April 11, 1997 GOLDMINE #436
10cc :
A Pure Injection Of Pop
Original
Article By Dave Thompson
Chapter Five
: Strawberry puts the ‘hit’ in ‘shit’!!!
Gouldman,
of course, landed on his feet, taking up an offer to fly to
The first
Kasenatz-Katz sessions took place in
“Dick
Leahy, from Philips, came in and he said ‘What the hell’s that you’re
playing?’” Stewart recalls. “I said, ‘It’s a studio experiment, a percussive
experiment.’ He says ‘It sounds like a hit record to me…’ and ‘Can we release
it?’ And we said ‘Yeah okay. What should we call it?’ And we had no name for
the group, of course. But we had a girl at the studio… Kathy Gill, I think her
name was, yeah… we had very, very nice legs and she used to wear these
incredible hot pants. Green, leather hot pants. So we called the group, ah,
Hotlegs.”
Restructured
and released in the summer of 1970 by Philips, Neanderthal Man reached
#22 in the
Undeterred,
the trio (augmented by Gouldman) undertook a short British tour supporting the
Moody Blues towards the end of 1970, but little more was heard from Hotlegs for
another year, until September, 1971, when they released a new single, Lady
Sadie. Simultaneously, Philips repackaged Thinks: School Stinks,
omitting both Neanderthal Man and, more surprisingly, Lady Sadie,
in favour of The Loser (the flip of Lady Sadie), and Today,
a reworking of another Marmalade era song.
Again, it
made no impact, and a further repackaging in 1974 met a similar fate. You
Didn’t Like It Because You Didn’t Think Of It brought together all the
previously available Hotlegs material including, for the first time on album,
the title track; the original B-side of Neanderthal Man, You Didn’t
Like it had since metamorphosed into Fresh Air For My Mama, the
closing track on 10cc’s debut album. Hotlegs did, however, return to the chart
that year, albeit as mere session musicians. Kennedy Street’s Harvey Lisberg
had recently discovered a new talent named John Paul Jones; not the pop
arranger turned Led Zeppelin bassist, explains Gouldman, “but a comedian who
had the most wonderful rich voice.” Aware, though he was, that Zeppelin’s Jones
already had some claim on the name, Lisberg went ahead with launching his new
client’s career. “I still don’t know why he used it,” Gouldman marvels. “It was
such a bizarre thing to do! But
All four
of the Strawberry team played on Jones’ Man From Nazareth single, which
was well on its way to being a Christmas 1970 hit when the other John Paul
succeeded in getting a court injunction, forcing the artist to respell his
surname Joans. The single had already reached #41 on the British chart; in the
ensuing chaos, while RAK Records reprinted the label, Man From Nazareth
dropped from the charts, reappearing in the New Year, when it rose to #25. (In
the
The
Strawberry team were also involved in numerous sessions. The group played on
Solomon King’s version of Lynsey DePaul’s When You Gotta Go, Dave Berry,
Wayne Fontana and Mike Timoney, a virtuoso on the cordovox, all recorded with
them; Peter Cowap teamed up again with Gouldman to cut a trio of singles for
Pye, and a fourth, under the pseudonym Grumble, for RCA. The Herman-less
Hermits cut around fifty tracks over the course of a year, although only two of
them ever saw the light of day; while the Hermit-less Herman, Peter Noone, also
recorded a single with Graham, one of several sessions Mickey Most’s RAK label
sent Strawberry’s way.
“We were
doing sessions and it was terrible,” said Godley. “We did a lot of tracks in a
very short time, it was really like a machine. Twenty tracks in about two
weeks, a lot of crap really; real shit. We used to do the voices, everything;
it saved them money. We even did the female backing vocals!”
Gouldman
is more forgiving. “At that period of time, Strawberry Studios was doing
everything and anything, and it also was providing work for myself, Eric, Kev
and Lol as session musicians, we were the house band.” Comedians, night-club
acts, you name it, Strawberry would record it, but the real money spinner came
from sport.”
In British
chart terms, it was the age of the football (soccer) record; teams of sportsmen
trooping into a studio to lend their often dubious vocal talents to their
team’s song. Strawberry Studios would be responsible for many of these, including
several big hits; Leeds United’s imaginatively title Leeds United even
breached the British Top 10, while both of Manchester’s professional teams,
United (Willie Morgan On The Wing) and City (The Boys In Blue)
enjoyed Strawberry’s services, with the former, an ode to one of the side’s
most gifted players, even earning a cover version by the Ted Taylor Orchestra!
“We did
the football things,” Gouldman recalls. “We’d be asked and ‘You know, it’s a
football record, let’s try and make a good football record, and it’s business
for the studio. Who are we to get picky?’ That was our attitude, and at the
same time we were doing an album with Neil Sedaka, or an album with Ramases,
and I think it showed we could turn our hands to anything, or in other words,
there were no depths to which we would not sink.” Of all these projects,
Ramases’ Space Hymns remains a genuine favourite. Ramases himself
believed he was the reincarnation of the Egyptian Pharaoh of the same name, and
Gouldman enthuses, “It was great. It was a really fine album to make. We would
sit down on the floor with acoustic guitars, that kind of vibe, very hippy and
mystical.”
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… |