April 11, 1997 GOLDMINE #436
10cc :
A Pure Injection Of Pop
Original
Article By Dave Thompson
Chapter
One : Eric Stewart in Air Gun Revelation!!!
10cc’s
last album, 1996’s Mirror Mirror, might not have been a massive hit, but
there is no doubt that it certainly re-established the band’s credentials
amongst the most collectible British bands of the last 30 years. At least two
internet sites currently offer reasonably complete 10cc discographies; at least
one all-encompassing band biography is in the works; but most telling of all,
dealers all over the country report an upsurge of interest in the work of bands
who might otherwise have remained mere footnote archives forever: The
Whirlwinds, the Mockingbirds, Frabjoy and The Runcible Spoon. All three boasted
one or more future members of 10cc in their ranks.
Wayne
Fontana and the Mindbenders, which featured another (guitarist Eric Stewart,
born in Manchester, January 20, 1945), enjoyed two hits packages in recent times,
while barely a month passes without someone reviving another old song by Graham
Gouldman (born Manchester, May 10, 1946): he might have made his name as 10cc’s
bassist, but his fame rests on the string of indelible hit singles he penned
through the 1960s, a role call which only began with the Yardbirds, the
Hollies, Herman’s Hermits.
10cc’s own
back catalog has been revived on CD, with reissues and compilation albums now
outnumbering the band’s actual releases, while the intervening years have seen I’m
Not In Love, their 1975 worldwide hit, not only return to the UK chart in
its own right, but also win covers from artists as disparate as Red Red Meat
and the Pretenders. The original, meanwhile, has just become available on a
bonus stacked remastered issue of the album from which it came, The Original
Soundtrack.
Add to
this the video work of drummer
The four
albums which the original quartet recorded between 1972 and 1976 bristled with
an inventiveness and talent that the passage of time has done little to
diminish. 10cc was a trademark of the very highest quality; and although the
two basic units which emerged from their 1976 break up never did equal their
former achievements, both the “new” 10cc, and Godley and Crème still went on to
record some magnificent music.
10cc’s
roots lie in the northern English town of
“Morrissey’s
East West to me, is the definitive version,” he says. “It was always a
very Mancunian song; it was about being away from Manchester, not being away
from London or Amsterdam or Rome, it’s about being away from Manchester, and
somehow there’s something about his voice which is not overtly Mancunian, but I
heard that and I was really knocked out by it.”
Gouldman
originally wrote the song for another local band, Herman’s Hermits, and it was
they, through the 1960s, who swept all before them from a Mancunian base; the
Hermits, the Hollies and Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders. (And Billy J.
Kramer. And Monkee Davy Jones.) Of the three, it is the Mindbenders who history
has worked the hardest to reappraise; not because their output was in ay way
inferior to that of their contemporaries, nor because they were markedly less
successful. It is because, when you think of the Mindbenders, you think of just
one song… “when I’m feeling blue, all I have to do, is take a look at you…”
Carole
Bayer [Sager], the American songstress who penned those immortal lines (with
co-writer Toni Wine), later looked back and admitted, A Groovy Kind Of Love
features some of the most cringe-making rhymes in popular music history. But
it’s the biggest song she ever wrote, providing talents as disparate as Phil
Collins and former Mud vocalist Les Gray with sizable hits, and though the
Mindbenders’ version was not the original rendering, it remains the definitive.
“Anytime you want to, you can turn me onto, anything you want to…”
A Groovy
Kind Of Love, of
course, was far off in the future when Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders first
emerged out of apprentice telephone engineer Glyn Geoffrey Ellis’ daydreams of
becoming a successful pop performer. Rechristening himself Wayne Fontana, after
Elvis Presley’s drummer, D.J. Fontana,
“I had a
wonderful air rifle, which all young boys of about 14 seemed to be into, and
while firing it, I actually put a slug through a neighbour’s window,” Stewart
recalls. “He threatened to take my head off, so I went to a secondhand shop on
“
Renaming
the band after Dirk Bogarde’s then-recently released hit movie The
Mindbenders (Fontana, of course, was allowed to keep his name!), the
quartet’s first release, in June, 1963, was a cover of one of the
afore-mentioned stage favourites, Fats Domino’s My Girl Josephine, re-titled
Hello Josephine. It was not a major hit, peaking at #46, but according
to Stewart, “in
The song
had been brought to the band’s attention by the Rolling Stones’ manager, Andrew
Loog Oldham: The Mindbenders and the Stones frequently crossed paths as they
toured the country, and a certain friendship had developed between the two
groups. With
As was
standard at this time, single success swiftly wrought the opportunity for the
Mindbenders to spread their wings further; with their second EP, titled after
the hit (and featuring a spellbinding version of Chuck Berry’s “Too Much Monkey
Business”), then a full-fledged album, Wayne Fontana and The Mindbenders.
As was also standard at this time, it was recorded in one day, crammed into a
schedule which included their first major British tour, supporting Brenda Lee.
Eric
Stewart In Air Gun Revelation!!! |
|
Graham
Gouldman In Wrong Studio Revelation!!! |
|
Graham
Gouldman In Songwriting Technique Exposé!!! |
|
The
Runcible Spoon… What Exactly Is It? |
|
Strawberry
Puts The ‘Hit’ In ‘Shit’!!! |
|
So
That’s How They Got The Name… |
|
A
Million Dollars Buys A |
|
Strawberry
Studios South… Now You’re Dorking!!! |
|
I Said ‘You’ve
Got To Be Joking Man, It Was A Present From Me Mum’!!!! |
|
Headline
Writer In ‘Stuck For Words’ Shock!!! |
|
Sometimes
Having Wax In Your Ears Can Be A Good Thing |
|
And They
Still Don’t Give A… |