Should 10cc Be Taken Seriously?
Should 10cc Be Taken Seriously?
BYJIM FARBER
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10cc may be the most gloriously absurd band ever. What other group would combine the sensibility of Frank Zappa with the sound of The Archies? Or meld doo-wop, opera, heavy metal, and swing music in the same song? Or write lyrics from the point of view of a ticking time bomb and play it for laughs?
10cc
To top it all off, 10cc managed to turn their cracked explorations into hits. From the gleefully anarchic "Rubber Bullets
" to the cheeky Capitalist send-up "Wall Street Shuffle," 10cc enjoyed an extended run of chart scores in the '70s and '80s. Most came in their native U.K., where wit counts for a lot more than it does in the more literal-minded States. Though often categorized as the world's greatest "art-pop" band, 10cc might better be described as the world's greatest "absurdist pop" band, blasting out sounds and sensibilities that melded The Beatles with Monty Python.
But their work wasn't all about smirks and subversion. 10cc approached the studio like scientists, tricking up their guitars and keyboards to create sounds like no one else's, while layering their vocals to parallel the loony grandeur of Queen. Their gleeful antics distracted many critics from the ground-breaking work going on inside the music. As a result, 10cc were never taken as seriously as they deserved.
In semi-serious celebration, let's dive into 10cc's rabbit hole and see what we find.
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Before they became 10cc, each of the band's four members—Graham Gouldman, Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley and Lol Crème—spent years perfecting their chops as writers and musicians in scores of pop-oriented projects. Starting in the early '60s, these Manchester-born players worked, in various configurations, on projects that ranged from promising to dead-on-arrival.
By the mid-'60's, Gouldman turned that around, enjoying major success as a songwriter by penning blissful classics like "Heart Full of Soul
" and "For Your Love" for the Yardbirds, "Look Through Any Window" and "Bus Stop" for The Hollies, and "East West" and "Listen People" for Herman's Hermits. Guitarist Stewart made headway, too, as a member of Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, who scored big hits with "The Game of Love" and "A Groovy Kind of Love." The four solidified their connection while working at their own Strawberry Studios in 1967, where they cranked out the kind of fly-away bubble gum singles 10cc would later satirize. In 1972, all four artists provided much of the instrumentation for a huge comeback album for Neil Sedaka named "Solitaire." Its success inspired them to try and make it as their own unit. A demo they sent to Apple Records got the thumbs down, which led them to the door of Jonathan King, a highly colorful producer and sometime star, who signed them to his own U.K. Records. In July of 1973, that indie label released their self-titled debut.
'10cc' (1973)
10cc
10cc's first album opened with a flourish—literally. A rush of orchestration greeted the listener, providing an apt curtain-raiser for the theatricality of what came next. A satiric tone hit listeners from the start, established by "Johnny Don't Do It," a keening send-up of kitschy girl group odes of the early '60s. Two tracks later, the band switched genders for "Donna," another falsetto-drenched period piece that could have come from the lips of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. The latter served as the band's first single, hitting No. 2 in the U.K. They bested that with "Rubber Bullets," which hit the top spot in Britain and earned 10cc their first airplay in the U.S. The antic rhythm and saturated color of the vocals made the song sound like it was recorded by elves. But the real innovation came in the guitar solo, a double-tracked bit devised by Eric Stewart who manipulated various tape speeds to make his axe sound dentist drill high. There's lots of Beach Boys influence in the song, along with a rockabilly mania. There's even a flash of unhinged opera in the vocal chorale. Lyrically, "Rubber Bullets" restages Elvis' "Jailhouse Rock," but because, at the time, British soldiers were using rubber bullets on rioters in Northern Ireland, the song caused some controversy, though not enough for the BBC to ban it.
The band's debut housed a third UK hit, "The Dean and I," a mock-bubble gum romp with lyrics narrated by a dad who tells his kids how his lust turned to boredom with their mother. It's hardly the only outre narrative on the set. In "The Hospital Song" a patient lusts for the drugs they give him ("I'm grateful for my anesthetic/out goes the spark/delirious and apathetic"). Likewise, in "Headline Hustler," George Harrison-sweet guitars serenade lyrics capturing the vows of a sleazy journalist. The zany quality of such songs suited the campy animation of the glam-rock age, putting the band right in step with the times while giving them their own twists.
'Sheet Music' (1974)
Regarded by many fans as their finest work, 'Sheet Music' found a band fired by ideas at every turn. Each song gorged on unusual sounds, jammed into the tidiest pop melodies imaginable. Ballsy guitar riffs alternated with flouncy keyboards, as the music skimmed the best of pop from the '30s through the '70s. The album contains the band's hardest rocking song, "Wall Street Shuffle," a Top Ten U.K. hit which traced the greed and fluctuations of the financial market. The lyrics piled on the cornball word play: "You need a yen/to make a mark/if you want to make money."
The album also shows the writers' love for shifting lyrical viewpoints. In "The Worst Band in The World," the narration switches from a guy in that crappy group to their 45 rpm song itself. In "Clockwork Creep," a time bond stashed on a 747 tells the tale, before the narrator switches to let the plane speak. The music pivots on Crème's piano, which mimics the bomb's countdown. As irony lovers, the writers in 10cc naturally viewed romance as an easy target, which they hit with gusto in "Silly Love." The lyrics make attraction look ludicrous, aided by a guitar line that ranks on the happy/shiny sound of Paul McCartney's solo albums. Interestingly, Sir Paul himself was working in a neighboring studio at the time, and lent the band his drum kit for the sessions. Like the band's debut, the writing credits tended to break down to either Stewart/Gouldman or Godley/Crème. But that didn't always hold. Sometimes, the teams mixed up their ranks. Likewise, each of the four took turns singing lead, giving 10cc a wealth of configurations to draw upon.
'The Original Soundtrack' (1974)
Very generally speaking, the oddest songs in the 10cc playbook came from Godley and Crème, the most friendly from Stewart/Gouldman. That split played itself out most dramatically in the first two songs on the band's biggest selling album, 'The Original Soundtrack'. The opener, "Un Nuit En Paris," penned by Godley and Crème, couldn't be more daring. Its chaser, "I'm Not In Love," by Stewart/Gouldman, couldn't be more embraceable. At the same time, the latter included some of the band's most subtly unusual lyrics. Together, the one-two punch of those songs idealized the breadth of 10cc's talent. "Paris" sprawls over three acts, a joke in itself since they all take place on the same night in the same general area. A mock-operetta, "Un Nuit" tells the story of a hapless British tourist in the French city of love, who one night has encounters with con men, a prostitute and a doomed policeman. Presaging "Bohemian Rhapsody," the song borrows the billowing vocals of opera by way of the Marx Brothers. As always, the writers revel in groaning lines like "That's the way the croissant crumbles" and "all our girls are, how you say, good in the sack." The song also served as a template for "One Night in Bangkok," a hit from the '80s musical Chess.
"I'm Not In Love" provides a sumptuous chaser to "Paris." It's the loveliest melody the group ever recorded, explaining why it became their biggest international hit. When Mercury Records heard the demo they signed the band out from under Jonathan King's label to a multi-million dollar advance before they heard a single other note. The investment paid off when the song shot to No. 1 in the U.K. and No. 2 in the normally more resistant U.S. The song soared on its cascading vocals, led by Stewart, who wrote the main melody. It's one of the band's most sincere readings. The message, however, wasn't overtly commercial. The song epitomizes that classic Shakespearean line about the man "who doth protest too much." The more the narrator denies his love, the deeper we suspect it runs. Though the six-minute song had an edited version for the single, listeners often insisted it be played in full, so enthralled were they by its sumptuous production, pillowy vocals and gorgeous melody.
Amazingly, "Love" wasn't the first single released from the album. Beating it by two months was the gleefully preposterous "Life Is a Minestrone," a zippy Brit Top Ten which included the deathless couplets: "Life is a minestrone/served up with parmesan cheese/death is a cold lasagna/suspended in deep freeze."
Believe it or not, that wasn't the album's strangest cut. That prize goes to "The Second Sitting of the Last Supper," an irreverent hard rocker that remarks on Jesus' tardy return. ("Two thousand years and he ain't shown yet"). The album's secret treasure, however, was the gorgeous "Channel Swimmer," whose lyrics contain a twist in the very last line.
'How Dare You' (1975)
To suit their love of left-curves, 10cc opened their fourth, and final, album as a quartet with an instrumental that sounded like an overture for a musical that was never to be. It blithely bridged the style of Bond themes, Bollywood scores, and lounge anthems, goosed by the band's trademark chiming guitars and a ripping percussion effect. From there, the elevator of eclecticism kept rising. "Lazy Ways" used a military beat, and Gilbert and Sullivan-style vocals, to tell a classic "revenge of the nerd" tale. The sociopathic anthem "Iceberg" had the jazzy lunacy of the Lambert-Hendricks-Ross classic "Twisted," while "Rock 'n' Roll Lullaby," a cheesy '50s-style ballad crooned by Crème, found a bitter adult projecting his fears and regrets onto his helpless child. Amid the strangeness, the band came up with two hits. The zippy "I'm Mandy, Fly Me," shifted the sexist lens of airline advertising to the sexual frustration of a man lured in by it. "Art for Art's Sake," meanwhile, played the title phrase off the punch line "money for God's sake." It's a balance 10cc navigated perfectly, creating art songs that paid them handsomely.
The Aftermath
In 1976, Godley and Crème split from the band, leaving Stewart and Gouldman to carry on. The departing duo wanted to develop a solo project to showcase a new device they had created called "The Gizmo." It was capable of recreating the sounds of multiple instruments, sort of like a modern answer to the mellotron. The other guys felt this a betrayal, which led to the break. With half the band gone, the British press dubbed the remaining members 5cc. While that wasn't entire fair, there's no denying that the act lost something significant in the split. Their first album as the new 10cc, 'Deceptive Bends', streamlined the sound and axed the most demented lyrics, though they did retain a certain humor. The winnowing resulted in a big hit, "The Things We Do For Love," a soft-rock sing-along which hid a cynical message. The band tried to show its continued ambition by including an eleven-and-a-half-minute suite, titled "Feel the Benefit," but it lacked the cheerful insanity of "Un Nuit En Paris."
The slimmed-down 10cc continued to have hits, like the 1977 tourist trap anthem "Dreadlock Holiday," and they continued to put out albums until 1995. Meanwhile, Godley & Crème went on to a highly successful career as pioneers of the new '80s art-form, music video, along with scoring a massive hit with "Cry." Still, only the first four 10cc albums pool all their talents to create the ultimate skewed stew.
