April 11, 1997 GOLDMINE #436
10cc :
A Pure Injection Of Pop
Original
Article By Dave Thompson
Chapter Twelve
: And They Still Don’t Give A…
The 1982
concert video, and an earlier, excellent compilation, Tropical And Love
Songs were only the first Japan only releases which today haunt (and, in
terms of cost, daunt) the 10cc collector. There was also a 1991 CD boxed set, The
Greatest Songs And More, recounting 10cc’s entire eleven year career across
56 tracks, including all of their stubbornly non-album Mercury B-sides. Of
course the band’s return was going to be greeted with success, so much so that
a handful of British and European dates were followed by a full Japanese tour,
out of which came the two-CD Alive concert album. This, even by 10cc’s
eccentric standards, is a weird one. Available only on Japanese import for a
long time, it was eventually issued in America across two single discs by
Griffin (New Millenium in the UK), and offers up not only the expected smattering
of past hits and misses, but also a handful of covers, the first 10cc have ever
released. Two Beatles’ songs, Across The Universe and Paperback
Writer are joined by Carl Perkins’ Slow Down (effectively a third
Beatles number, of course), and Gouldman laughs, “Harvey [Lisberg, still the
band’s manager], his favourite song of all time is Across The Universe,
and he used to say why don’t you… so we thought okay, we’ll shut him up and do
it. And Eric always liked Paperback Writer, and we came up with this reggae version of it, it was really
a case of why not?”
Yeah, but
what about Slow Down?
With the
10cc machine how grinding again, Stewart and Gouldman began to seriously
consider reconvening. In the event, it would be three more years before anything
came of their scheming, but with interest from the Avex label still building,
by 1995 the duo were ready to start work. The problem was, Stewart was living
in
“What
happened was, it’s almost like two halves of an album. I think the original
intention was – Eric was in
The
resultant album, Mirror Mirror is indeed a pickle, apparently picking up
on numerous past collaborations, and dropping them all into the pot. To make
matters even more confusing, there are at least four different versions of the
album floating around, domestic American, Japanese and European CD pressings
all boasting different track listings, and a British vinyl set which reconciles
most of them. An unreleased Stewart-Paul McCartney collaboration here, a
Gouldman-Tim Rice song there, and a …meanwhile demo, Woman In Love
somewhere else… one ends up feeling thankful that Gouldman didn’t drop in some
reminder of another recent collaboration, playing on an album by actor David
Hasselhof! (“That was a career move and a half,” he jests.) The only point at
which one realizes one is listening to an actual 10cc comes with a reprise of I’m
Not In Love, thrown onto the album at the last minute to salute both the 20th
anniversary of the duo’s most successful collaboration, and its three millionth
spin on American radio.
“That was
something we didn’t intend to do at all,” says Gouldman. “We did a TV program –
the album was going to come out, and Avex wanted to start off the promo machine
early. We’d already done an acoustic version of I’m Not In Love on a TV
program called Good Morning Television, they said ‘Could you do something
well-known?’ so we worked out a version that was just myself on guitar and Eric
playing keyboards and us both singing, and it sounded really good. So there as
another program that was going to do a feature on us, and they asked if they
could film us rerecording the song; we did it and it sounded so great that Avex
said we must put it out as a single, which I didn’t want to do at all. My
argument was, ‘we’re promoting an album of new songs, and we’re going to launch
it with a song that’s 20 years old? That’s insane!’ But their argument was,
‘Well, it will grasp people’s attentions, it is your most famous song, it’s a
way of reminding people you’re still around.’ And I have to admit it did work.”
Backed by
a ‘state of the art’ remix of the original recording, the acoustic retread of I’m
Not In Love reached #29 in
It is not
a bad album, of course; indeed, there are moments which at least rival Stewart
and Gouldman’s finest moments of the last 16 years; however, Gouldman himself
is not necessarily being complimentary when he remarks, “I think it’s unusual
that on this album, unlike other 10cc records, the songs are coverable. Other
people could record them. No-one else would ever have done Sand In My Face
or One Night In Paris. I’m Not In Love, yes, but that’s really
the exception in our catalogue. O\n the next album, I think we should get back
to songs no one else could do – that are so individual that they’re ours and
no-one else’s.”
Whether
that “next album” ever appears, of course, remains to be seen. But although it
would seem highly unlikely that 10cc, in any permutation, will ever be able to
recapture the sheer brilliance of the songs they produced between 1972-76,
neither could anyone have predicted what would befall them at the close of
those long, fallow months following Neanderthal Man. Individually and
collectively, the group continues to enjoy a fiercely devoted following, and
for the collector, there are now over thirty years worth of releases to chase,
a task whose demands are only partially alleviated by the reappearance, on CD,
of so many crucial albums from the early years of the band’s development : The
Graham Gouldman Thing (Edsel EDCD 346), Ramases’ Space Hymns
(Repertoire RR 4108-WP), Hotlegs’ Think: School Stinks (One Way
S21-17961). An explosion of interest in those once despised football songs,
spearheaded by the acclaimed
None of
which is at all bad for what was, and always will be, the self-confessed worst
band in the world. And they still don’t give a…
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… |