Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Webstats podcast. My
Speaker 1: yesterday is the one and only Raham Goldman Ram. You're
Speaker 1: bringing ten c C to the States. Why now?
Speaker 2: Why now? Well, that's a very good question.
Speaker 3: I think what's happened is that I've been touring as
Speaker 3: ten CC for many, many years now, and even though
Speaker 3: I'm the only original member, we've just been doing better
Speaker 3: and better selling out wherever we go, and have obviously
Speaker 3: caught the eye of some American promoters who are you know,
Speaker 3: want us to come over And I'm really delighted to
Speaker 3: be coming back. It's a long time since we were
Speaker 3: over in the States.
Speaker 1: Okay, I remember seeing you on the Bloody Tour tour.
Speaker 1: When was the last time ten CC was in the
Speaker 1: United States?
Speaker 3: Well, actually there was a gig. There was a one
Speaker 3: off gig in New York. It must have been about
Speaker 3: maybe fourteen, maybe fifteen years ago even and it was
Speaker 3: an in and out thing.
Speaker 2: So I don't know.
Speaker 3: Why we just did one one one gig. But before
Speaker 3: that it was we're talking about sort of mid seventies
Speaker 3: with the original lineup.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I saw at the Santa Monica Civic.
Speaker 1: So someone comes to the show.
Speaker 3: What might they expect, Well, they're going to get all
Speaker 3: the all the hits and more. You know, we had
Speaker 3: eleven big hits in the in the UK and various
Speaker 3: other places in the world, so you're going to hear that.
Speaker 3: You're going to hear also various album tracks that we
Speaker 3: like to play and that our fans have quested. There's
Speaker 3: going to be one new song in it as well
Speaker 3: that I feel entitled to put in. It's a song
Speaker 3: I wrote about the James Webspace telescope, and because it
Speaker 3: was about it is astronomical, I asked Brian Made to
Speaker 3: play on it, which he did, and he plays guitar
Speaker 3: on it. He does back in vocals on it. It's
Speaker 3: called Floating in Heaven.
Speaker 1: Great and I noticed that Kevin Godly joined you with
Speaker 1: the Royal Albert Wall. How did that come to be?
Speaker 3: Well, Kevin and I have always remained good friends ever
Speaker 3: since he and Loe left the band, and as it
Speaker 3: was the Albert Hall a special, very special place to play,
Speaker 3: as anybody will tell you, I thought it'd be a
Speaker 3: nice idea for Kevin to join us to sing the
Speaker 3: appropriately titled Old wild Man, which was what he sang.
Speaker 3: Actually what happened was he appears on our screen singing
Speaker 3: somewhere in Hollywood from our sheet music album. And so
Speaker 3: what happened was when the song is finished and he
Speaker 3: walks off the screen stage right, and then he appeared
Speaker 3: stage right walking on to the stage. And it was
Speaker 3: really quite a moment. I mean, the audience were gobsmacked.
Speaker 3: Actually he sang, he said a few words, he sang
Speaker 3: all wow men, and then we did cry, which was
Speaker 3: a big Goblin Cream hit, and it was really quite
Speaker 3: a moment, quite emotional, I have to say.
Speaker 1: And I love that song A Dog up in Beverly Hills. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's crazy. And one has to ask, we're are Eric
Speaker 1: and lawl today.
Speaker 3: Eric I haven't heard from for years and years. You know,
Speaker 3: I don't know what's happened with him lol. I know
Speaker 3: has been active. In fact, quite a few years ago,
Speaker 3: we were rehearsing in the same place that Loll was
Speaker 3: rehearsing with a bank called the Producers that he has
Speaker 3: with the Trevor Horn, and he was actually rehearsing in
Speaker 3: the in the room next to us, and I had
Speaker 3: a very nice chat with him. As it happens. But
Speaker 3: I haven't seen for a while. It's really Kevin is
Speaker 3: the only one to have any constant to contact.
Speaker 1: With and when you play shows in the UK and
Speaker 1: I'm a continent, are these basically people who remember the
Speaker 1: big hits from the seventies or are there any younger
Speaker 1: generations who've discovered ken CC.
Speaker 3: I think there's three generations now. There's the more mature
Speaker 3: audience that you would expect. There's my eldest kids age,
Speaker 3: which is in their forties, and there's a younger crowd coming,
Speaker 3: I mean twenty plus coming as well, and that's really
Speaker 3: gratifying to see.
Speaker 2: I love it when I see younger kids in the audience.
Speaker 3: You know, maybe they've listened to our music because of
Speaker 3: their parents listen to it. It's played in the house
Speaker 3: or by the internet.
Speaker 1: Okay, the Tennessee C Records who owns those, but.
Speaker 3: Well they're with the Universal now. They were with various
Speaker 3: other record companies, Phonogram UK Records, which was our first label.
Speaker 2: I think I think Hypnosis have actually got that those
Speaker 2: first albums that were on Jonathan King's label, but the
Speaker 2: others are with the Universal.
Speaker 1: And at this lead deep the way we have major
Speaker 1: label accounting. The royalties come in from the Tennessee ce
Speaker 1: records or do they still say because of all the advances,
Speaker 1: you're in a negative position.
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't think.
Speaker 3: I think all advances a long time ago or were
Speaker 3: paid off. So yeah, roads are still still paid Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: And in terms of your songs, who owns those songs now?
Speaker 3: Well, some of the songs are with various various publishers
Speaker 3: throughout you know, they're with loads of different people. I
Speaker 3: have a deal now with BMG, who I find very
Speaker 3: good to work with. Here my music publishing was which
Speaker 3: a lot of the songs are with. In fact, the
Speaker 3: bulk of the TANCC ones, if not all of them,
Speaker 3: are now owned by Sony.
Speaker 1: And at this late date, with so many people selling
Speaker 1: their rights, is that something you would contemplate?
Speaker 4: I have contemplated it full stop. And what have you thought, Well,
Speaker 4: I've thought I've thought that it's I look at it
Speaker 4: in two ways.
Speaker 3: There's a financial side of it, but there's also the
Speaker 3: emotional side of it. And I tend to think of
Speaker 3: the emotional side of things.
Speaker 1: So we would not anticipate reading you selling your rights
Speaker 1: in the near future.
Speaker 2: I'd say never, say never.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to your you were first known
Speaker 1: as a songwriter. The first song you wrote that had
Speaker 1: international traction was for Your Love, which was covered by
Speaker 1: the Yardbirds. How old were you and how did you
Speaker 1: write that song?
Speaker 3: Okay, I was nineteen when I wrote it. One record
Speaker 3: that had a massive influence on me was The House
Speaker 3: of the Rising I loved the chord sequence in it,
Speaker 3: and it's kind.
Speaker 2: Of the chord sequence of the House of the Rising
Speaker 2: Sun is kind of.
Speaker 3: The opposite of what musicians called that C A minor,
Speaker 3: F and G. Do you know that kind of You've
Speaker 3: heard it a million times, But the House of the
Speaker 3: Rising Sun went from a minor to C, then to
Speaker 3: D then to F.
Speaker 2: So it was kind of like it turned that chord
Speaker 2: sequence on its head.
Speaker 3: And I use that chord sequence, particularly the first two chords,
Speaker 3: going from the minor to the relevant major and a
Speaker 3: lot of songs. Not only was it on for Your
Speaker 3: Love but Heartful of Soul No Milk. Today, I don't
Speaker 3: know whether it's it's obvious to people that it is
Speaker 3: the same sequence, but those two chords have been very
Speaker 3: good for me. So I wrote the song and my
Speaker 3: manager at the time said, this is a great song.
Speaker 3: Why don't we get it to the Beatles, So I
Speaker 3: said that, I think the Beatles were okay in the
Speaker 3: songwriting department. But as it happened, the Beatles were doing
Speaker 3: a Christmas show at the Hammersmith Odion being supported by
Speaker 3: the Yardbirds, and I think that gave our publisher the
Speaker 3: idea to give it to the Yardbirds, because you knew
Speaker 3: that at that time they were looking to have sort
Speaker 3: of more commercial success.
Speaker 2: You know, they'd been a.
Speaker 3: Really well known with R and B band, really, but
Speaker 3: they decided that they wanted some chart success, I guess,
Speaker 3: and that was one of the reasons why Eric Clapton
Speaker 3: actually left the band. I think that was the last
Speaker 3: straw fame of them recording what he thought was a
Speaker 3: commercial song.
Speaker 1: So you know, today you make a demo and that's
Speaker 1: passed around. Is that what happened? Did you cut a
Speaker 1: demo for four Your Love?
Speaker 3: I cut a demo and the demo had the bongos on,
Speaker 3: but it didn't have the harpsichord on that the odd
Speaker 3: Birds put on it. And the story goes that the
Speaker 3: they went to the studio and expecting them to be
Speaker 3: a keyboard or an organ or some sort of keyboard
Speaker 3: but not harpsichord. But there was a harpsichord in the
Speaker 3: studio and they decided to use that, which I think
Speaker 3: was a stroke of genius and divine good luck.
Speaker 1: And how did you first hear their version?
Speaker 3: I think I was sent an ascetate the by the
Speaker 3: publisher and it blew my mind.
Speaker 1: Okay, blew your mind to what ded we? Was it
Speaker 1: similar with your vision of the song?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 3: It was similar, but it was really the It was
Speaker 3: the harpsichord that was the big difference.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: They had kept the bongos. That was that's for sure.
Speaker 1: And when it became worldwide hit? What was that like
Speaker 1: for you?
Speaker 2: It was fantastic, as you can imagine, wonderful.
Speaker 3: It was kind of like, you know, I'd known from
Speaker 3: an early age that I wanted to be in music,
Speaker 3: and I didn't know in what way, but music was
Speaker 3: and still is my my great love. And you know,
Speaker 3: this was validation, I guess.
Speaker 1: So now you have this hit other acts, I'm calling, well,
Speaker 1: you wrote this for the Yard Words we need songs?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, that really? You know.
Speaker 4: I I.
Speaker 3: Wrote two songs for the Hollies, look Through Any Window
Speaker 3: and bust Stop. I wrote Heart Full of soul and
Speaker 3: evil hearted view for the yardbirds no milk today, for
Speaker 3: Hermit's Hermits. There were some others, but those are the
Speaker 3: kind of, you know, the major ones from that period.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to the beginning. You're from Salford,
Speaker 1: outside of Manchester.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of North Manchester. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And what was it like for you growing up? Would
Speaker 1: you still fear the after effects of the war?
Speaker 3: Not really, but certainly the austerity. I remember going with
Speaker 3: my mum to the to the grocery store and she
Speaker 3: would have a Russian book still, so I didn't know
Speaker 3: anything else, so it didn't feel like austerity to me.
Speaker 3: But we were a sort of working class family. We
Speaker 3: didn't go out to restaurants, we didn't go on luxury holidays.
Speaker 3: But I lived in a lovely part of North Manchester,
Speaker 3: an area where there are lots of other kids of
Speaker 3: the same age as me. I didn't have any brothers
Speaker 3: or sisters, but I certainly have had lots of friends
Speaker 3: and it was a very happy and artistically it was.
Speaker 3: We were listening to me and my friends were listening
Speaker 3: to music from the ages of you know, like nine,
Speaker 3: ten eleven, listening to American music. We had radio Luxembourg,
Speaker 3: and I actually became aware of music about the age
Speaker 3: of seven, and my parents always encouraged me with music.
Speaker 3: Of course, I think we talked about this before. My
Speaker 3: dad was very helpful with me with the writing lyrics
Speaker 3: with me for a lot of those early songs. So
Speaker 3: I grew up in a very encouraging atmosphere. My parents
Speaker 3: were both involved in amateur dramatics, so every Friday night,
Speaker 3: lots of different people would come round to the house,
Speaker 3: a lot of theatrical types, which was great.
Speaker 2: I loved that, and I remember.
Speaker 3: Myself sort of sitting at the top of the stair
Speaker 3: was listening to all this chatter going on downstairs, and
Speaker 3: maybe there was some sort of show business, although I
Speaker 3: don't think of myself being in show business, but I
Speaker 3: suppose I am in reality. I got that bug from
Speaker 3: from these people that came to visit the house.
Speaker 1: And at what point did you start playing an instrument?
Speaker 3: I wanted to be a drummer, so I started playing
Speaker 3: when I was about seven. My mum had a handbag
Speaker 3: that had like a serrated surface, and I used to
Speaker 3: use clothes brushes to like do that, and I play
Speaker 3: along to whatever was on what was called the light
Speaker 3: program on the radio at that time. But then when
Speaker 3: I was the most important thing that happened. When I
Speaker 3: was eleven, a cousin of mine bought me a guitar
Speaker 3: he'd been on holiday in Spain, and that that and
Speaker 3: the time that it was the music that I was
Speaker 3: listening to, that was really a massive turning point. So
Speaker 3: we were listening to Me and MA contemporaries were listening
Speaker 3: to Little Richard, Chuck Berry, the every Brothers, Buddy Holly,
Speaker 3: Ricky Nelson, all these great records coming out of America,
Speaker 3: and I guess those records are still in in my
Speaker 3: sort of DNA today. And then we also had the
Speaker 3: there was a skiffle era came up, which said that
Speaker 3: sort of informed us that we could make music ourselves.
Speaker 3: Whether we could play or not was another matter, but
Speaker 3: it didn't seem to matter. It was just getting that
Speaker 3: love of playing with other people that has never.
Speaker 1: Okay, skiffle was a big English thing. For those people
Speaker 1: don't know, take a second and describe skiffle.
Speaker 3: Okay, So it's like like kind of country stroke folk music.
Speaker 3: But it was the first time that if you can
Speaker 3: imagine that, the main thing that people were listening to
Speaker 3: was sort of big band music. So it's not it's
Speaker 3: impossible to form a big band, well not impossible, but
Speaker 3: highly unlikely that you're going to be able to perform
Speaker 3: a big band with your mates. But when we saw
Speaker 3: people like Lonnie Donegan, who was doing things like Rock
Speaker 3: Island Line playing with he was would playing guitar and
Speaker 3: have another guitarist, have a bass player and someone playing
Speaker 3: like a washboard instead of proper drums. Suddenly it was
Speaker 3: like we could hunt around these We didn't have guitars
Speaker 3: lying around the house, but certainly it was sort of
Speaker 3: very homemade sort of interestruments. Like I think like instead
Speaker 3: of a bass, you'd have a like a broomstick handle
Speaker 3: with a piece of string attached to a like a
Speaker 3: wooden box, and it would make some kind of sound
Speaker 3: similar to a like a double bass. So it was
Speaker 3: a lot of fun and really sort of introduced a
Speaker 3: lot of people to playing together with other people.
Speaker 1: And other than like I mean, was this kind of
Speaker 1: like street corner singing rapped today where everybody had a
Speaker 1: skiffle group.
Speaker 2: There were a lot of skiffle groups.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there were a lot of them, and like one
Speaker 3: of the boys had a guitar, but he couldn't play it,
Speaker 3: but it didn't seem to matter. He had it, so
Speaker 3: he sort of held it and hit it or scrummed it.
Speaker 3: God knows what sounded like. But it was a lot
Speaker 3: of fun. That was the main thing. It was fun
Speaker 3: and we enjoyed it. And after the I think after
Speaker 3: the the skiffle era, the next main thing was Cliff
Speaker 3: Richard and the Shadows. That had a massive influence on people,
Speaker 3: particularly wanting to play the guitar.
Speaker 2: That was major.
Speaker 3: And then, of course the most clon and thing hand,
Speaker 3: which was the Beatles. And if I had any doubt
Speaker 3: about what I wanted to do with the rest of
Speaker 3: my life, that was okay when I heard them.
Speaker 1: We know the Beatles. Certainly they were on Ed Sullivan
Speaker 1: of February sixty four. Liverpool is really not that far
Speaker 1: from where you grew up, but if you don't have
Speaker 1: a car, could be, you know, might as well be
Speaker 1: on the moon. But we hear all these stories. There
Speaker 1: was a scene in Liverpool. They played in Hamburg. They
Speaker 1: broke a couple of years earlier, at sixty two in
Speaker 1: the UK. How did you discover the Beatles? When did
Speaker 1: they break it? How much of a scene was there.
Speaker 1: What did it feel like In the UK.
Speaker 3: The beach was when the beat was broke, it was
Speaker 3: how can I describe it? It was massive, absolutely massive.
Speaker 3: It took over all my friends and my life. We
Speaker 3: became we fell in love, we became obsessed with them.
Speaker 3: The first time I saw a picture of them was
Speaker 3: on a cover of a magazine called Mersey Beat. And
Speaker 3: so out of this era where we had artists in
Speaker 3: you know, nice suits, with nice, you know, expensive Fender
Speaker 3: Stackcastic guitars with very neat hair, suddenly we had these
Speaker 3: four guys with what appeared then to be really long
Speaker 3: hair on these having these guitars that we've never seen before,
Speaker 3: wearing different sort of clothes, looking quite scruffy, standing in
Speaker 3: like a bomb site. And it was absolutely breathtaking, That's
Speaker 3: all I can say. And of course that combined with well,
Speaker 3: the first record that we all heard was Loving Me Do,
Speaker 3: and the b side of that was just phenomenal and
Speaker 3: it changed people's lives.
Speaker 2: It was that big.
Speaker 1: In the US, we had the British invasion, but with
Speaker 1: these acts Dave Clark five, did all these acts exist
Speaker 1: and they just got ah grease to the top or
Speaker 1: was it more like this is big, we all have
Speaker 1: to form bands, we all have to make music.
Speaker 3: Well, they were. I think they were my biggest inspiration.
Speaker 3: I think the most important thing that happened to me
Speaker 3: by the Beatles was being encouraged to write songs, and
Speaker 3: it encouraged you know, loads of other people to write songs.
Speaker 3: Suddenly here was a band that was completely self contained.
Speaker 3: I mean before that you would have to go down
Speaker 3: to a place like the Denmark Street, which is a
Speaker 3: kind of timpanale of London, and sort of go and
Speaker 3: ask for if you could, go into a publisher and
Speaker 3: ask for us for something to record. But with the Beatles,
Speaker 3: they were like saying, you know that you can do
Speaker 3: this on your own.
Speaker 1: Okay, the Beatles hit You're like sixteen, At what point
Speaker 1: do you start writing? At what point do you form
Speaker 1: a band?
Speaker 3: I'd already started forming bands. I was already doing that anyway.
Speaker 3: But the one thing that the Beatles did, I guess
Speaker 3: was I was with a band and it was kind
Speaker 3: of like a cabaret band and which so we did
Speaker 3: have Fender stratocasters and the suits, and I was getting
Speaker 3: really fed up with that and we used to rehearse
Speaker 3: at a club in North Manchester called the Jewish Lads Brigade,
Speaker 3: and the deal was that we you know, there were
Speaker 3: a few bands that rehearsed there and they give us
Speaker 3: a room for free and we would play at their
Speaker 3: you know, social events.
Speaker 2: That was the deal.
Speaker 3: And one in one of the other bands was Kevin
Speaker 3: Godley and I used to listen to him playing and
Speaker 3: I thought, God, he's really fantastic.
Speaker 2: So I decided to.
Speaker 3: Leave the Mockingbirds, took two of the boys with me
Speaker 3: and nicked Kevin from this other band, and we formed
Speaker 3: a band called the Mockingbirds, which made we made a
Speaker 3: few records, nothing really happened, and that disbanded.
Speaker 2: Really not long before we phoned tezc.
Speaker 1: Okay, so, how many songs did you write before you
Speaker 1: wrote For Your Love?
Speaker 2: I don't think very many.
Speaker 3: I can't actually remember, but it might be, you know,
Speaker 3: a handful, I would say.
Speaker 2: Before I wrote for Your Love.
Speaker 1: And were you disappointed? I mean, it was great you
Speaker 1: had this huge success. What was your dream to be
Speaker 1: like the Beatles and record the songs yourself and have success?
Speaker 2: Not at all.
Speaker 3: I was just blown away that a band that actually
Speaker 3: loved the yards I was a big fan of theirs anyway,
Speaker 3: had recorded one of my songs and it had been
Speaker 3: a big hit. It was amazing to me. I was
Speaker 3: very very happy.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I thought, if I'm going to be like a jobbing
Speaker 3: songwriter for the rest of my life or well, who knows,
Speaker 3: then that's that's that's okay by me.
Speaker 1: And you say your father helped you with the lyrics,
Speaker 1: was more about.
Speaker 3: That, okay. So when people ask what did your dad do?
Speaker 3: I say he was a writer. He wrote plays, he
Speaker 3: wrote stories, he wrote poetry, but he never actually did
Speaker 3: it professionally because he couldn't afford to. He had a
Speaker 3: regular job. But his passion was words, and I think
Speaker 3: I inherited that. So I would write a lyric and
Speaker 3: he'd go, let me have a look at that, and
Speaker 3: he'd make it better. Sometimes he'd come up with like
Speaker 3: song titles and parts of songs, I mean, whole chunks
Speaker 3: of lyrics as well. So he was really but I
Speaker 3: was really lucky that I was, you know, living with
Speaker 3: a lyricist there happened to be my dad.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I'll give you an example.
Speaker 3: I came home one day and he gave me this
Speaker 3: I'd given him a song title idea, and he presented
Speaker 3: me with this first verse of bus stop and it
Speaker 3: was bus stop wet day, she's there. I say, please
Speaker 3: share my umbrella. And I looked at the lyrics and
Speaker 3: I heard the melody in my head and I just
Speaker 3: sort of finished it. Not all the lyrics, because he
Speaker 3: finished a lot of the lyrics as well, but I
Speaker 3: wrote the song in like, I don't know, ten minutes
Speaker 3: or something, just because of that lyric that he gave me.
Speaker 1: You wrote the song it was a big hit for
Speaker 1: the Hollies. When you finished in ten minutes, did you
Speaker 1: see to yourself, man, this is a hit? Oh this
Speaker 1: is just another song I wrote.
Speaker 3: I actually I very rarely do it, but I thought
Speaker 3: there's something special there.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back. You do for your Love? The
Speaker 1: next big hit is hard Full of Soul. Had you
Speaker 1: already written that when For Your Love was a hit
Speaker 1: or did you write it subsequently?
Speaker 2: I wrote it especially for the adverts.
Speaker 1: That's a lot. That's a lot of pressure. So how
Speaker 1: did you actually write it?
Speaker 2: I didn't feel pressure.
Speaker 3: I just thought I should, you know, I should write
Speaker 3: write another song, and I'd love to get another song
Speaker 3: with the advert since I'm kind of in so to speak,
Speaker 3: and I just had this guitar riff that had this
Speaker 3: sort of very sort of Indian Indian field and the
Speaker 3: the the lyric my dad helped me with with the lyric.
Speaker 3: The title actually was from my manager at the time.
Speaker 3: I had this title, uh, and so you know, it
Speaker 3: just everything seemed to seem to fit, and I said,
Speaker 3: I sent it to the man know that they went
Speaker 3: into the studio with a setar player to record, to
Speaker 3: record the song, but the it didn't work out, and
Speaker 3: then Jeff Beck just nailed it.
Speaker 1: Okay, how did you come up with a line sick
Speaker 1: in heart and lonely?
Speaker 2: I think that was actually one of my dad's lines.
Speaker 2: It was, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: So sad, and then tell us about look through any window?
Speaker 2: Okay, look through any window?
Speaker 3: Was the idea for that came on a I was
Speaker 3: on a train with a friend of mine coming out
Speaker 3: of Houston stayed in London going back up to Manchester.
Speaker 3: And actually his name was Charlie. He was he was
Speaker 3: a friend of mine was he was also a co
Speaker 3: manager as well, and we were slowly coming out of
Speaker 3: the station trying, you know, we were passing these houses,
Speaker 3: trying to look through the windows of the houses if
Speaker 3: we're good.
Speaker 2: To see what was going on. And he said, look,
Speaker 2: look look through thrillly of those windows. What can you see?
Speaker 3: Or something like that he said, And I thought, that's
Speaker 3: that's a that's a really good idea for a song.
Speaker 1: And how did it get to the Hollys.
Speaker 2: The Hollys after bus stop they.
Speaker 3: Came round to my my house, and I think there
Speaker 3: was Graham Nash definitely, and Tony Hicks, and I think
Speaker 3: I played them some other stuff.
Speaker 2: I think I actually played them no milk today. I
Speaker 2: think I've just started.
Speaker 3: But obviously they didn't record that, and so we sort
Speaker 3: of had some sort of relationship. And bus Stock was
Speaker 3: another song that was specially written for them. We did
Speaker 3: a gig with them with the Mockingbirds as a support
Speaker 3: act to the Hollies, and I said, I've got I've
Speaker 3: got another song for you, and I remember going We
Speaker 3: went into the smallest, quietest room in the place there
Speaker 3: was Stoketown Hall, and I played it to them. I said,
Speaker 3: it's great. I made a demo of it and.
Speaker 2: That was it.
Speaker 1: Okay. The Hollys and Herman's Hermons were also from the
Speaker 1: same area you were.
Speaker 2: Well, they were from the north of England. I mean
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 3: They were from Stockport and I was more north Manchester.
Speaker 3: But yes, certainly not that far away from each other.
Speaker 1: Well, we always heard in America about the scene in London.
Speaker 1: To what degree was there a scene in the Manchester area?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, very much, so, very much so.
Speaker 3: We had there were loads of clubs, you know, it's
Speaker 3: a university city, loads of coffee bars that had musical
Speaker 3: acts on, great clubs that we would go to. I
Speaker 3: mean I got with my mates on a Saturday night.
Speaker 3: We just go around all the clubs, checking out all
Speaker 3: the bands and watching the guitarists and looking at all
Speaker 3: their equipment. And Saturdays we kind of spent going around
Speaker 3: the music shops. So there was It was a very
Speaker 3: it was a fantastic scene in matter and still is.
Speaker 1: And so how did you write no Milk Today? And
Speaker 1: how did that get to Herman's hermits?
Speaker 3: Okay, so, uh, my dad went to see one of
Speaker 3: his friends.
Speaker 2: His friend wasn't in.
Speaker 3: But my dad noticed on the doorstep there was an
Speaker 3: empty milk bottle with a note in it. And in
Speaker 3: those days, milk was delivered to people's houses and if
Speaker 3: you didn't want milk, you just put in a note,
Speaker 3: no milk today. And he came back to me he said,
Speaker 3: I've got a great idea for a song, no milk today.
Speaker 3: I said, that's that's horrible, it's terrible, terrible. He said,
Speaker 3: you're missing the point. It's the the milk bottle represents
Speaker 3: the fact that the lovers left the house as no
Speaker 3: one in the house anymore. And he came up with
Speaker 3: that brilliant line, the bottle stands forlorn, a symbol of
Speaker 3: the dawn, so poetry.
Speaker 2: So I wrote the song.
Speaker 3: We wrote the song, and my manager at the time
Speaker 3: was the manager of Herman's Hermits, So no problem.
Speaker 1: Okay, your father is helping you with all these songs.
Speaker 1: Does he want credit and money?
Speaker 3: Well, he got money. He did get money. There was
Speaker 3: kind of like a tacit agreement that like the name
Speaker 3: of Gouldman, like his name would be directly on top
Speaker 3: of my name. So he never once said, and for
Speaker 3: some reason it never occurred.
Speaker 2: To us that he, you know, it should be Goldman Goldman.
Speaker 3: I think he was happy that I was getting the credit,
Speaker 3: although but I always credited him with what he did,
Speaker 3: and he was financially rewarded as well.
Speaker 1: Was there a tacit agreement? I had to, you know,
Speaker 1: just with the money? How did it work?
Speaker 2: Uh? Do you know what?
Speaker 3: I can't remember, but he was happy and I was happy,
Speaker 3: so everyone was happy.
Speaker 1: Okay for your love hits? How long until you get
Speaker 1: the money? And what do you do with the money?
Speaker 2: You're quite interested in the money, aren't you. God?
Speaker 1: Absolutely, because when you might when you're nineteen and you
Speaker 1: have a hit in America, when you're nineteen and you
Speaker 1: have a hit record, the first thing somebody does is
Speaker 1: buy a car.
Speaker 2: Okay, I got a nice jacket. Actually I did backar
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 3: It took several several months, and I don't think I
Speaker 3: even't got an advance or anything not In the early
Speaker 3: days anyway, it would take maybe nine months a year
Speaker 3: for the money to come through. But I wasn't that
Speaker 3: sort of bothered about that. I you know, I did reap,
Speaker 3: you know, reaped the reward, so to speak.
Speaker 2: So I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The first thing was a really nice jacket from a
Speaker 3: place called Jaga that did sort of quite high end stuff.
Speaker 1: Well did your parents say, yeah, you know, you may
Speaker 1: never have another hit you better put this with your
Speaker 1: borrower mits for money in the bank.
Speaker 2: They never said that.
Speaker 3: I don't I think they were, you know, they were
Speaker 3: always in both my mym and dad were very very encouraging.
Speaker 3: And I was lucky to have that in a way,
Speaker 3: because a lot of my contemporaries were being I guess
Speaker 3: encouraged to get a proper job or you know, a profession,
Speaker 3: which was fair enough. But I was lucky in that
Speaker 3: my parents recognized that I had a gift. I was
Speaker 3: terrible at school. I was just dreaming about music all
Speaker 3: the time I was. I didn't get any degrees or
Speaker 3: anything at all, but it all worked out for me.
Speaker 1: So as we say in America, you dropped out of
Speaker 1: high school, you'd never finished high school.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just left the school that I was at
Speaker 3: When I was seventeen. I got a job through my
Speaker 3: parents had some friends that had a gentleman's When I
Speaker 3: say gentlemen, that's putting it. That's a bit of a stretch,
Speaker 3: a gentleman's outfit to shop lear Salford Docks, and I
Speaker 3: worked there until I got the sack. Because I was
Speaker 3: playing with the mockingbirds, leaving work early or coming in
Speaker 3: late the next day, got the sack my manager who
Speaker 3: I had met who actually lived near me. Harvey said,
Speaker 3: you know, this was a good thing. He paid me
Speaker 3: a retailer to write songs basically, and within six months
Speaker 3: I'd had a hit.
Speaker 1: And going back to some of your heres, how'd you
Speaker 1: write listen to people?
Speaker 3: Listen people that? Yeah, I wrote that one on my own.
Speaker 3: I think that was a song that was one of
Speaker 3: the earlier songs that I'd written that wasn't picked up
Speaker 3: by anybody, And I think it was through Harvey having
Speaker 3: his involvement with Herman's Hermits, because it was in a
Speaker 3: film call when the boys meet the else If Memory Serves, and.
Speaker 2: They were looking for songs for it. I know that
Speaker 2: was quite a big hit in America back in the day.
Speaker 1: Youtub great record too. Okay, So you have all these hits,
Speaker 1: then you hit a dry period and you go to
Speaker 1: New York to work with the kings of bubble Gum yea.
Speaker 3: And that seems ridiculous looking back. The idea was that
Speaker 3: they wanted to I think they wanted to move away
Speaker 3: from the bubblegum thing and I wanted to work with
Speaker 3: writers that had more sort of pop credentials if you like.
Speaker 3: And I met them, I liked them, went to New York,
Speaker 3: stayed for about six months there.
Speaker 2: If that.
Speaker 3: Got fed up with it, and I said to them,
Speaker 3: I had a bunch of so as I said, I'm
Speaker 3: involved in a recording studio and with some other guys
Speaker 3: back in the UK, I don't want to stay here
Speaker 3: and record them here. I'm going to take them back
Speaker 3: with me and record them with these friends of mine
Speaker 3: back at the studio that I was a partner in
Speaker 3: back in Stockport, and that was Strawberry Studios. And the
Speaker 3: guys I was want to work with were Kevin and
Speaker 3: Lowell and Eric. So there were several reasons why the
Speaker 3: four of us came together, but one of them certainly
Speaker 3: was this sort of every cloud has a self fanning
Speaker 3: of leaving cousins and cats recording the songs with them,
Speaker 3: with Kevin and Lowell and Eric.
Speaker 1: So when you went to work in New York with
Speaker 1: Kazanets and cats, had you ever been to America before?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: I had, And I'm trying to think what the reason was.
Speaker 3: And I've been there because Herman's Hermit's were did a
Speaker 3: tour with the Hollis in America and I went. I
Speaker 3: went out on that tour with them just to sort
Speaker 3: of basically hang out, which was a great experience.
Speaker 2: I loved it. So I think that was the only
Speaker 2: time I've been before working with them.
Speaker 1: The six months in New York? Were you lonely or
Speaker 1: was it a dream? Here I am in New York
Speaker 1: for six months.
Speaker 3: I think I was more lonely and get me out
Speaker 3: of here. But you know, I did it. I stuck
Speaker 3: with it as much as I could.
Speaker 2: I might. You know, I can't be said it's definitely
Speaker 2: six months. It was around that time anyway, but it was.
Speaker 2: It was quite productive, but I just didn't didn't feel right,
Speaker 2: and I'm glad I didn't. It didn't feel right because.
Speaker 3: You know, that went towards what happened there, went towards
Speaker 3: the formation of TENNESSEEC.
Speaker 1: So tell us how you got involved in Strawberry Studios.
Speaker 3: Strawberry Studios had a different name, and it was owned
Speaker 3: by Eric and a guy called Peter Tatasall, but they
Speaker 3: wanted to expand. I'd met Eric because his band, the
Speaker 3: mind Benders were.
Speaker 2: Their offices.
Speaker 3: Their manager's office was the same office as my, same
Speaker 3: building as my manager Anyway, Eric and I met got
Speaker 3: on very well, and Eric said, we started the studio,
Speaker 3: but we need more. Do you want to become a
Speaker 3: partner in studio? Let's build a proper studio in the
Speaker 3: North of England because at that point anybody wanted to
Speaker 3: make a record would have to go down to London.
Speaker 2: Really, I thought it was a brilliant idea. There were
Speaker 2: so many musicians.
Speaker 3: In in the North of England that would use it,
Speaker 3: we thought. And so that's how I got involved in it.
Speaker 1: And how about the other two members who became members
Speaker 1: of Tendency? See how did they get involved?
Speaker 3: Well, they both Loll and Keaven were at the JLB working,
Speaker 3: you know, rehearsing with their bands, so we knew each
Speaker 3: other from that from that that place.
Speaker 1: So Strawberry Studios. How long before you went to New York?
Speaker 1: Were you working in an owner at Strawberry Studios?
Speaker 3: You mean before we went to New York with with
Speaker 3: with tenn CC, with the original.
Speaker 1: No No No, with ksiands and Cats.
Speaker 2: Oh, probably months, not that long.
Speaker 1: So you come back, you cut all these songs for
Speaker 1: casidds and Cats. What else is going on at Strawberry Studios?
Speaker 1: What's keeping the doors open.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, we were looking for business, so I was
Speaker 3: happy to that, you know. That was another motive for
Speaker 3: bringing the songs back. We were doing all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 3: We were doing football records, we were doing recording choirs.
Speaker 3: Anybody could come in. It was just any old stuff
Speaker 3: we would do. We would like. We became kind of
Speaker 3: like a session band before we started recording in downtown downtime.
Speaker 2: I should say, not downtown.
Speaker 3: Songs that we'd written just for our own amusement, and
Speaker 3: that became the basis for our very first TURNCC album.
Speaker 3: So we we you know, we didn't. It was almost
Speaker 3: like not a conscious decision to form a band. It
Speaker 3: was just that we were kind of like enjoyed each
Speaker 3: other's company. We made a nice noise together, and we
Speaker 3: were lucky that we had the studio. Not only that,
Speaker 3: but the fact that Eric was an engineer as well.
Speaker 3: So a lot of the time I always think that
Speaker 3: a lot of the records benefited by the fact that
Speaker 3: there were just four of us in the studio, no
Speaker 3: one else's opinion, and no one else to ask, you know,
Speaker 3: to worry about.
Speaker 1: At what point do you start working with Neil Sadaka,
Speaker 1: how does that happen.
Speaker 3: We did two albums with Neil, one pre TENCC and
Speaker 3: one post TENSEC. So Harvey, who was my manager at
Speaker 3: the time, he'd met Neil and knew that Neil was
Speaker 3: going to a place called Badly Variety Club in near
Speaker 3: Leeds in the north of England, and has suggested to
Speaker 3: him that he record with me and keV and Lowell
Speaker 3: and Eric at Strawberry Studios. And the upshot of that
Speaker 3: was that I went to meet Neil at the Queen's
Speaker 3: Hotel I think it was, and he'd agreed to this.
Speaker 3: I think we'd agreed to sort of say, well, let's
Speaker 3: see how it works out, but sort of time wise,
Speaker 3: it worked out for him because Leeds wasn't that far
Speaker 3: from Manchester, so he could come to record during the day.
Speaker 3: So I'll stop or I should say. Anyway, I went there.
Speaker 3: He played a load of songs. I recorded them onto
Speaker 3: a cassette player, took them back to the studio and
Speaker 3: Neil came in and we recorded these songs. We made
Speaker 3: that first album, The Trailer Days are over, in like
Speaker 3: two weeks. It was great and one of the things
Speaker 3: that was great about it was not only it was
Speaker 3: Neil that the consummate professional, but as oppose to these days,
Speaker 3: he would the setup would be that me and Loll
Speaker 3: and Kevin would be in the studio with Neil. Neil
Speaker 3: would play the piano, but he'd also sing the lead
Speaker 3: vocal at the same time. So the record was almost finished.
Speaker 3: I put based on later and we do backing vocals
Speaker 3: and any other overdubs.
Speaker 2: But that was the That was the beauty of it,
Speaker 2: that the fact that you know everything. A lot of
Speaker 2: the recording was made in lack in that one take.
Speaker 1: Great And when was the last time you had contact
Speaker 1: with Neil Sedaka?
Speaker 2: I did.
Speaker 3: It's quite a few years ago, maybe about twelve years ago.
Speaker 3: He came over to do an interview or he was
Speaker 3: here and the idea was that he and I would
Speaker 3: be interviewed together, and it was lovely to see him again.
Speaker 2: I must say.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the first TENCC album, how much of that
Speaker 1: is already recorded before you try to get a record deal.
Speaker 2: This quite a bit of it was recorded because we
Speaker 2: just we were just.
Speaker 3: Doing what as I say, recording in downtown just for
Speaker 3: our own pleasure. But the way that record came about
Speaker 3: was that Eric and I'd written a song called Waterfall,
Speaker 3: and Apple Records, the Beatles label, were quite interested in it,
Speaker 3: and we thought, well, in case they do go for it,
Speaker 3: we should get a B side ready, and because Erict
Speaker 3: in the A side, you know, we said to Kevin Oile,
Speaker 3: you should come up with a B side and that
Speaker 3: B side was a song called Donna. And as we
Speaker 3: were recording that, we thought this, there's something special going
Speaker 3: on here. We sent it to Jonathan King, who ran
Speaker 3: UK Records at the time, and he said, I love it.
Speaker 3: He came up to see us, he said, have you
Speaker 3: got a name? We said no, we weren't. We weren't
Speaker 3: a touring band. He said, I had a dream last night.
Speaker 3: I was standing in front of the Hammersmithhodian and on
Speaker 3: the hoarding it said TENCC the best band in the world.
Speaker 2: We said, okay, that'll do. We didn't even discuss it.
Speaker 3: I don't think I don't remember. There was no alternatives.
Speaker 3: We just thought, yeah, that sounds.
Speaker 1: Good, okay. There was an incredible sense of humor, certainly
Speaker 1: on the first album. Yeah, was was that just your personalities?
Speaker 1: Was that conscious? You know what was going on there?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 3: It was it was unconscious that the whole thing about
Speaker 3: ten CC when we were recording was we just did
Speaker 3: what we wanted to do. We didn't keep an eye
Speaker 3: on the charts, we didn't keep an eye anything. We
Speaker 3: didn't listen to the record company, we didn't listen to anybody.
Speaker 3: We just did what we wanted to do. And I
Speaker 3: think that's why it worked.
Speaker 2: We didn't care. We just wanted to do what we
Speaker 2: wanted to do.
Speaker 1: Okay. But like the opening track, Johnny Don't Do It? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it was like a sad tire of the fifties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, it was.
Speaker 3: Actually it was kind of like a follow up to Donna,
Speaker 3: which was also a kind of do what pastif? And
Speaker 3: I love that track. It's so great. It was a
Speaker 3: complete flop when we put it out as a single,
Speaker 3: but a great track.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: We were very good at copying other people's styles, whether
Speaker 3: it was that the Beatles or Beach Boys. We were
Speaker 3: very influenced by Well you can hear all our inferences.
Speaker 1: I think they're pretty and sparent okay, and then tell
Speaker 1: us the story of Rubber Bullets.
Speaker 3: So Rubber Bullets was a song that Kevin and Lowell
Speaker 3: had started and I think they were thinking about, you know,
Speaker 3: like James Cagney films like Angels were dirty faces, you know,
Speaker 3: where the priest tries and keeps the boys calm, and
Speaker 3: it's always Irish for some reason. And and they couldn't
Speaker 3: finish it.
Speaker 2: They wanted a.
Speaker 3: They wanted a different a part to it, like a
Speaker 3: kind of a bridge, and they said, do you want
Speaker 3: to to help us finish this song? I loved what
Speaker 3: they'd already done, so I did, and I wrote the
Speaker 3: sort of middle slow section and some of the lyrics
Speaker 3: as well. We've all got balls and brains, but some's
Speaker 3: got balls and chains. I think that was one of
Speaker 3: my contribution lyrically.
Speaker 1: Okay, this record was not a commercial or radio success
Speaker 1: in the US. How successful was it in the UK?
Speaker 3: I don't I can't remember it did. I think it
Speaker 3: did quite well. It did quite well. We got a
Speaker 3: lot of support from people like John Peel. I don't
Speaker 3: know if you're familiar with John.
Speaker 1: Peele, the radio DJ.
Speaker 3: Yeah, radio DJ, and and lots of other people got
Speaker 3: great reviews. I wouldn't say it was like that, but
Speaker 3: it was obviously not a worldwide smash or anything, but
Speaker 3: it certainly established us and established our sort of style
Speaker 3: how we worked not that we were thinking of we
Speaker 3: have a style. I mean, one of the things about
Speaker 3: TENCC was that because we had the principle of whoever's
Speaker 3: best for the job gets the job. We had different
Speaker 3: singers on different tracks, different guitarists on different tracks, whoever
Speaker 3: was the best, as I say, would get the job.
Speaker 3: And actually we had three number one records in the
Speaker 3: UK and they the three of them have different singers
Speaker 3: on Brother Bullets, has Lol on I'm Not in Love,
Speaker 3: has Eric on, and I sang on Treadler Holiday.
Speaker 1: Okay, did you tour on the first album?
Speaker 2: We did?
Speaker 3: The year after or actually the same year it was released,
Speaker 3: we did, and that was a bit of a shock
Speaker 3: as well. The first gig we did, we went because
Speaker 3: we were born in the studio, so we weren't really
Speaker 3: Eric had some experience of being on the road, and
Speaker 3: so did me and Kevin Lob but not to the
Speaker 3: same extent as Eric, because he'd been with Wen and
Speaker 3: Tarn and the mind Benders and the Mine.
Speaker 2: Benders, who were really quite successful.
Speaker 3: But we got went out on the stage and we
Speaker 3: were met with these screaming fans and it was just
Speaker 3: not expected that that would happen, so but quite a
Speaker 3: nice surprise, I have to say.
Speaker 2: But we didn't expect it because we expected people to listen.
Speaker 1: Okay, you go back into the studio to cut a
Speaker 1: second record, you know, did you feel any pressure? What
Speaker 1: was going through your mind?
Speaker 4: Then?
Speaker 3: No pressure, because it made total sense that we do
Speaker 3: another album. We wanted to do another album. We were
Speaker 3: loving working together. You know, the studio was our playground
Speaker 3: and we were doing, you know, being successful with the
Speaker 3: records that we were putting out. We had four Street Shuffle,
Speaker 3: we had other tracks. So we made the sheet Music album,
Speaker 3: which a lot of.
Speaker 2: People consider our best album, and it was all going,
Speaker 2: all going really really well.
Speaker 1: Okay, whilst Reed Shuffle that got radio. We're play on
Speaker 1: FM in the United States. But it's an interesting record
Speaker 1: in that it continues to have a life because of
Speaker 1: all the shenanigans on Wall Street it does. So is
Speaker 1: that something that you feel on your end, that you know,
Speaker 1: people all of a sudden, you know you have a
Speaker 1: y end to leave your market cetera.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but I'm really pleased that it does.
Speaker 3: You know, it does seem to come up whenever there's
Speaker 3: some sort of financial crisis. I'm very happy about that.
Speaker 1: Okay? How about something like the Sacral Iliac? Where does
Speaker 1: that come from?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 3: That was a song that I wrote with Kevin Godley
Speaker 3: and I'm both here and I have a fear of dancing,
Speaker 3: so we came up with a dance that people who
Speaker 3: can't dance can do or don't do, called the Sacral earlier.
Speaker 2: And it's just an kind of a nonsense song.
Speaker 3: But if I don't really listen to our old stuff
Speaker 3: that much, but if I have listened to it recently
Speaker 3: and I just think it's so clever, I love it.
Speaker 2: It's so weird.
Speaker 1: And then how about the Worst Band of the World.
Speaker 3: That was a song I wrote with Law and Well
Speaker 3: that was based on the what Jonathan King saw on
Speaker 3: the hoarding of the above the Hamma Smith Odeon, which
Speaker 3: was the worst band, which was the best band in
Speaker 3: the world. So we thought, well, we'll be the worst
Speaker 3: band in the world.
Speaker 1: So how does the third album end up being a
Speaker 1: mercury as opposed to UK.
Speaker 3: Because we wanted to go on We wanted to go
Speaker 3: on the road and it was going to cost a
Speaker 3: lot of money, and one of the reasons being that
Speaker 3: we thought the audience should hear us as near as
Speaker 3: dammit like the record.
Speaker 2: So it meant.
Speaker 3: Basically trying to take a recording studio on the road
Speaker 3: to have that quality of sound. And I think Jonathan
Speaker 3: didn't have the money that we needed.
Speaker 2: Our contract had come to an end.
Speaker 3: I think it was I can't remember the actual details
Speaker 3: of the contract, but anyway, we were going to sign
Speaker 3: with Virgin and something happened and we ended up with
Speaker 3: on Phonograph. On Phonograph. Now, whether that's a good thing
Speaker 3: or a bad thing, we'll never know, but I think
Speaker 3: we were pretty upset when I think we've given power
Speaker 3: of attorney to our managers because we were all going
Speaker 3: away and he signed us to Phonogram instead of Virgin.
Speaker 3: I know that Richard Branson was not too pleased with that,
Speaker 3: But however, we did very well with that label, and
Speaker 3: of course you know I'm Not in Love and consequent
Speaker 3: records were released on there very successfully.
Speaker 1: Okay, the original soundtrack was that seen as a concept
Speaker 1: album from the band or was that just a title?
Speaker 3: No, it's it wasn't a concept album. But we always
Speaker 3: thought that our songs were very visual or created. We
Speaker 3: wanted them to create pictures in your mind. Like a
Speaker 3: lot of songwriters do. I'm not saying with the only
Speaker 3: people I've ever thought of that. Yes, So that was
Speaker 3: the idea, and we were very lucky that right from
Speaker 3: the second album we put out sheet music, we'd met
Speaker 3: up with Hypnosis, and this was Hypnosis, the not Merk.
Speaker 3: This is the Hypnosis. The album covered designers who we
Speaker 3: worked with for many years and I'm still working with
Speaker 3: on my solo stuff.
Speaker 2: So they were a perfect match for us.
Speaker 3: And of course this was in the days when artwork
Speaker 3: was really really important, when you could sit down with
Speaker 3: an album and if you were interested, you could see
Speaker 3: who played on this, and who did the who mastered
Speaker 3: the album, who published it, you know, all the details
Speaker 3: that you wouldn't don't necessarily get now unless you would
Speaker 3: go looking for it.
Speaker 1: Working with Hypnosis, to what degree did they come to
Speaker 1: you with ideas and you approved them? What do they
Speaker 1: basically said, you paid us, we'll deliver something that'll be it.
Speaker 3: Well, what used to happen was they they come, they
Speaker 3: come to the studio and they'd come with about maybe
Speaker 3: fifteen different ideas. We'd already sent them the album, so
Speaker 3: they'd already steep themselves in the album.
Speaker 2: So they might pick up on a line of a
Speaker 2: song or just get the.
Speaker 3: General vibe of the album. They come to the studio
Speaker 3: and sort of turn the studio into.
Speaker 2: An art gallery.
Speaker 3: They'd pin pictures of these rough ideas for a sleeve
Speaker 3: on the wall and we would walk round like an exhibition,
Speaker 3: which is brilliant, and we'd reach an agreement and that
Speaker 3: would be it. I mean sometimes that one album that
Speaker 3: we did was Deceptive Benz and it was an title
Speaker 3: I came up with because we had a studio in
Speaker 3: Dorking and I used to drive from London down to
Speaker 3: Dorking and on there was a road sign on one
Speaker 3: of the roads that said Deceptive Benz, which was I
Speaker 3: thought a very subtle thing for the Ministry of Transport
Speaker 3: to right rather than rather than dangerous bends, you know.
Speaker 3: But it struck me because you know, the guitar bends
Speaker 3: DB's are how you measure sound, and it just sounded
Speaker 3: nice that this is interesting. And they came up with
Speaker 3: all different ideas, originally of things happening on roads, which
Speaker 3: we didn't kind of take to. But then they came
Speaker 3: up with the idea of the diver on the front cover.
Speaker 3: If you're familiar with it with the beautiful woman in
Speaker 3: his arms, and of course he was suffering from the
Speaker 3: benz and that is so typical of hypnosis to come
Speaker 3: up with.
Speaker 2: An idea like that.
Speaker 3: Great brilliant genius and I worked with Storm right until
Speaker 3: his passing in two thousand and twelve. I think it
Speaker 3: was he actually did an album cover for me, a
Speaker 3: solo album cover from me called The Love and Work,
Speaker 3: and that was one of the last projects he worked on.
Speaker 1: And going back to the original soundtrack, did everyone agree
Speaker 1: that One Night in Piris would be the opening track,
Speaker 1: because that's a unique, lengthy, almost nine minute opening track.
Speaker 2: Yes, we did, although I think Eric and I did
Speaker 2: edit it somewhat. I think it was going to be longer.
Speaker 3: I think, in fact, that the original idea was for
Speaker 3: it to take up side one of the album. We
Speaker 3: thought that was a little excessive, so I remember we
Speaker 3: did cut it down a bit. But what a wonderful
Speaker 3: piece of work that is. I have to say, a
Speaker 3: Kevin Love genius song.
Speaker 1: So what was the genesis of a Martin love So.
Speaker 3: I always wanted us to write a love song, but
Speaker 3: we've avoided it because it was you know, everybody's writing
Speaker 3: love songs, and but I said we could write a
Speaker 3: great one. Eric came up with the perfect title, which
Speaker 3: was I'm Not in love and you can read into
Speaker 3: that what you will. And the song was written really quickly.
Speaker 3: I had I had this sort of opening, these two
Speaker 3: chords that open open the track. And when the song
Speaker 3: was written really quickly, we recorded it as a kind
Speaker 3: of a Boston over and hated it and we erased it.
Speaker 3: Anything we didn't like we erased. We were worried about
Speaker 3: people getting hold of it. Is it kind of a shame, really,
Speaker 3: it would be nice to hear that person now. But anyway,
Speaker 3: Kevin came up with the the song stuck with us.
Speaker 3: We all liked the song. Kevin came up with this
Speaker 3: idea of a different rhythm and why not do it
Speaker 3: just with voices and nothing else. We thought, wow, this
Speaker 3: is like a revolutionary idea. How the hell are we
Speaker 3: going to do it? Well, what we're going to do
Speaker 3: we need to do a rhythm track. So we made
Speaker 3: a rhythm track really quickly, which was myself, Eric and
Speaker 3: Loll and Kevin. Just like the bass from Sound came
Speaker 3: from a.
Speaker 2: Mini move.
Speaker 3: I played electro rhythm guitar and Eric played keyboard, and
Speaker 3: even at that point we thought there's something happening here.
Speaker 3: But we pursued the idea of the of doing it
Speaker 3: all with voices, the idea being we do all the voices,
Speaker 3: but we needed a backing track as a sort of
Speaker 3: guide for us to sing to. Then we take the
Speaker 3: backing track off, but everything sounded so wonderful as we were.
Speaker 2: Everything every idea we.
Speaker 3: Had worked, and that meant we had a great you know,
Speaker 3: something good was going on. And when we finished it,
Speaker 3: we just used to play it back to ourselves, turn
Speaker 3: the lights off in the control room, lind the floor
Speaker 3: and listen to it and tell each other how great
Speaker 3: we were. But nobody ever said this could be a
Speaker 3: massive hit. We just thought this is like a fantastic
Speaker 3: album track. But then when we played it to everybody
Speaker 3: else and everyone said.
Speaker 1: This could be big, and you know, there's a video
Speaker 1: online about leayering the vocals, how did you ultimately do it?
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, we made loops of every note that we
Speaker 3: needed that we flew back into the multi track and
Speaker 3: ended up using the mixing desk as an instrument, so
Speaker 3: we didn't have all that we needed to mix all
Speaker 3: these I think they're about thirteen tracks of with different notes.
Speaker 3: We needed to mix them down to a stereo pair,
Speaker 3: so we would all man like two faders each and
Speaker 3: move them around as the track was playing to get
Speaker 3: this final stereo pair mix of the backing vocals. So
Speaker 3: I don't think I'd ever been done before. What was
Speaker 3: great about it was that as we were doing it,
Speaker 3: we didn't know what we were going to get because
Speaker 3: it was just building up and building up and building up.
Speaker 3: Of course, nowadays you wouldn't do that. You'd just go
Speaker 3: to some sort of sampler and just just one keyboard
Speaker 3: player could do the whole thing, but it wouldn't sound
Speaker 3: like ours because ours was kind of flawed in a
Speaker 3: way in that you know, things aren't perfectly in tune,
Speaker 3: notes of chorusing against one another. But it was fantastic
Speaker 3: to be a part of creating something unique.
Speaker 2: I think, and.
Speaker 1: It becomes a gigeantic hit. What was that like from
Speaker 1: the other side of the fence.
Speaker 3: It took us by surprise, I think, but meant that
Speaker 3: we could. It elevated the band's position all around the world,
Speaker 3: no doubt about it.
Speaker 1: So did you feel a pressure to come up with
Speaker 1: something equally successful on how Dare You? The follow up album.
Speaker 3: I don't think we felt pressure, but there was a
Speaker 3: feeling now that, particularly from Kevin and Lowell, that we
Speaker 3: kind of they kind of done it. They were and
Speaker 3: I sense this in it when I if I listened
Speaker 3: to that album, a little cloud gathering on the horizon
Speaker 3: that they weren't entirely happy.
Speaker 2: They I think, gotten fed up with.
Speaker 3: The writing, then recording, then rehearsing, and then touring and
Speaker 3: all the other stuff that goes with it. I think
Speaker 3: things have got a bit predictable for them, whereas for
Speaker 3: me and Eric, this was exactly what we wanted, but
Speaker 3: they wanted also. They had come up with this invention
Speaker 3: called a gizmo, which was an attachment that went under
Speaker 3: the guitar, and the mate started making an album that
Speaker 3: came out eventually called Consequences, which was three albums set.
Speaker 3: And during the recording of that, we were saying to them,
Speaker 3: you know, we should really get back to the record company,
Speaker 3: want something, and we should get back to being tense
Speaker 3: s And they said, we want to finish this, and
Speaker 3: you know it could have been handled better. I mean,
Speaker 3: Kevin and I spoke about this quite a lot. What
Speaker 3: we should how we should have handled it. Whereas they
Speaker 3: could have finished that we would have survived taking time off. Anyway,
Speaker 3: it didn't happen, and the up shot of it was
Speaker 3: that Kevin and All left the band, which still upsets
Speaker 3: me to this day that they didn't. I think we
Speaker 3: could have gone on to do amazing things.
Speaker 1: But on the album before they leave, tell us about
Speaker 1: art for art sake?
Speaker 3: Well, that was something that my dad used to say
Speaker 3: to me. Now, my dad, it's quite a cynical phrase.
Speaker 3: Art for art sake, money for God's sake, But he
Speaker 3: wasn't a cynical man, but he loved that phrase because
Speaker 3: it was funny. So we had that title and Eric
Speaker 3: and I just wrote the song. I mean, another song
Speaker 3: that was written really really quickly. I can't tell you
Speaker 3: that much about the actual writer. I don't remember that
Speaker 3: much about the writing of the song. But you know,
Speaker 3: if you have a great title, it's you know, it's
Speaker 3: a big it's a major thing.
Speaker 1: So tell us about the gizmo and the two of
Speaker 1: them really believed in it. Were you skeptical from day one?
Speaker 3: I wasn't skeptical, but the problem with it was it
Speaker 3: was very temperamental, as an instrument. It was an attachment
Speaker 3: for the guitar that contained six wheels and these little
Speaker 3: pads that you'd pressed down and the revolving wheel that
Speaker 3: had a kind of serrated edge would hit the string,
Speaker 3: so you get the effect of almost like a violin,
Speaker 3: and you could play the six pads and it would
Speaker 3: create this really great noise. But I always said that,
Speaker 3: you know, it sounds great, it's got a million pounds
Speaker 3: studio attached to it, so, you know, because it needs
Speaker 3: to be multi tracked to make it sound effective. But
Speaker 3: it was an interesting sound and they really believed in it.
Speaker 3: But I think that was, you know, a contributing factor
Speaker 3: to them leaving the band pursuing this thing that actually suffered.
Speaker 3: I think, however good or bad it was, you know,
Speaker 3: the age of the synthesizer was coming in, and I
Speaker 3: think that would have really made it, you know, not
Speaker 3: a commercial possibility.
Speaker 1: So the two of you saw Gern you and Eric.
Speaker 1: You have the album Deceptive Bens and you have another
Speaker 1: Gigea to get with the Things we Do for Love?
Speaker 1: Where does that come from?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 3: I had this sort of these intro chords and Eric
Speaker 3: we started writing the song. I remember Eric wanted the
Speaker 3: right song about suicide, said, this song is not this
Speaker 3: isn't a suicide.
Speaker 2: This is kind of like a more definitely more upbeat.
Speaker 3: And to give him credit, came up with the title
Speaker 3: you know Things We Do for love it. It's a
Speaker 3: great title. And we recorded it. We wrote it, recorded it,
Speaker 3: and we knew we had something special. In fact, I
Speaker 3: remember at one point during the recording of it, Eric
Speaker 3: was doing some backing vocals in it. He added one
Speaker 3: harmony that suddenly said I said to him, I said,
Speaker 3: this is a hit now that it was like a
Speaker 3: tipping point where if you're in the studio where something
Speaker 3: happens and you go, wow, this is so good. And yep,
Speaker 3: that was a big hit for us in America and
Speaker 3: a lot of places around the world.
Speaker 1: Tell me about the middle where it's you have the
Speaker 1: scene song you talked about the rain and the show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you you wrote about that once and you actually
Speaker 3: picked up on the you said like the sort of
Speaker 3: sixth chord about it. I'll give Eric the credit for
Speaker 3: that part of the song. It's kind of sing song.
Speaker 3: I did sort of question it in my head a
Speaker 3: bit at the time, I remember, but hey, it worked.
Speaker 1: Okay, the opening song, good Morning Judge.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was that came out of a I think
Speaker 3: I wrote you about this out of a conversation as
Speaker 3: having my dad about people being institutionalized who spent they
Speaker 3: continually going back to prison, and I was talking to
Speaker 3: Eric about it and we thought that this is a
Speaker 3: this is a this is a good idea.
Speaker 2: For a song, and I knew about that.
Speaker 3: There was there was a joke that I'd heard and
Speaker 3: the punchline was and good morning judge, and that was all.
Speaker 3: I don't remember the joke very well at all. I
Speaker 3: can't remember it at all what the actual joke was.
Speaker 3: But the combination of having that title and and the
Speaker 3: general concept of it as someone who always gets into
Speaker 3: trouble and there's a there's also kind of like a
Speaker 3: wats a boy to do kind of element to it
Speaker 3: as well. And yeah, that was a good good record
Speaker 3: for us in the UK certainly.
Speaker 1: Okay, And the second side ends with an eleven and
Speaker 1: a half minute track, Feel the Benefit. Once you get hooked,
Speaker 1: you can you almost can't dig it off. You have
Speaker 1: to plead again and again. Tell me about feel the Benefit.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: So when I was a little boy, I used to
Speaker 3: come in from the cold. My mum would say to me,
Speaker 3: take your coat off, so that when you go out
Speaker 3: again you'll feel the benefit. So that there's a there's
Speaker 3: a title. That's where the title came from. And after
Speaker 3: we'd done most of the recording on Deceptive Bends, we
Speaker 3: had quite a few odds and ends musical odds and
Speaker 3: ends hanging around that we thought were really good. For
Speaker 3: some reason, we didn't want to make them into songs
Speaker 3: on their own, and we decided to put them together
Speaker 3: and it kind of worked. Now had this sort of
Speaker 3: John Lennony type intro guitar intro like I sort of
Speaker 3: Dear Prudence type thing that I loved, and they just
Speaker 3: think we just put the things together and it worked
Speaker 3: because it's not a matter of just putting things together,
Speaker 3: you know. There has to be some sort of sense
Speaker 3: to it. Why it works, I don't know, but it does.
Speaker 1: Okay, you have a huge success. The next album, Bloody
Speaker 1: Tourists Off has another record that has continued to live
Speaker 1: and tell us about the creation of dreadlock Holiday.
Speaker 2: Okay, dread Loote Holiday.
Speaker 3: Was written at my house after both Eric and I
Speaker 3: have been on holiday. He'd been to Barbados and I'd
Speaker 3: been to Jamaica. We started talking about our experiences. I
Speaker 3: was sat down with the guitar and I started playing
Speaker 3: the opening chords to it and in this sort of
Speaker 3: reggae sort of rhythm, and so we talked about our
Speaker 3: various experiences. And then I remember that I'd been had
Speaker 3: a conversation with someone at the hotel I was staying
Speaker 3: at him in Jamaica, and we were talking about sports.
Speaker 3: I've talked about Manchester United and I said, what about cricket?
Speaker 2: Do you do you like cricket?
Speaker 3: He said no. I said, I'm surprised. He said, I
Speaker 3: love it. Gave me the line, and so like a
Speaker 3: couple of months later, when Eric and I were talking
Speaker 3: about the you know, various different experiences while we were
Speaker 3: both on holiday, this line popped into my head right
Speaker 3: to the right spot.
Speaker 2: It was just perfect.
Speaker 1: Okay, from the outside, it looked like ten CC went
Speaker 1: into a Denu mall. It was started feeding there. Certainly
Speaker 1: weren't more successful radio tracks. What was it like on
Speaker 1: the inside? After bloody tourists not good?
Speaker 2: Eric had had an accident.
Speaker 3: That really affected him quite badly, so he was out
Speaker 3: of action for a year. I started doing other projects,
Speaker 3: and when we came back together again, it really wasn't
Speaker 3: the same. We did an album that Andrew Gold was
Speaker 3: involved with, and I loved working with him and continued
Speaker 3: to work with him after Erica and I split up,
Speaker 3: but there was a general sort of malaise where everything
Speaker 3: it was like our time has passed. And I remember
Speaker 3: going into the record company with an album. I can't
Speaker 3: remember which album it was. I'm playing it to the
Speaker 3: head of the label and you know, I don't know
Speaker 3: if you know this, but when you're playing something to somebody,
Speaker 3: if it's something wrong with it, it's glaringly obvious that
Speaker 3: this isn't very good. And I started sort of feeling
Speaker 3: I could tell by his expression as well it wasn't
Speaker 3: It was obvious. And then he said I want to
Speaker 3: play something. He didn't say anything else other than that,
Speaker 3: and he played a private investigation by Direstrates, which.
Speaker 2: Was it was phenomenal.
Speaker 3: So I think we got the point that we'd better
Speaker 3: do better, but it didn't happen. I mean, Eric and
Speaker 3: I had a very very strange relationship. We did another
Speaker 3: album with Gary Katz in New York that was a
Speaker 3: complete disaster, even though we had some really wonderful musicians
Speaker 3: on it, so it was enough we did. There were
Speaker 3: some attempts at reunions that was just horrible and hard
Speaker 3: had enough. There were other attempts to sort of revive us.
Speaker 3: Our American record company suggested that we work with the
Speaker 3: late Andrew Gold, which I thought was an absolutely brilliant
Speaker 3: idea because I was a massive fan of his anyway,
Speaker 3: and to give him credit, we did record and he
Speaker 3: co produced and co wrote three tracks on our ten
Speaker 3: out of Ten album and all those those three albums,
Speaker 3: those three tracks were actually he chosen as singles, which
Speaker 3: you know, you know, says that they were worthy of that.
Speaker 2: So that was a good move.
Speaker 3: And after that album, I'd had enough with Eric, and
Speaker 3: the first person I contacted was was Andrew and said,
Speaker 3: I got a little studio at my house. Do you
Speaker 3: want to come over for a couple of weeks and
Speaker 3: just let's mess around there. He stayed for about yeah,
Speaker 3: stay for two months, I think, and we just had
Speaker 3: a great time together, really clicked musically and on a
Speaker 3: personal level as well. And you know, to the time
Speaker 3: is untimely passing. We remained in contact with each other.
Speaker 3: We had joined the eighties, we had a band called Wax.
Speaker 3: We had a couple of hits, not in America unfortunately,
Speaker 3: but we did, you know, quite well. And we just
Speaker 3: loved working together. And I actually think some of the
Speaker 3: stuff that we did together as some of the best
Speaker 3: stuff I've ever been involved with.
Speaker 1: So what was it like working with the edge was
Speaker 1: opposed to the previous people you worked with.
Speaker 3: He was very, very creative, He could play everything. He
Speaker 3: was very good at everything he did musically, I have
Speaker 3: to say, and he was just a delightful person to
Speaker 3: be with. It was funny, you know, we kind of
Speaker 3: we loved each other. It was wonderful. I'd say, one
Speaker 3: of my happiest collaborations and friendships. And I you know,
Speaker 3: I miss him very much to this day. So we
Speaker 3: recorded three albums together. He did have a terrible problem
Speaker 3: with flying, he didn't like that, and eventually we did
Speaker 3: record After the third album, we actually both agreed that
Speaker 3: if we didn't have any sort of significant success, we
Speaker 3: would call it a day as far as being having
Speaker 3: a band together, but that we would carry on working,
Speaker 3: you know, writing together, which we did do.
Speaker 1: So what's it like having this amazing success as you
Speaker 1: talk about the record exec playing you dire streets and
Speaker 1: you know you're doing what you do. You're as talented
Speaker 1: as you ever was, but the game keeps changing. What's
Speaker 1: it like to be in that position?
Speaker 3: Well, we knew the game had changed actually before that,
Speaker 3: because with the the punk here that came in and
Speaker 3: suddenly sort of whatever you like to call it art
Speaker 3: rock or prog rock or whatever, was suddenly very out
Speaker 3: of favor, and you know, everything got very very punkish.
Speaker 3: So I did sense that there was a big shift
Speaker 3: in what was going on in music at that time.
Speaker 3: But I've always welt that one should just keep doing
Speaker 3: what it's in your you know, do what's in your heart, right,
Speaker 3: what's in your heart, and things will turn out okay.
Speaker 3: You know, I feel in a way that I've had
Speaker 3: sort of three important careers in my life. What one
Speaker 3: is a writer in the sixties ten SC Definitely I'm
Speaker 3: working with Andrew. So now I'm in a place where,
Speaker 3: you know, I have the TENSEC Band, which is a
Speaker 3: touring band.
Speaker 2: I don't record under that name.
Speaker 3: It doesn't feel right to me, but it feels certainly
Speaker 3: feels right to be able to go out and tour
Speaker 3: the band and I make my own solo albums, which
Speaker 3: I love doing, and there that's one of my you know,
Speaker 3: the great pleasure to me and something that I'll always
Speaker 3: continue to do.
Speaker 1: So how much do you work when you're on the road.
Speaker 1: You're working, but in terms of creating, going in the studio,
Speaker 1: laying down your stuff, how motivated and how often are
Speaker 1: you working?
Speaker 2: Now? Well, I get bored very easily.
Speaker 3: So I love my family and I love my work,
Speaker 3: so I'm always doing something I can't sort of keep still.
Speaker 3: In fact, I did when I did this record that
Speaker 3: I spoke about before with Brian May.
Speaker 2: Last year. At the beginning of last year.
Speaker 3: I started writing some songs after that and suddenly found
Speaker 3: myself writing another you know, solo album which I've just
Speaker 3: finished that's coming out in June. So there's there's always something,
Speaker 3: There's always something to do. And there's a couple of
Speaker 3: other projects which are we'll see if they work out
Speaker 3: at the moment. But I guess I'm of an age
Speaker 3: now where you know, you really should just be doing
Speaker 3: what you like, you love to do, and I'm lucky
Speaker 3: enough to be able to do it.
Speaker 1: And how did you end up going out with Ringo Store?
Speaker 3: I got a uh my, our agent got a message
Speaker 3: from David Hart, who's their producer on the you know,
Speaker 3: the show's producer, and they said they sell up a
Speaker 3: meeting and I walked into the office and they asked
Speaker 3: me the stupid question, would you like to join a
Speaker 3: band with Ringo Starr? And ye know, what's the boy
Speaker 3: to do? I said, definitely, and and that's how it
Speaker 3: came about.
Speaker 2: I think that.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to think Richard, Richard I can't remember his
Speaker 3: second name, who was with the bass player was taking
Speaker 3: time out. They wanted somebody else, and you know, I'm
Speaker 3: actually not quite sure how they landed on me. But anyway,
Speaker 3: I was absolutely delighted to do it. I had a
Speaker 3: wonderful time. I really enjoyed it very much, and I
Speaker 3: would have done another tour. I was asked to do
Speaker 3: another tour, but I had tendency c commitments, so I
Speaker 3: couldn't do it.
Speaker 1: So what was it like being out with Ringo in
Speaker 1: his mad cap room?
Speaker 3: It was fantastic, as you can imagine, slightly surreal. I
Speaker 3: actually wrote a song about it called standing next to
Speaker 3: Me because I'd be playing away and then you know,
Speaker 3: with Ringo wasn't playing the drums. It would be standing
Speaker 3: to my right and I'd sort of look around and go,
Speaker 3: blood the hell, it's Ringo stuff. It was fantastic because,
Speaker 3: as I said before, the Beatles were my biggest influence,
Speaker 3: and obviously he's a major part of that. And I
Speaker 3: wrote a song about it, be called standing next to
Speaker 3: Me that describes my time on the road with Ringo.
Speaker 3: It was great, not only just Ringo but Steve Lucafer,
Speaker 3: Greg Berson, I, Greg Rowley, Colin Hay, just lovely guys.
Speaker 2: It was brilliant. I really loved it.
Speaker 1: Well bloody how it's Graham Goldman. I listened to those
Speaker 1: records incessantly, dedicated fans saw you live. Graham. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for taking the time to talk to my audience.
Speaker 2: My pleasure, Bob Oh, it's nice to talk to you.
Speaker 1: And don't forget you can go see ten CC and
Speaker 1: hear all these hits this summer in the US until
Speaker 1: next time. This is Bob left Sex