliant.

I thought I'd never heard anything like that before.

And when I really started producing records, in 1975, it took me

until late 1979 to have a hit, and through those years,

whenever we got really excited

about something that we'd done, I always used to say,

"Come on, we've got to put on I'm Not In Love

"and just remind ourselves..."

You know, it'd cure our studio fever,

because it was such a great-sounding record.

# So if I call you

# Don't make a fuss

# Don't tell your friends about the two of us... #

I remember when I'm Not In Love came out

and everyone was just in awe,

because it was a great song,

had a great melody,

but the idea of the lyric was fabulous,

this "he complains too much" aspect of it.

And then the sound, the multilayered vocals...

..were a real treat to the ear.

It was quite ironic that it comes out close in time to Bohemian Rhapsody,

because those two are really the great multitrack hits of...

dare I say all time?

Both bands were hugely fond of overdubs, massed vocals, you know?

I mean, we were studio bands, essentially.

Queen were lucky enough to have Freddie as a front man.

We didn't really have a front man, as such.

We weren't showmen at all.

I always described us as we sounded like 400 maniacs from Hollywood

but looked like four scruffy gits from Manchester.

And maybe that's why it didn't quite work as well as it could have done!

MUSIC: Art For Art's Sake

Looking back on that era, bands like Queen and other sort of more literary

kind of bands got more recognition or are remembered more

because they were more flamboyant than 10cc.

10cc were always a, er... we were all about the music.

# Art for art's sake

# Money, for God's sake

# Art for art's sake

# Money for God's sake... #

By then we were a living, breathing, touring brand with responsibilities

and people working for us, and we were quite successful,

doing well.

And what I remember very distinctly, we had a kind of preproduction

meeting about what "How Dare You!" might be.

And I found it quite a disturbing meeting, because it wasn't like,

"Well, let's try a bit of this and let's try a bit of that,"

it was, "Well, we need one of those and we need two of those".

It was that attempt to quantify who and what we were

that I found slightly troubling.

It took the freedom away,

it took the sense that you could just go in there and try things.

The need to be fresh was ever so slightly tarnished, in a way.

MUSIC: I'm Mandy Fly Me

There had become a bit of a routine to things,

but, for me, it was the routine that I wanted, I'd always wanted.

And I think it was the same for Eric.

But for Kev and Lol, it was different.

I think it was important for them to have fun

and for things to be spontaneous, which I understood,

but "How Dare You!" signposted a big change for 10cc, I think.

I think the writing was on the wall.

Or the songwriting was on the wall.

I'd written a song called I'm Mandy Fly Me...

# If it hadn't have been for Mandy... #

..and completed it, again with Graham Gouldman.

We got our first hit from the record with that one.

But I thought there was an underlying thing going on here

that I hadn't noticed before.

# I'm Mandy

# Fly me. #

Kevin and Lol weren't that happy,

in that they weren't enjoying it as much.

And it also coincided with them

doing an album that featured their invention of the Gizmotron,

which was an attachment that went onto the guitar.

MULTILAYERED GUITAR SOUND

That entire music comes from one guitar multitracked

and fitted with a device called a Gizmo.

The Gizmo was devised by Lol Creme and Kevin Godley of 10cc.

This is the actual prototype that I had on my guitar.

It's not been used for 40 years!

But the electric motor is here.

It's now got a drive cable, a little cable that makes this rotary...

cog here spin, and every time I press one of those buttons,

or all of them,

they come down and the little rotary plectrums will strike the string.

So I put it on the guitar and I could play like that.

I'd pick and hold one down and play, or I could hold a chord down -

I had it going - and I even pluck other top lines.

And then I learned to play it.

MULTITRACKED GUITAR SOUNDS

We're hoping it'll retail at somewhere

approximately between £50 and £100, maybe £70, £75.

The thing about Kevin and Lol was, in addition to being able to write

some weird songs,

they were really into gadgets and gizmos and electronics,

and, really, they were ahead of their time.

I mean, I sort of feel if they'd started out now,

they would be very much at the forefront of all the technology

that goes with music today.

They were always pioneers not just in the songwriting

but in the way it was presented.

When Kevin and Lol designed this Gizmo, the natural thought was, "Oh!

"Where does this lead to?"

And this project, which was called Consequences,

did indeed have consequences!

MUSIC: Wind by Godley and Creme

Kev and Lol were actually recording Consequences at the time,

while the other album hadn't been completed,

so they drained themselves, as well.

If they do a lot of work on Consequences

and then they go in the studio afterwards

and listen to what Eric and Graham had to offer

and maybe they weren't very kind about it or something,

I could see there being terrific tensions in there.

We had a meeting after one of these Buddy Holly days that

Paul McCartney used to have.

We're all there with... God - you know, Clapton - Elton, Queen,

oh, everybody in the music business there.

After it, we started talking about the future of 10cc,

and I played them The Things We Do For Love.

SONG STARTS

And, er, Kevin said, "I don't like that."

He said, "In fact, it's crap."

I was like...

"What?!

"This is bland, boring.

"I don't want to do this."

On reflection, NOTHING wrong with that song at all.

But to us then,

me and Kev had spent the previous four or five months grinding out

side one of Consequences,

and the nature of the music that we were making was

so far removed from the 10cc music, and we became consumed with it.

And The Things We Do For Love just seemed like another I'm Not In Love

type of thing, which is all very well, but we didn't want to do that.

And they said that they didn't want to continue to do it any more.

They wanted to pursue their own careers, I guess,

and try and do something with the Gizmo.

Part of me had tremendous admiration for them for doing it,

and another part of me just thought they were completely mad.

I was trying desperately to keep them together. I really was.

And even with hindsight,

probably they would have been better off being kept together.

But in those days, bands had to deliver on a budget,

on a timescale, so although, like,

20 years later it would be nothing for a member of any band to say,

"Look, I'm taking a year off, I'm going to do my own album

"and I'm coming back later..."

And it's sad, because together they were a power.

I think at the end of the day,

there's a natural lifespan of a band.

It's a bit like the Spinal Tap film!

Something else is going to happen within

the band that will trip you up a bit.

And initially you can take it and say,

"All right, let's just carry on with it,"

but in the back of your mind you're thinking, "What's going on? Why?

"Why is this not working the way it did?"

If I had my time over again, I suppose, within the band,

I probably did too much talking

and not enough strangling...

..which would probably clear the air quicker!

But you have other ambitions that don't necessarily have to

be realised within that particular situation,

and we kind of wanted to take six months off and do this experiment.

But because we were forced into a corner and forced to leave

because of it, we turned it into

this gigantic Heaven's Gate-style project.

But that wouldn't have happened

if we'd have been given the room to manoeuvre.

So, in a sense, it was a shame.

I regret the upset that it caused, hugely...

because it was like a divorce, you know, it was like a big divorce.

It caused terrible ructions, you know,

socially and all the rest of it, because my wife, Ange,

and Gloria, Eric's wife, are sisters,

so it caused a terrible kind of rift in the family.

But we couldn't stop ourselves from moving on.

It was a real shame and something I'm still upset about

to this day, because I think we could have done major things.

Even though Eric and I carried on and did very well,

it was different. It was different.

MUSIC: Old Wild Men

I think the idea was that we'd go in the studio.

There was just myself, Eric and Paul Burgess on the drums, and we'd just

go in with the same attitude and just write some songs, see what happens.

Without Kev and Lol there,

I suddenly felt it was easier, a lot easier.

And I worked so hard on that album.

Obviously, I had something to prove,

mainly to myself - that I could do it.

But it had The Things We Do For Love,

and that was such a massive hit.

It sold more in the States than I'm Not In Love.

So we were pleased, very, very pleased.

# You lay your bets and then you pay the price

# The things we do for love

# The things we do for love

# Like walking in the rain and the snow when there's nowhere to go

# When you're feeling like a part of you is dying... #

I'm very proud of the album. I think that the album's great.

I think we came up with some really interesting stuff.

I can sense slightly we're trying to be Kev and Lol at some point,

but even so, I thought it was very good.

And it was quite a well-received album.

The Things We Do For Love became a massive hit in America.

And Good Morning Judge was a hit, as well.

# Well, good morning, Judge, how are you today?

# I'm in trouble, please don't put me away

# A pretty thing took a shine to me

# I couldn't stop her so I let it be... #

They did great things, Graham and Eric, and with all the tracks,

I'm quite happy to put Dreadlock Holiday up there,

which they did, which was magic.

# I say, I don't like cricket-ah

# Oh, no

# I love it-ah

# I don't like cricket-ah

# No, no

# I love it-ah... #

Dreadlock Holiday is a great story, based,

I gather, on a true incident.

And I remember the first time I heard it, I remember thinking,

"I don't like cricket," and you think, "Oh, that's rather savage,"

and then immediately, "I love it," you know!

# She said, "I got it, you want it..." #

It's got everything.

It's got a great rhythm, it's funny, it's witty,

it's got an irresistible beat but it's still sophisticated.

# And I say, don't like Jamaica

# Oh, no

# I love her

# Yeah

# Don't like Jamaica... #

There are a few things that changed everything.

Eric had an accident which put him out of commission for over

a year, and in that time I started working on other projects.

The punk era had kind of happened, the landscape had changed,

and when we came back, it wasn't the same.

MUSIC: People In Love

Things were not really going very well between me and Gouldman.

We were really not writing stuff that was good enough for 10cc.

I mean, there were divorces going on...

I was very sorry the songs that were coming into the studio were

so depressing, and it was like, "I can't get into these songs,

"and they're boring."

We tried a few things to try and inject that magic

back into what we were doing, because we knew there was something wrong.

But eventually, Eric and I called it a day in the very early '80s.

MUSIC: An Englishman In New York by Godley and Creme

Once we'd become Godley and Creme, regardless of how

successful or unsuccessful

we were as a music act - and we did quite well eventually -

we found our way to a new career, I guess.

We weren't looking for one, but it kind of came to us!

# Happy to see you, have a nice day... #

We did this track called An Englishman In New York,

and the BBC, on Top Of The Pops, used to show

"promo clips", they were called.

When a band in America, the record company, wouldn't pay

for them to travel and play Europe,

they would pay for a cheap little film which they would send.

It's much cheaper than getting board

and lodgings and flights for a group.

And Kev came up, I think, with the notion,

"It'd be great if we could do our own promo film."

And that's what we did. But it was when we got in the edit suite

that it all really came to life for us, because it was like being

in a recording studio but for your eyes.

That was when we looked at each other and thought,

"Hello, hello, we could have some fun here!"

# Strange apparatus... #

The person that saw it that liked it was Steve Strange from Visage,

and he asked the record company, "Do you think Kev and Lol would do

"one of those promo films for my song?"

We said, "We'd be delighted," and we did.

And they gave us a budget of something like £2,000.

But it got us started.

And at that point, record companies were sceptical about the value of

these videos, and they were saying, "We're not sure that we want

"to spend any money on a new video for the next song."

It was £2,000.

And I said, "Well, I have to tell you that on Tuesday,

"Visage was at number 52 in the German charts,

"and after they showed the video it's now number two."

# We fade to grey... #

And we got £12,000, I think, to do the next video!

It was proven to be a good commercial.

MUSIC: Girls On Film by Duran Duran

There were no rules about making videos.

It was a very young industry.

No-one knew, really, what a video was supposed to be.

So we thought we could make it be anything we want it to be!

It was a tremendously exciting time.

# See them walking hand in hand across the bridge at midnight... #

As far as I was concerned, the spirit of rock and roll was alive

and well in this new form of entertainment, videos.

It seemed to have gone from the music game,

because there was no sense of experimenting any more in music.

It all seemed formulaic to me, but in the video department,

nobody knew what they were doing at all,

least of all the record companies, so they left it to us.

# Girls on film

# Girls on film... #

We didn't know much, but we were learning by doing it

and having fun, so that's why I say the spirit of rock and roll

was alive and well, truly,

and rebirthed in the medium of video.

MUSIC: Every Breath You Take by the Police

We made videos together, but we were really good friends.

Whenever they were in a city where I'd be, that's who we'd hang out

with, because they were, as chuckle buddies, nobody better,

for sitting round of an evening just laughing and laughing

and bullshitting and doing outrageous stuff.

Or if they were recording, making a film somewhere,

in the editing booth, that's the place to go hang.

# Every bond you break, every step you take

# I'll be watching you... #

I think their knowledge and understanding,

deep understanding, of music was what made the images dance with the music

so effectively.

# Oh, you'll be wrapped around my finger

# You'll be wrapped around my finger... #

I'll just go out on a limb and say that Kevin and Lol created

the modern video as we know it today, where they would do cool things.

Instead of just the band

and that's what you get flouncing around somewhere,

they would think of some cool idea.

That first thing, where the video as a concept, the video as a work of

art, the video has its own artistic power in combination with

the music, I totally have to give that up for Kevin and Lol.

# When two tribes go to war

# One is all that you can score... #

I suppose our way of going about it was to be driven by the music,

which is the logical thing to do,

and make it as different as you possibly can to anything else

that's around and keep pushing and keep trying

and see what you can make unique.

MUSIC: Cry by Godley and Creme

# You don't know how to ease my pain

# You don't know

# You don't know how to ease my pain... #

For Cry, they were right out there in front of Michael Jackson,

where the face morphs from one face into another face. Really genius.

And they did it the hard way, frame by frame.

And by the time Michael Jackson came on and did the same thing,

you could all do it on a computer, easy-peasy.

# You don't know... #

We got a few casting books and picked a bunch of faces.

They sat on a chair with their head resting against a very small

frying pan attached to the back of the chair, which held their

head in place, and we shot each one of them doing the entire song.

We asked everyone to learn it.

And then we hit the edit suite, and that's where...

the magic happened!

# You make me wanna cry... #

The fact that Godley and Creme turned out to have great control

and mastery of visuals as well as audio and all these gadgets

and things they came out with, it is quite extraordinary.

And as a band, 10cc branched out into lots of different areas.

They have influence beyond the obvious influence of fantastic

songs and hit records.

MUSIC: The Film Of My Love by 10cc

If you look through their whole careers,

not just while they were part of the group,

I mean, you realise that they really are working in several

different fields related to music

and they were working in music in different ways.

But that's because that's what they loved.

# The film of my love will travel the world... #

The way I think of it was that I was the luckiest

guy in the world, to have met up

with Kev and do all those years of writing

and art nonsense before I even

met up with Eric and Graham and had 10cc.

And then together we had all that together and we did all that,

and I loved every minute of it.

And I was given the opportunity to be as nuts as I wanted,

and these other people helped make it into things which sold.

And we never went into it for fame or money,

we went into it to enjoy ourselves, and not only did

we enjoy ourselves but we made a really marvellous living in the end.

10cc, for me,

was an affirmation that what I was thinking and the ideas

I was coming up with could in fact be liked by other people outside

the confines of my head!

I wasn't mad!

I wasn't insane. And I have huge, fond memories of those four years,

a major, major step up, creatively, for me...

and I'm sure for everybody involved, in their own way.

I think the influence of 10cc is still being felt with certain bands.

I know that because they say so.

I'm very proud of what we did. I'm sorry that we didn't carry on,

the four of us.

But, having said all that,

we had a fantastic run,

and it was one of the greatest musical periods of my life.

# The film of my love... #

It wouldn't have happened if either one of us had not been there.

It needed that collaboration

and...confliction between each other to make it work

and that we believed in each other and allowed it to happen

and experimented just to see if it would work.

Just to see if it would work.

You know, "What would it be like if...?"

HE CHUCKLES

MUSIC: Old Wild Men

# Old men of rock and roll

# Keep bearing music

# Where are they now?

# They are over the hill and far away

# But they still gonna play guitar

# On dead strings

# And old drums

# They'll play and play to pass the time

# The old wild men

# Old wild men

# Old wild men... #

MUSIC: Don't Hang Up