April 11, 1997 GOLDMINE #436
10cc :
A Pure Injection Of Pop
Original
Article By Dave Thompson
Chapter Nine
: I said ‘You’ve got to be joking man, it was a present from me mum’!!!!
Neither
was much critical attention lavished on a pair of albums featuring Eric
Stewart, released during this tumultuous year. The first was by Sad Café, the
“We used
to go on holiday to the Caribbean and one day Eric decided he wanted to go
parasailing,”
“We got
some flak for Dreadlock Holiday,” Gouldman laughs, “For stereotyping
black voices and style, but the stupid thing is, the song is if anything,
anti-white, because it’s talking about this guy trying to emulate black cool,
black style, which he can never do!” And besides, the single was so successful,
its detractors were very swiftly drowned out. In the summer of 1978, Dreadlock
Holiday gave 10cc their third British #1, and a #44 in
Looking
back on Godley/Creme’s departure from that perspective, Gouldman reasons, “We
withstood it remarkably well, coming out with our biggest selling record right
after.” Dreadlock Holiday was 10cc’s eleventh Top 10 hit in
In fact,
there were more tangible reasons than that, beginning with Eric Stewart being
involved in a very serious motor accident in January, 1979, on the eve of a
sold out Far Eastern tour. Scuppering the band’s plans to appear in a science
fiction rock movie, Rock On, in which they would have been filmed
playing on Mount Fuji in
During
this enforced lay-off, Gouldman scored his first ever solo hit with Sunburn,
the soundtrack to a new Farrah Fawcett movie. It reached #45 in
Eric
Stewart bounced back in late 1979 with his own solo album, the soundtrack to
the French movie, Girls, which he recorded during his incapacitation;
with a sparkling production job on Sad Café’s eponymous fourth album, and a new
10cc album, Look Hear?. It was not a great success. The problem was,
says Gouldman, “I think we felt we could take up the reins where we left off,
without paying any attention to what was going on around us.” He remains
adamant that Stewart’s incapacitation did not really make a difference to the
band’s continuing misfortunes. Look Hear? reached #180 in the
Those
“other things,” of course, were Punk and the New Wave, a musical backlash which
sent 10cc’s brand of rock perfectionism reeling, as new bands sought to return
music if not to the stone age, then at least to a stone age garage. The
continued sophistication of 10cc’s music had no place in a climate dominated by
the young upstarts of Punk, Two Tone and New Romanticism; Gouldman’s one
serious brush with Punk Rock, when he was drafted in to produce the Ramones’ Pleasant
Dreams album in 1981, remains an unresolved thorn in the Ramones’
collective side. “He was [Sire Records chief] Seymour Stein’s idea,” Joey
Ramone recalls. “He thought Graham would be perfect for us, after all the songs
he’d written in the ‘60s, Bus Stop and things like that. But we didn’t
really understand it.”
Neither
did Gouldman, whose last outside production job had been an album by Irish
singer songwriter Gilbert O’Sullivan. “That was bizarre. They contacted me, and
I said, ‘Why me?’ They said, ‘we loved the songs you wrote in the ‘60s, and we
think we write those kind of songs!’ I didn’t understand that at all. I
couldn’t think of songs more opposite to those I’d written. But I loved doing
it. We cut most of the album in
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… |