Channel Swimmer had just played…
	Alan		…that’s a bit of a “blast from the past” and it’s a song I played because it was co-written by the two gentlemen I’m going to be speaking with in just a second. These two guys together form quite the wide swath of British music – they were in one of the biggest groups of the 70’s that is still revered by fans today – the Mockingbirds, the Sabres, Wax, solo, Godley & Crème, and oh, this group called 10cc from which that track was done by. It is my incredibly great pleasure to welcome to Purepop and the world-wide listening audience and our local Fairfax, Virginia audience… Godley & Cre… and Gouldman. How are you?
	Kevin		Hi there
	Graham		Hello there
	Kevin		I don’t remember writing that
	Alan		You don’t?
	Graham		No, I think that was a song that I wrote with Eric.
	Alan		No, you know, you guys are credited on it
	Kevin		Oh really?
	Graham		Really?
	Alan		Yeah
	Graham		Well as long as I get the royalties.
	Alan		The reason why we have you on the show here and you know, God, I could go about 7 hours with questions for both of you, but let’s focus in on this new material here. After so long and you only wrote 3 songs together in 10cc, that being one of them according to the credits, and Sacro-Iliac is one, right? And Iceberg…
	Graham		Quite correct
	Alan		…would be the other and now you’ve got 4 brand new songs that the two of you have written and recorded and they’re up on your site www.gg06.co.uk and they’re wonderful. It’s really great to have you guys back. What brought you back together to do these new songs?
	Kevin		I think if you are, if you have any musical sensibilities at all and like me, you take a 30 year break, you, something inside you that wants to come back, you’re always singing in the car, singing in the shower, singing in the bath and I wanted to do it again and I felt I didn’t want to spend too much time getting to know anybody new so I called Mr.G and we resolved to try.
	Alan		Now was it like in the old days writing together? I mean you guys wrote together with, in different combinations, sometimes 3 of you, sometimes 4 of you, you mixed it up a little bit here and there…
	Graham		Yeah we did. We had written other songs together such as, I mean, Rubber Bullets was a good example of a song that Kev and Lol had started off and they needed an extra part so I joined them on that. But we wrote songs like Sand In My Face which was on the very first album. So like Kevin was saying, we knew that it would work. And we’d stayed in touch with each other over the years. So there was no sort of “getting to know you” period. We just pretty much went straight in there.
	Alan		Yeah, and, but the approach seems a little different, I think did I not see it on your website where you said the songs are not as eclectic maybe, and a little more straightforward, especially in the lyrics, the depth is incredible. Every time you listen to some of these songs you get more out of it. So was there a different approach in that way?
	Kevin		I don’t think there was a conscious, not consciously, it’s just like two people starting again and we just let what, we didn’t have any remit, we just sort of sat down and tried to write and at the beginning we didn’t even know we were gonna be writing for ourselves. We kind of figured “let’s just try the writing process, see if anything works at all.” We maybe write for TV or for other people, or, what the hell, again like we say on the website, it was something that clicked back into place as if we hadn’t stopped and the years just melted away. And it was, again as it says on the website “unfinished business”. And we just ploughed ahead and we recorded them and after the first one we thought “hmmmm we like the way this sounds, could anybody else cover this?” Maybe! We did another one and we thought “Could anyone here, could anybody else cover this?” and we thought “Not easily”. We did another one and we thought “Can anybody else cover this?” and we thought “No!”
	Graham		A resounding NO!
	Kevin		Well, I mean we kind of slipped back into our own characters, I think.
	Alan		Yeah, I don’t know, The Same Road maybe could be covered but I think if you go in the order of the way the songs appear on the website, it gets progressively harder. Hooligan Crane, I think would be pretty impossible to cover.
	Graham		Yeah, we’re in a different place now. And also we never set out to go “Well, we’re half of 10cc now we’d better write something that is kind of 10cc-like”. You know I think it would be have been ridiculous for us, to expect us to start to write another Iceberg or something like that. That’s not to say that that might not happen in the future though I mean I know we’ve got a lot of songs in us, and we might write something that’s more you know, what’s the word, less serious. Yeah, you know, we might write something really poppy at some point. We just don’t know when we go in, because as Kevin said, there’s no remit, we’ll go in and just write what we feel like that day, either a lyric or an idea that he has or some sort of chord thing. We don’t really know. So there’s no agenda, we just sit down together. And because of that, you know, sometimes things work out and other times they don’t. But because we love the process so much and it’s always really exciting to do it because you’re sat there sort of struggling to find something, like, five minutes later, you go “Bloody hell!!! This is great!” and we’re singing it over and over to one another because we think we’re great, you know.
	Alan		Well you are – you know that kind of works out good. Well let’s talk about one of the songs here I have cued up is “Johnny Hurts” and talk about the genesis of that one because I’ll tell you something, the lyrics are incredible on these four songs, they really are something else…
	Kevin		Thank you
	Graham		Like all the songs Kevin – I think I might have put a comma in and then taken a comma out…
	Kevin		…what a comma!
	Graham		…but you know when sort of, Kevin will come up with a lyric pretty much you know sometimes pretty much complete and other times just a start of a lyric idea, I try and sort of hook in melodically or find some sort of chords or something that matches what he’s got in his head and then we’ll start singing something that feels right with, obviously, that feels right with the lyric, and it might not be an obvious sort of thing either, sometimes it can be, you can have something very dark lyrically and have a very light melody that for some kind of reason works, but you know, Johnny Hurts was one of those songs you know. I had a chord sequence from a long time ago, kind of like a very common chord sequence but I kind of changed it round a little bit and I sort of, when I get a chord sequence in my head I always try and find a place for it so I’ll, anything that comes along, I’ll try and apply it, you know…
	Kevin		So you dumped it on me…
	Graham		Hey it found it’s home, and it worked I think.
	Alan		Go ahead Kevin
	Kevin		Sorry, no, all I was going to say was it’s a funny thing writing lyrics. They either come or they don’t. I’ve spent a number of years trying to write screenplays and scripts and so on and so forth, and I enjoy words and there’s a point in writing a song or indeed any lyric where you’re not writing the lyric, the lyric is writing you in a sense, you’ve got so far down the line or far enough into the idea where you kind of know where this has to go, where this has to be taken and it could be dark or funny or light or whatever but in the case of these 4 songs they do deal with loneliness and fear and suicide and rape and violence and stuff. It’s just what was in there for whatever reason and it came out on the page.
	Alan		Well, one of the things about these songs, one of the many things about these songs that I love is the imagery, sort of the understatement, where something is suggested and it might be that way, it might not be, depends on what the listener hears, or how the listener hears it, rather. And in Johnny Hurts the whole thing about turning on the light, you can leave the light on or you don’t have to turn it on. We can talk in the dark because in the dark things may be safer. They’re not as obvious or they’re not really seen, the problem can be sort of glossed over…
	Kevin		Yes, I mean I think what that particular line is trying to say, it may be said clumsily, I don’t know, you can say the truth about this guy or you can keep it hidden. You can do either one so long as you’re comfortable with the situation. But you know you can shop this guy, you can tell the world that he did this to you.
	Alan		Well, why don’t we play the song here and this is what we’ve been talking about, and if you haven’t heard these songs, you folks listening, I mean, what are you waiting for? Do you actually have something else to do with your time? I cannot believe it!
	Kevin		I couldn’t possibly imagine that they would have…
	Alan		Yeah that’s what I’m saying, for God’s sake, so you know, it’s www.gg06.co.uk. It’ll get you to, it’s a cool looking website it is, it’s a lot of fun and there’s a lot of good information on it. Bio’s – as if you really need to know what these guys, I mean come on, do we really have to talk about who wrote what, here in the canons of popular American, I mean British music, it doesn’t matter where it comes from, these guys are right at the top and here’s one of those songs. This is the new one, one of the new four songs, called Johnny Hurts.
			Johnny Hurts plays…
Alan		Ahhhh don’t you love that? You love that, guys?
Graham		Who are those guys?
Alan		I don’t know…
Kevin		Those the guys that did Channel Swimmer? Can’t be the same guys!
Alan		No, it’s not because we don’t know who wrote Channel Swimmer so we don’t really know the deal there. It’s Alan Haber on Purepop with the great Kevin Godley and Graham Gouldman, oh my, oh my! You know guys, I tell you something, I’m shaking like a leaf here, you guys are two of my heroes, you know…
Graham		We’ll try not to be frightening!
Kevin		We’re blushing!
Alan		Now you’re supposed to say that I’m your hero but you, you, no problem…
Kevin		Well you are so far but we’ll see how the hour goes.
Alan		That’s right, there’s still time to screw up… Hey I wanted to mention, Kevin, on the site here this is a quote, your words here, which is interesting, this will show how different the music world is from the way it was when 10cc was around and certainly 10 years ago, when you say “all hail the democracy of the internet, you don’t have to be young, safe and predictable to find an audience anymore. We’re definitely not the first, hopefully neither of the other two.” Could it have worked the same, I mean it wouldn’t have worked the same way but do you find this better than being on the label and going along the traditional route?
Kevin		For people like us, I really don’t think there is any choice because the record industry is inhabited by dinosaurs, the concept of major record labels is something that in my opinion doesn’t have a huge future. And record labels are amalgamating as fast as you can say them because they know this, and because of that they are cautious, because of that they release more and more records that they think are a safe bet. But in effect, what they are doing is removing any sense of excitement from the popular music market which is the engine that drives popular music so they are very, very slowly shooting themselves in the foot. This way it’s like every artist has their own record company, they don’t have to answer to anybody, they write and record – here is our stuff – buy it or shove it –it’s as simple as that. SO we’re removing the major obstacle between us and our audience.
Alan		And you get to talk to the fans directly. You have seven emails listed on the site there, that are , you know, way complementary, people are really enjoying the music.
Graham		It s wonderful to have feedback you know, even in the, as much as some people , I know, when the site was set up they had a problem – they emailed us and we got the problem fixed. You know, we’re dealing directly with the people that are buying our music which is something completely different. And we can, we have a dialogue with them, this was, you know, never heard of.
Alan		While you’re hearing from people all over the world, is there any place that you heard from somebody, from somewhere where you thought nobody ever knew who you were/
Kevin		We’ve had a number of emails from a guy called Jose Gomez and I assume he’s emailing from Mexico from the name, but I’m not sure. But I think they’ve mostly been from England, haven’t they, Mr.G?
Graham		There have been some American ones.
Kevin		There have, yes, you’re absolutely right.
Graham		It’s sort of spreading and it’s just this wonderful feeling of being part of the “global village” as well.
Alan		Well, Jose by the way, he runs the Minestrone mailing list, so he’s your guy.
Kevin		He’s that guy. He asked a very interesting question about putting better quality downloads on the site which we have in fact looked at but it’s, it doesn’t make any sense to do that at the moment because there’s like one or two people have asked us to do that, but one day, maybe.
Alan		Well in addition to these 4 songs you’ve put up here, you’ve got others that are various shapes of completion…
Graham		Yeah we’ve got quite a few that we started and just for one reason or another have not been finished. But we always, you know, we don’t even have to record them, we kind of remember them, the good ones and I hope that we will, gonna finish them.
Kevin		Well we are
Alan		Well I hope so, four is not enough
Graham		No it’s certainly not enough. I mean originally we were thinking about maybe we’d do twelve tracks and put an album out. But because of Kevin’s workload and mine, you know, we just work together whenever we could find the time. And it took us quite a long time to get these four tracks finished. But of course, like Kevin was saying before about the wonders of the internet, this is an ideal way to release them and it might be that will complete them, by the time we’ve completed another eight, we might well put them out on one CD. But we might not – we just don’t know, and that’s another thing that’s so great about it, everything’s very fluid.
Alan		Yeah and it’s exciting really not to know, I mean, basically you’re in charge, you don’t have to wait for a record company to go through a pre-promotion campaign, then a promotion campaign, release the record, wait for the reviews, I mean with the internet, it’s instantaneous. I mean just to use a really specific example close to me – I had emailed you, Kevin, with the direct link to this webcast and it was up there in what… 2 minutes?
Kevin		That’s amazing, isn’t it…
Alan		Yeah it really is.
Kevin		For people like Graham and myself a traditional record company wouldn’t seriously be an option because it’s like “Hey guys, we love your music, but how are we gonna sell you?” And that’s true enough, there isn’t really a huge marketplace for people like me and Graham, so to have our own boutique label on a website is probably the way to go. We don’t know how many people are going to tap in or if any, or millions or thousands or hundreds, but it feels like it’s the right way to approach it.
Alan		Well, I wanted to ask you a question about what you think of the music audience in general out there, the younger people – do you find that they’re interested in where music is coming from, where influences are coming from, are they just keyed into the top 20 chart? You know, are their parents teaching them the history of the bands and the songs that they liked and is the way it is good or not?
Graham		I’ve actually found with my own kids – I’ve got young kids and older kids, that they all went back to the 60’s so there eventually even my daughter who was well into sort of hip hop and house and dance and it was just amazing the stuff that was coming out of her room and now she’s playing the Beatles. And then she kind of progressed onto, because I obviously talk about music a lot, as I turned her onto Prince – now she loves that, Prince is great and I think Kevin and I both I know we both love him as well. So it’s funny isn’t it that they can go through, a lot of the kids can go through different trends but a lot of them, and a lot of them, like my daughter’s friends as well, she’s 16, are listening to a lot of 60’s stuff.
Alan		That’s good.
Kevin		I mean I haven’t got any kids but I hear stories from my friends, well they say their kids come to them and say “Hey Dad, I just heard this guy called Bob Dylan, he’s amazing, do you know who he is?” And it’s like, I know, but it’s kind of like musical archaeology. I think if anyone’s interested in music and kids really get interested in music and in inverted commas they dig deep and find stuff – I mean, we’re used to all this stuff, we grew up with it but they’re not – and they find things that are like hidden secrets.
Alan		Yeah, well, you know here in the US, terrestrial radio has degraded to the point you know where they’re playing maybe 500 songs in a play-list and pretty much every day you tune in, if you tune in around the same time you’re likely to hear “Who Are You?” whether you want to or not.
Graham		There’s no sort of individuality any more, I mean, there’s no sort of, it’s not just with DJ’s or with record companies like managers. They used to be really colourful characters. There were people who would take a chance – people who would invest in music and in artists and give them a chance and stick with them. The fact that they maybe didn’t have a top ten hit single didn’t matter, they just stuck with them and I mean we would never have had someone like say Bowie if the record company had gone “well do one album and then if it’s not successful then we’re gonna let you go” But they didn’t, they stuck with him
Kevin		Exactly
Alan		It’s very different today, it really is. I mean, I would hate to be a musician just coming up now.
Kevin		That would be tough.
Graham		That would be tough, I mean, as long as people are having fun making music I guess the priorities of why a band is signed to a label now, if you go down that route, have altered somewhat. I mean, you know you have to be like good looking, you have to be very young as well and it’s as much as how you look and also we have the technology to alter how you sound anyway, we can get someone else in to do it or we’ll use an auto-tune on your voice and you’re a good looking guy so we won’t let that be an obstacle, you know, the fact that you can’t sing properly.
Kevin		I think it’s a symptom of he modern age. I mean if you’re looking out the window and you check out 20 cars going by, they’re all by different makes but boy do they look the same!
Alan		Don’t they ever!
Kevin		But do you know what I mean, it’s like, there’s a corporate mentality out there that is all about earning a fast buck and as many bucks as possible but it doesn’t really take art into account, but that doesn’t translate down onto the street and that’s where everybody’s going wrong. The kids’ll only buy stuff if it’s interesting or if it’s cool and the people at the top don’t seem to know what that is any more.
Graham		I think not to paint too dark a picture of this, I don’t know what it’s like in the States, but in England you still do get the odd artist, someone that’s really original that comes through and that still does happen despite everything else that’s going on. They can still manage, it might just be one renegade single that gets through and you go “Wow, that’s amazing” through maybe pure word of mouth and now maybe because of the internet as well. It’s getting brought to peoples attention. I think they’re created like that.
Kevin		I think audiences are gagging for interesting stuff but they just. It’s almost as if the majors aren’t feeding them enough to educate them enough to look for it. It’s like if you only hear bands that feature guitars and that’s all you hear, you don’t know about things like pianos, you don’t know about things like zithers or flutes or saxophones and stuff so when you hear it, maybe it’s a little weird the first time but there is a definite, just to go back to the internet which is what you were talking about, that’s the future because of that fact in my humble opinion anything goes on the internet if you’re a little bit strange or a little bit “out of the box” as you say then that’s the place to be because you will find an audience, it may be a small audience but you will find one there.
Alan		And it’s going to be an audience that is “into it” as well
Kevin		Yes because they don’t have to go, they don’t have to go through anything, they don’t have to fight, you know, they don’t have to wade through the shhh, wade through the nonsense to find you. They go through a search engine, they go through a looking process and there you are. Once they’ve found you, they’ll stick to you like glue if they like you, it’s as simple as that. You’ve opened a little shop, you’ve made your mark, you put a poster up outside saying “Here we are, if you like what we do, here’s a bit more, come and check us out every now and again”
Alan		Well, if people are looking for something that’s good (and there’s a segue for you) -
Graham		I love it
Alan		…these four…
Kevin		You haven’t finished yet – I know what you’re going to say…
Alan		That’s right, it could go really bad here but it’s not going to, I tell you, you could do a lot worse and you couldn’t do any better than these four wonderful songs. Find out all about them and listen to the samples at www.gg06.co.uk
Alan		…The next one we’re going to play here, this, I just love this song to death, aside from the fact that it’s a great song and the lyrics are just incredible and it tells a really gripping story, it really draws you in like a novel. I’m talking about Beautifulloser.com. Kevin, your voice on this, this is the showcase of your career.
Kevin		Oh my God, you know what was different about this song. This may sound really strange but in our history of recording and this kind of goes way back from before 10cc, through 10cc, Godley & Crème, blah blah blah. Our approach has always been quite careful and detailed and mathematical but there has never been that “capturing lightning in a bottle” kind of feeling about our recording process so this particular song was recorded in one take. We actually sat down with Jess Bailey playing keyboards and me singing and we went from the beginning to the end and it was like the first take. End of story. And all the little overdubs, all of Graham’s beautiful guitar things were just an afterthought, just to add some flavouring. But in terms of the performance, it was done there and then, trying to capture lightning in a bottle, and there’s a little bit of lightning there. Maybe there’s more to come but I’m pleased with it as a vocal performance.
Alan		Oh I think it’s a spectacular, I mean your voice is right up front, close miked and Jess Bailey’s piano reminded me very much of some of the great Nicky Hopkins parts, from years and years ago.
Graham		We shall tell him that, he’ll be very pleased with that. He’s a fine, fine musician and he’s more than a keyboard player, he’s a real pianist. There is a difference. You know, there are a certain musicians, well both, between us we’ve worked with loads of people, and some people specialize in keyboards but like they’re great Hammond players, you know but Jeff is a great big pianist, he’s a very sensitive musician and we’ve been lucky in, with the people that we work with, we’ve worked with Jeff and Mike Stevens, that I think what’s important as with everything, you need somebody who is sympathetic and really understands what you’re trying to do, and just thinks like you think when they’re playing.
Alan		Well, let’s…
Kevin		Good point
Alan		Go ahead. Kevin, go ahead, I thought you were going to say something.
Kevin		All I said was ‘Good point’. I mean you’re only as good as the people that kind of frame it and all we had was the words and a loose kind of tune. We just went in with Jeff, it was one of those magical sessions that just happened. You know, a hand-held microphone and keyboards, a few little bits and pieces over the top. But essentially if it draws you in and entrances you and moves you then we, we’ve succeeded with what the song set out to do. I mean without wishing to go on about it, it’s a song about an unfortunate woman who was once famous and is now at the end of her tether but I think… oh we’ll go on about it later – play it first.
Alan		There you go, that’s what I was going to say. Let’s hear it, it’s Beautifulloser.com from Godley & Gouldman. I’m thrilled to have them here on Purepop
		Beautifulloser.com plays
Alan		It’s like there was a lot of sweat on this one.
Kevin		Well, kind of yes and no. It was, it was one of those songs that, or one of those lyrics rather, that once I knew where it was going, that the lyrics came reasonably easily but not in their finished form. It was a matter of moving things around once they existed, and again it was one of those situations where the lyrics were writing me rather than me writing the lyrics. I kind of knew what I wanted to say and what had to be said and I think that even though it’s a story about an unfortunate woman who was once extremely famous and critically acclaimed star who’s lost everything and finds herself doing anything for peanuts on a dreadful website, demeaning herself. I was, I think I was writing about me because at the time I was writing the thing I was feeling pretty down, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be doing, my career was going round in circles and I should be doing music, video, film and nothing was really going right so it’s an exaggerated sense of how I was feeling about myself although I don’t personally wear a dress
Alan		No, no, good news, it’s good to know
Kevin		Not that it’s any of your god damn business. But I don’t know, I think the lyrics of all the songs that we’ve written together, I kind of made an effort to make the meaning of them and the intent very, very straightforward so that it’s like “Wow I love that song, what’s it mean to you?” “I don’t know, what’s it mean to you?”. It doesn’t really matter what it means. There was an effort to make the storytelling quite linear so that there was no danger of anyone misinterpreting what the song’s about and I think that is probably the strongest example of that, this particular song.
Alan		Well, yeah, it’s just great and it’s captivating is what it is and it really is wonderful. I wanted, I wish we had more time today but and we can play it next time, but I, Hooligan Crane is a wild song and maybe closest to what people might be used to from you guys as 10cc, you think?
Kevin		Difficult to say
Graham		It’s close but you know, none of these songs, well, let’s put it this way, had these songs been written and then presented to the four of us as they used to be and then pretty much became the, sort of, property of everyone else. I mean we, that was one of the wonderful things about 10cc, was that whoever wrote the song, nobody ever said I don’t like that song and I don’t want to do it.
Kevin		Yes we did…
Graham		What did we not do?
Kevin		Well we actually did, but we’d left the group by then.
Graham		Yeah I know but that was you know, a rule.
Kevin		Yes that’s true.
Graham		We never said to the other person “that’s a lousy song, we’re not going to do it” It was kind of almost like “well if you two think it’s okay then we’ll do it” you know and because we had this attitude of well I think it could be better so I’ll come up with the suggestions, someone will change the rhythm, someone will change the chords, someone will make an arrangement change. And that’s how it worked. So what I’m saying is, it could well have been if we’d done these songs and presented them to the other two members of the band, then you know, they might have turned out very differently. But the fact is, there’s only 2 of us working on these things and I think because of that we’ve been very sympathetic to what they need. I mean we did actually, as far as Hooligan Crane is concerned, we did record another version of it that we scrapped which sounded almost like a rocky version…
Kevin		But it wasn’t us though, it didn’t feel like us.
Graham		The trouble is while you’re doing it, particularly there’s quite a lot of guitars on it which I love, but you have to look at the big picture and go and be a big boy about it and say you know this isn’t working and we’ll have to scrap it.
Alan		Well, you, everything in these songs serves the songs, I mean the songs are the stars here.
Graham		And that’s how it should be
Kevin		Exactly, that’s gratifying.
Alan		Because if you remember, I mean you know obviously you want them to remember you. I mean, the song’s got to work. There’s nothing like a good singer and twelve songs on an album that are lousy. You know, there’s plenty of albums like that unfortunately.
Kevin		Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Graham		I think this has also been a great, an opportunity because you know, I always said and I say it on the website, to me Kevin’s voice, Kevin had the best voice and it was, he needed to be heard more and now what we’ve created here is perfect for him to do that. I mean, I might sing something down the line but it depends if it’s a song that we write and we think, you know, maybe I should have a crack at that one, then we’ll do it but I’m not really bothered about that one way or the other. We do whatever’s best for the song.
Alan		Yeah
Kevin		You know what, I, just one thing I feel about singing is this is the first time I’ve felt I can sing without restraint somehow. It’s a very, it’s a very open atmosphere to record in between us two. There’s always been some kind of restraint before. If I don’t quite hit the note then we go back and re-do it and we do a composite version of the vocals but somehow this is, the way we’re working, it’s more about touching the heart of the song and getting a performance rather than perfection. And that is for a singer, or, I’m not a singer I’m a vocalist or whatever, but for someone like me it’s a liberation to be able to do that, just go in and do it, how you feel it and there’s an end to it. Maybe there’s a couple of things that need fixing but that’s the body of it, that’s how it works, that’s how I want to say it and that’s how I want it to sound and that’s how it is.
Alan		Well, these songs sound effortless in the end you know. They sound effortless, they sound like they were really worked on and you know there’s nothing, you know, not to take it away from other people who like some of the more contemporary, the things on the radio, maybe not to my taste or to your tastes but there’s nothing that compares to a real melody, a real lyric played by people who know what they’re doing. And you guys are that, you know, if anything else.
Graham		The other thing that comes out of the tracks is I mean when we are working, we love what we’re doing. You know, we really love it. This is, actually Kevin said something to me yesterday, going to the studio to do an edit on Beautifulloser for a radio programme that we’re doing next week and he said, well, I’ll paraphrase him, you know, I still get a frisson of excitement when we go into the studio, and I said I feel exactly the same thing, it’s like…
Kevin		And that’s even when we’re going to remove something…
Alan		Imagine how you’d feel…
Graham		I think you need to retain that love and excitement and for me, you know, like it’s saying like whenever I pick up a guitar, I’m still just like a 16 year old kid picking up my guitar…
Kevin		Check out the mirror!
Graham		I know, I know, but the guitar looks pretty much the same though.
Kevin		True
Alan		I mean so you know, so here you are, there’s been a lot of activity lately with re-releases in Japan – they just re-released Godley & Crème albums and…
Kevin		Really?
Alan		Yeah, you didn’t know?
Kevin		NO!
Alan		Oh well let me…
Kevin		I had no idea!
Alan		Well let me be the first to let you know that 5 Godley & Crème albums have been re-released in Japan, with bonus tracks, Kevin.
Kevin		We didn’t do 5 albums, we didn’t make 5 albums, did we?
Alan		Yes you did actually, believe it or not, you did.
Kevin		It’s very strange, I mean, we were talking about this the other day. Back in the 1970’s. when people discuss the 1970’s it’s always a little painful when they say “oh yeah the 1970’s, yeah, Bowie, Marc Bolan, T-Rex, Queen, Roxy Music, punk” and we continuously kind of get left out of that and I feel maybe now people are starting to re-appraise what we did a little more and maybe we’re gonna get a little credit.
Alan		Well you know you’d better because I’m working the room…
Graham		Hey try the veal, it’s great!
Alan		Yeah try the veal, it’s great.
Kevin		Don’t touch the veal – I’m a vegetarian.
Alan		Alright well we’ll have the vegetarian veal. I don’t know what that is but we’ll make it up. But in addition to five 10cc albums, not the ones that you were on, Kevin, also Hotlegs was re-released in Japan too. So there you go.
Kevin		Hotlegs?
Alan		Yes
Kevin		How very bizarre.
Alan		Yes isn’t that weird, how about that?
Graham		There does seem to be a feeling that people are sort of you know, re-appraising us and there is a few strange things happened. There’s a band called The Feeling who are very big in the UK and they cite 10cc as one of their major influences.
Alan		Well I got an email from a guy who runs a mail-order pop label and he said that he was so excited because he says for him 10cc is bigger than the Beatles, for him.
K