Graham Gouldman is one of the finest singer-songwriters Britain has ever produced, writing and producing records over seven decades for bands including The Yardbirds, The Hollies, Herman's Hermits, Neil Sedaka, Wax and of course, 10cc, spawning the monster hit I'm Not In Love.
Gouldman's songwriting was acknowledged in 2014 with his induction into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame and last year he was awarded an MBE for his services to music.
MusicRadar caught up with Gouldman as he was preparing for his upcoming 10cc tour to talk about the craft of songwriting, his studio and stage gear, AI in music, the legacy of Strawberry Studios and how 10cc started as "the Wrecking Crew of Stockport."
In the early 1960s at the start of your career you lived in Salford - there was quite a scene in Manchester at the time?
“Yeah, there were lots of bands going between Liverpool and Manchester, and the city always had a great scene for all the arts: theatre, music, ballet, everything. Also Manchester being a university city, there were lots of clubs and coffee bars where we used to go and see bands purely for the music. You had places like The Oasis Club, where one week would be The Rolling Stones, then The Beatles, and next week The Kinks and The Animals. It was mad, it was brilliant.”
You wrote many hits for bands like Herman's Hermits and The Hollies. That must have been a tremendously exciting time?
“It was great. I met my manager at the time, and he put me on a retainer to just write songs. Six months later, I had a hit with For Your Love with The Yardbirds. And then it just sort of kept going - people kept asking me for songs and I was happy to do it.”
You're very proudly from the North and I imagine that was the spirit of setting up Strawberry Studios in Stockport?
“It was really such a great idea to build a studio, a proper one. I mean, there were some studios in the North, but it was basically someone with a Ferrograph tape recorder or something - it was pretty basic. We wanted to build a studio that was world-class.”
Strawberry Studios was named after Strawberry Fields Forever. The Beatles must have been a major influence?
“Oh yeah. I wouldn't be talking to you today without them. I can't stress it enough how important they were to get inspired and to think, ‘I want to do that. I'm going to do that’. For those of us lucky enough to have the gift and, I suppose, the drive as well, The Beatles were a real inspiration. And still are. I mean, they set the standard. It's the songwriting for me - I hear any of their records, and I'm going, ‘what the fuck?!’ I feel lucky to have been able to live through that era.”
Paul McCartney came to Strawberry Studios, didn't he?
“Yeah, he recorded an album with his younger brother, Mike McGear. We were recording the 10cc Sheet Music album during the day and he would come in later in the day or early evening. So, it was fantastic, just to have Paul come in every day, and we hung out with him quite a lot as well. The studio was absolutely crammed with our gear and his - it was great.”
And you worked with another Beatle as well, Ringo Starr, when you played with the All-Starr Band?
“Yes, I did a couple of tours with Ringo, which I really enjoyed. That was quite a surreal experience. In fact, I wrote a song about it after one of the tours that's on my Modesty Forbids album, Standing Next to Me where Ringo plays drums.”
In Strawberry Studios during the early 1970s, did you work and record with many artists?
“Yeah, we were like the house band - the Wrecking Crew of Stockport! We recorded lots of very un-10cc things, but we enjoyed it and it was bringing business into the studio because it was a studio just starting up. It was only Eric and I who were from the band who were partners in the studio, but it was in all our interests to support it.”
Did having a recording studio in Stockport affect the way you made records? Did you have more time to do things?
“I think once we were in there, whether the studio was in Huddersfield, Glasgow or London, I don't think it would have made any difference - that was our ‘sonic playground’, and we just loved every minute of it. When the studio wasn't working, we were hanging around and just started writing songs and recording stuff. We then hit on something we thought could have been a single - Waterfall. However, we needed a B-side, which was Donna, and that actually became our first single.”
Then you had a not-so-successful follow-up single...?
“Yeah, Johnny Don't Do It which was like a kind of a Donna Part 2 in the same sort of doo-wop ‘60s style. I thought it was a great record - I mean we didn't put out anything that we didn't think was great. Anything we didn't like, we erased - so there's actually an original version of I'm Not In Love which we hated. In retrospect, it's a pity, as it would be a great collector's item!
"There's actually an original version of I'm Not In Love which we hated. In retrospect, it's a pity, as it would be a great collector's item!"
“Then we released Rubber Bullets, which became our first number one. That was one of those kind-of-rare-ish songs that was written by me, but it was actually started by Kevin and Lol. They got stuck - they had this great chorus and verse, but they wanted something different for the middle of the song, the ‘bullhorn in his hand’ bit, which I provided.
10cc tracks are so varied, not only the albums, but even just within a particular song; there would be so many shifts and changes in key, feel and mood. It must have been a really creative time for you all?
“We didn't want to do what everybody else was doing. There was such a great chemistry between us that really worked - at least for a while. There was a whole philosophy that we had of not being worried. I think it was partly to do with the fact that we had such freedom in the studio and we weren't restricted by time. We could just do what we wanted.
“There were different influences that we all brought to the table and common ones as well, like The Beatles and Steely Dan. We were very influenced by The Beach Boys too - harmonies, melodic structure, and in particular, I loved Brian Wilson's use of the most unobvious bass notes with the bass part to a chord, you know? I've definitely, ahem, ‘borrowed’ that once or twice…”
Is I'm Not In Love an example of a good song that was made into something really special in the studio?
“Yeah. The song is a good song and I do a semi-acoustic version of it in the Heart Full of Songs show. It works because it's a good song in itself. I mean, it's made even better when you hear it with the whole production - but I've heard so many different versions of it and different styles of it and the song just has something.
“We were very lucky to hit on it. I think there are songs that are equal or even better that I've been associated with, but some songs have this quality that is just imbued on them for some reason and I've no idea why. I wish I had the secret to that one!”
The technology that was used in I'm Not In Love was very innovative - was it all done with tape loops?
“We were lucky in a way that we had to work out how to do something - and that was one of the joys of doing it. If we made the record today, we'd just go on a keyboard - plonk! - and there's all the voices. But we had to build them up, making these tape loops of each note that we needed, that eventually would be brought up on each fader and mixed down, creating the various chords that we wanted.”
Tony Wilson - Factory Records' supremo - praised 10cc saying that if it wasn't for Strawberry Studios, we wouldn't have the likes of Joy Division. Did you meet any of the Manchester bands that were recording in the late 1970s?
“Bands like Joy Division and Happy Mondays really came in after we had set up Strawberry South in Dorking in Surrey, which was the second studio that we had. Because Kevin, Lol and Eric had all moved to the home counties, we wanted to build another studio. At that point, as the studio was being built, Kevin and Lol left the band! So Eric and I carried on and recorded tracks there such as The Things We Do For Love, Dreadlock Holiday and Good Morning Judge - which we still play live.”
Has the way you write songs changed over the years?
“From a lyrical point of view - there are certain things that I can't or don't want to write about now. I'm a happily married man of a certain vintage with a family, so it would be very odd for me to write about, ‘that girl across the room that's giving me the eye’, or something like that.
"The subject matter really is the thing that's changed, but the musical brain is still that 19-year-old searching for the perfect song"
“I think you tend also to write about more personal things. So with my wife, it's actually the first time I've had a muse, because I've written quite a few songs that Ariella sort of inspired, which is lovely. The subject matter really is the thing that's changed, but the musical brain is still that 19-year-old searching for the perfect song.”
What makes a really good song?
“There has to be something about it that makes you want to finish it. So that you like it and you feel it - it has to connect with you first of all. When I'm writing and going, this is really good, I want you to feel the same. That's what I'm always striving for. That it connects with people, or they say, ‘do you know, you just expressed something that I couldn't have said better.’”
Are the songs that you finish quickly often the best ones or do you sometimes have to just really work at a song to finish it?
“For me, the best songs that I've been involved with, whether with 10cc, on my own or with Andrew Gold [Wax], have been pretty quick. It's almost like you tap into something that already exists, in your subconscious and out it comes. It's like you're chasing the song. You're following.
“I collaborate a lot and the usual experience is that if your writing partner plays something, I'm immediately hearing what the next bit is. It's a bit of a mystery and I really don't want to know how it happens! That's why I always say songwriting is not a clever thing to do, it's a gift. You've either got it or you haven't, and you can't really teach that.”
What are your current go-to bits of gear?
“I've got a studio at home with a Mac and GarageBand, very good monitoring, great microphones, good instruments and I know how to play them - so that's a very good start. I'm not a guitar collector per se, but I have got some very nice guitars that I keep at home. On the road I've duplicated the two basses I've always used - one is a Rickenbacker 4001 bass, although I use a 4003 now - and I had the Fender Custom Shop make me a Fender Jazz Bass based on my 1963 Jazz Bass, which is like the best. Unbelievable.
"I haven't used AI. I want to rely on my own brain. The only way I could think I might possibly use it is, if I was stuck on a song and said, ‘come up with an idea for a bridge to this’"
“I've got a Fender Telecaster on stage which is exactly the same as the one that's on the front cover of The Shadows album with guitarist Bruce Welch, who I know, so I got him to sign the headstock. I've also got a couple of Levinson guitars that we use on stage, and Ashdown amps.
“For the Heart Full of Songs gigs, I use an Atkin, which is a Gibson J-45-style guitar, which I had set up specially, and it now sounds so great and is really comfortable with a slightly narrower neck, so it's much nicer to play for a long set. I also use a Gibson J-200 and we use a Duesenberg Starplayer bass, and a recently-bought Höfner Violin Bass.”
There's a lot of discussion about AI in music at the moment - do you have any thoughts about it?
“I haven't used it. I want to rely on my own brain. The only way I could think I might possibly use it is, if I was stuck on a song and said, ‘come up with an idea for a bridge to this’. I have heard that country and western song that went to number one. What was weird about it was the voice - he never breathed! As far as music's concerned, it worries me a lot that Spotify's clogged up every single day with AI tracks. Is it going to put songwriters, people with a genuine talent out of business? That music also wouldn't exist without me or millions of other songwriters and artists.
“We're lucky in the sense that the one thing that will not change, is live music - even though the ABBA Voyage show is getting towards that. But people want to be in a place where things can happen - even when something goes wrong or there's a mistake, because you can make a joke out of it.
“It's a privilege to actually be able to look at people when you're playing and see the look on their faces at certain songs - see what they're feeling, whether they're thinking about maybe a love that was lost, or crying with joy because a relationship started through this song and it brought them such happiness. There's nothing like the live experience. It brings people together and creates joy.”
10cc are heading out on tour across the UK from March 4 to July 1. Tickets are available here. Graham’s career-spanning semi-acoustic show Heart Full of Songs tours from October 8, with tickets available here.
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