April 11, 1997 GOLDMINE #436
10cc :
A Pure Injection Of Pop
By Dave
Thompson
Chapter Three
: Graham Gouldman in Songwriting Technique Exposé!!!
Reservations
aside, Gouldman’s career as an internationally successful songwriter was off
and running, and the Mockingbirds could only look on in dismay. There was
nothing whatsoever wrong with their records. Both their second, and final,
“I remember
meeting him once, I don’t think he ever came to the studio. But he was a
mythical being… Andrew Oldham, a God! I can’t remember any conversation we had,
maybe because we didn’t have one, and that was it. But the Immediate label was
great.” So was You Stole My Love, but it wasn’t a hit, a fate which also
befell the Mockingbirds’ final brace of singles. By mid-1966, the group was no
more.
“I was
writing songs for everybody and anybody,” Gouldman admits, “but everything the
Mockingbirds recorded was a failure, and everything I gave away was a hit.
Gradually I realized that the Mockingbirds weren’t going to make it, that there
was some vital chemistry lacking.” Still, the Mockingbirds’ lack of success
remains unbelievable. They were the regular warm-up band for the BBC’s weekly
pop fest, Top Of The Pops (then being recorded in
“Graham
wrote No Milk Today, Listen People, East West, Ooh
She’s Done It Again, he was just a phenomenal songsmith,” Peter Noone
recalls. “I mean, everything he played to me, I loved. And it’s the
construction. We turned down Carole King songs and Neil Diamond songs, but we
never, ever turned down a Graham Gouldman song, and I, still to this day, say
“Why didn’t I get him in Herman’s Hermits?” The Shadows covered his Naughty
Nippon Nights on their classic From Hank, Bruce, Brian and John
album, while Getting’ Nowhere was tackled by Friday Browne, Tony Basil
and P.J. Proby (on his Enigma LP), the last two re-titling the song I’m
28. He had turned his hand to production, handling a single for Little
Frankie, while the quality of his work was such that another of his songs, The
Cost Of Living, was released in its original demo form by the Downliners
Sect. And of course, he wrote Bus Stop, quite possibly the greatest pop
song ever, and one which he introduced to Graham Nash in the decidedly
unfabulous surroundings of the men’s room at Stoke Town Hall, where the Hollies
were about to go on stage. If Wayne Fontana was feeling confident as he
recorded Pamela Pamela, he had every right to. Or did he?
Gouldman
himself has described Pamela Pamela as one of his very favourite
self-compositions. That isn’t how Eric Stewart remembers it, however.
“Pamela
Pamela… was actually written by Godley and Crčme”, Stewart says. Parts of
an entire musical which the duo were then working on, it remains the only song
from this piece to have seen the light of day after they sold it to Kennedy
Street Enterprises, the management agency which now handled Gouldman as well as
the Mindbenders and Wayne Fontana. They received “about 20 pounds, I think”
Stewart continues, adding that all Gouldman did was “take it and change it
around a little bit.” No matter. Pamela Pamela only just missed out on a
Top 10 placing, and Wayne Fontana was promptly given the green light to record
his first solo album, the optimistically title Wayne One. Unfortunately,
it bombed, a fate it shared with the singles that followed. All around, the
tides of pop fortune were turning: the era of psychedelia was approaching from
one direction, the age of the big voiced romantic, Tom Jones and Engelbert
Humperdinck, from the other. Wayne Fontana never stood a chance.
Neither
did the Mindbenders.
Although
Eric Stewart had developed into a very strong songwriter in his own right,
contributing one song (My New Day And Age) to the newly emergent prog
rock favourites Family, and coming up with another,
Fighting
hard to keep abreast of the changing currents, the Mindbenders next embarked on
their most audacious, yet strangely prescient, move yet, a full-blown concept
album. No matter that, several months before Sgt Pepper and even longer
before SF Sorrow and Tommy, nobody had even heard of concept albums, the
Mindbenders’ With Woman In Mind remains a gem in that genre. And yet,
despite the presence of both I Want Her, She Wants Me and Ashes To
Ashes, plus a startling new Graham Gouldman song, the lascivious Schoolgirl,
it is an undiscovered gem as well. Unreleased in
Faltering
ratings and drooping self-confidence, of course was not necessarily an
insurmountable hurdle. Screen-Gems’ music publishing house, for whom the
Mindbenders had now made an awful lot of money, were preparing the soundtrack
to the Sidney Poitier movie To Sir With Love, and had no hesitation at
inviting “number one hitmakers the Mindbenders” to contribute. The band appear
in the school gymnasium, performing It’s Getting Harder all The Time and
Off And Running, both sides of their next single.
Unfortunately,
not even major celluloid exposure could break the Mindbenders’ run of bad luck. Neither could an infusion of new
blood, after drummer Ric Rothwell quit, to be replaced by Paul Hancox. By the
end of the year, the band was reduced to recording covers of current American
hits, which could be rush released in Britain in the hope of beating out the
original. Art had been reduced to a crap shoot, and even as the first of the
Mindbenders’ efforts, a version of the Boxtops’ The Letter ground its
way to #42 in September, 1967 (the competition, by the way, reached #5), it was
clear that the end was in sight. The Mindbenders made one final stab at
reversing their fortunes, re-recording Schoolgirl from With Woman In
Mind, and pulling out every psychedelic rock trick in the book. A BBC ban
(that lasciviousness again), however, kept the single a good arm’s length from
either the radio or the charts. Still Gouldman shrugs off the song’s failure.
“Well, it got banned, that was good. In a way it was quite modern, it was the
warning. You could call it a contraception song if you want.”
A reading
of Robert Knight’s Blessed Are The Lonely followed Schoolgirl
into the dumper, in March, 1968, at which point Bob Lang finally quit (he would
reappear as a member of soft rockers Racing Cars in the mid-1970s). The bassist
was replaced by Graham Gouldman, taking what would prove o be a permanent break
from his previous guitar playing duties. “I was playing bass and guitar at the
same time; I was making demos at home, and I originally took up bass because I
wanted to put bass on the track and it was easy enough to play. Then I got
really interested in it and I used to do a lot of work with John Paul Jones”.
|
Eric
Stewart In Air Gun Revelation!!! |
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Graham
Gouldman In Wrong Studio Revelation!!! |
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Graham
Gouldman In Songwriting Technique Exposé!!! |
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The
Runcible Spoon… What Exactly Is It? |
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Strawberry
Puts The ‘Hit’ In ‘Shit’!!! |
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So
That’s How They Got The Name… |
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A
Million Dollars Buys A |
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Strawberry
Studios South… Now You’re Dorking!!! |
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I Said
‘You’ve Got To Be Joking Man, It Was A Present From Me Mum’!!!! |
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Headline
Writer In ‘Stuck For Words’ Shock!!! |
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Sometimes
Having Wax In Your Ears Can Be A Good Thing |
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And They
Still Don’t Give A… |