Prog You can thank Neil Sedaka for many things – and being just two of them – but perhaps his greatest gift to mankind was 10cc. “We did two Neil Sedaka albums, co-producing and playing on and ,” says Graham Gouldman. “And we thought, ‘Fuck this – we can do this for ourselves.
’ We had Strawberry Studios, and that’s where we were born, really. We were doing everything there; we were like the house band, a little bit of Motown in Stockport.” Over the years 10cc has shed its skin more than once, the original quartet (completed by Eric Stewart, Lol Creme and Kevin Godley) whittling themselves down to a nub until it was just co-founder Gouldman carrying the name, touring with sidemen for a still-eager audience longing to hear the hits.
He’s unapologetic and philosophical about it all – he’s grumpily happy, if you can imagine such a thing. “The tours do really well. I love it; when I stop loving it then I’ll stop doing it,” he says emphatically.
“I want to do what I want to do, but I’m very mindful of what an audience wants. I might have written the greatest song in the world today, but I’m not going to go, ‘I want to share this song that came to me this afternoon.’ We get the dads and the kids and as delighted as I am to see them.
People grew up in a household with 10cc playing and people are file sharing stuff; the kids are listening to everything now. I think it’s marvellous.” He really might have written the greatest song that after.