"I want to be a boss
I want to be a big boss
I want to boss the world around
I want to be the biggest boss
That ever bossed the world around"
10cc was made up of two very strong songwriting teams, Eric Stewart & Graham Gouldman along with Kevin Godley & (Laurence) Lol Creme. All four members of the group had solid backgrounds in music, all having been involved in other groups of varying levels of success and/or writing material that everyone knows. Graham Gouldman particularly had a string of songwriting hits with stuff like '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', and 'Listen People' for Herman's Hermits. Eric Stewart was in Wayne Fontana & The Mindbenders and when Fontana left and they were just The Mindbenders he was with them on 'Groovy Kind of Love'.
Kevin, Lol and Eric first made their mark when, as Hotlegs, they got to #2 in the UK and #22 in the US with 'Neanderthal Man'. Follow-up songs made no impression, but when Graham Gouldman joined and they changed the band's name to 10cc things got a whole lot better.
The meaning behind the band's new name is relatively well know. Or is it??! The myth is that the average male ejaculate is 9cc, and that these being big healthy Manchester lads, they were 1cc better. Unfortunately, Jonathan King (yes, 'Everyone's Gone to the Moon' and many other things - THAT Jonathan King) was the one who signed them up and gave them the name. He said it came to him in a dream when he saw a hoarding that said "10cc The Best Group in the World".
Gouldman and Stewart were good on writing pop songs, Godley and Creme did the 'push the envelope' stuff. Maybe a good stark example is shown on the first two tracks of their 'Original Soundtrack' album. The second song is the Stewart/Gouldman chart topper 'I'm Not in Love', a typical pop ballad love song distinctive for it's backing of multi-layered vocals. In contrast, the first track is the Godley/Creme 9 minute 3-part mini-operetta 'Une Nuit a Paris'. That song is thought to have been an influence on "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen and the song's melody can be heard in the overture to Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1986 musical 'Phantom of the Opera'.
The first 10cc album I bought was 'How Dare You!' in 1976 and I loved every track. Riding on the back of the two singles from the album, 'Art For Art's Sake' and 'I'm Mandy, Fly Me', there was the driving weirdness of the Godley/Creme influenced 'I Wanna Rule the World' mirrored by another Godley/Creme composition, the theatrical pathos of 'Don't Hang Up'. The other tracks were far from fillers, each had it's own reason to be there.
Then the following year I bought their next album, 'Deceptive Bends'. Three singles were taken from this album, but the only one that resonated with me was 'The Things We Do For Love'. Something was different, something had changed. That 'something' was Godley and Creme. Between the above 2 albums, Godley and Creme left the band to go their own way.
The first song of theirs I came across was the 1979 single 'An Englishman in New York', not to be confused with Sting's 1987 song of the same name. It's a weird pastiche of images based on their first visit to the Big Apple. 1981's 'Wedding Bells' is an almost Motowny rollalong song - she wants to get married, he wants "to have some fun" and has the desperate verse ..
"Oh I'd do it but the pleasure isn't worth the pain
We'd run out of track before we got on the train
Can't you hear the sound of heartstrings snappin' under the strain
Of those wedding bells".
'Cry' is a great song made even better by the amazing (for it's time) video that accompanied it. A whole series of morphing faces, full screen, lip-synching the song, although they used more of a soft-wipe technique than a true morph. My last post mentioned Trevor Horn doing work with Frankie Goes to Hollywood. He was also instrumental in getting this song off the ground. Godley and Creme had bits of it but were stuck. He heard it and together they came up with the finished product.
After achieving critical acclaim for the video, and having interest in that area, Godley and Creme went on to direct over 50 more music videos in the 80's alone. The Police, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Duran Duran, Sting, Lou Reed, Peter Gabriel & Kate Bush, the list goes on.
10cc didn't fade away after Kevin and Lol left, getting another UK #1 in 1978 with the reggae based 'Dreadlock Holiday' although after that I pretty much lost interest.
This compilation album has the best of both worlds, 16 tracks dividing itself into 10 by 10cc and 6 by G&C. There's a couple more deep 10cc songs I'd like to see on here .. 'Don't Hang Up' for one, but the G&C tracks give a broad stroke of their popular work, along with the lesser known goodies like 'Save a Mountain For Me' and 'Snack Attack' and the cinematic 'Under Your Thumb'.
All in all, a good mix for the casual listener and enough meat to satisfy those among us who want a bit more than mainstream.
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