10cc's Graham Gouldman: Hanging out with Ringo

He has written some of the greatest songs ever recorded — I’m Not in Love for one – but 10cc’s Graham Gouldman still has musical heroes. So he felt both “honoured” and “slightly scared” when he was asked by Beatles drummer Ringo Starr to join his All-Starr Band tour of America and Europe in 2018.

“I’d be on stage playing and he would stand next to me, and sometimes I’d get lost in the music and then look around and go, ‘bloody hell, that’s Ringo Starr!’ It was impossible for me to forget who he was. And the reason being because the Beatles were my biggest influence.”

Growing up in Salford, Gouldman discovered music aged seven and at 11 fell in love with guitar-playing when a cousin brought him a cheap six-string back from Spain. It was at his local Jewish Lads Brigade that he met two of his future bandmates, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme, while Eric Stewart of The Mindbenders completed the four-piece, who in 1972 became 10cc.

Gouldman’s love of The Beatles was sparked by hearing Love Me Do in 1963. “I remember being really moved by it and seeing a picture of them on a magazine called Mersey Beat. They were really mysterious looking, holding guitars that I’d never seen before, and those things hooked me and many other people into what they were doing.”

Not long before, Gouldman had started playing in local Manchester bands: the Jewish group The Whirlwinds, followed by the Columbia-signed Mockingbirds with Godley on drums. A raft of hit songs written for The Hollies, The Yardbirds and Herman’s Hermits followed (For Your Love, a song rejected by Columbia nevertheless became The Yardbirds’ first Top 10 hit in 1965, Heart Full of Soul, Bus Stop, No Milk Today are all his). His songwriting success led to a stint in New York, writing with pop producers Jerry Kasenetz and Jeffry Katz, before he returned to his friends back home.

Now inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, Gouldman credits not just the Beatles for inspiring him, but his encouraging parents Betty and Hymie who never pushed him to take a “proper job”.

“I think they recognised that I had a gift. What was quite fun was we [The Whirlwinds] used to play working men’s clubs and in the north of England they’re pretty rough places. So they would never in a million years have gone to these places, but they came because it was supporting us.”

His father also happened to be a writer himself, writing plays, poetry, newspaper articles and running an amateur dramatic society alongside his paid day job in fashion. “He was very helpful to me when I started writing songs. He was a wordsmith and sometimes I’d write something and take it to him and he’d make it better, or he’d come up with ideas.” One such song was No Milk Today, to which Gouldman’s father contributed the title and many lyrics.

Long before meeting Starr, Gouldman met Paul McCartney around 1973 when the Beatle used 10cc’s Strawberry Studios in Stockport to record his brother’s album. “They used to commute every day because Strawberry Studios was probably the best studio in the north of England at the time. We were recording our Sheet Music album during the day and then Paul would come in later and record. So I saw a lot of him then; it was great.”

And, yes, he was starstruck when they first met. “I had a stupid conversation with him about guitar straps or something that, as I was saying it, I thought ‘this is idiotic’, but he was always very charming. He was quite used to normal intelligent human beings becoming babbling idiots. But then the more I saw him, the more comfortable it got.” Perhaps his most prized compliment is McCartney saying he wished he’d written I’m Not in Love (which Gouldman co-wrote with Eric Stewart), although backstage at Cropredy Festival a few years ago Robert Plant thanked him for writing For Your Love, a song that helped him through the audition to join Led Zeppelin.

Ringo has now repaid Graham the favour on his new, fifth, solo album, Modesty Forbids — his first in eight years (he released the EP Play Nicely and Share in 2017) — on which the drummer plays on the opening song. Given that pretty much the only instrument Gouldman doesn’t play on the album is drums, and that Standing Next To Me sounds like it’s come straight out of the Fab Four’s songbook, it was a vacancy waiting to be filled. “The record is an homage to Ringo and the Beatles,” says Gouldman. “I was thinking there’s only one person to get to play on this song, it’s daft otherwise.”

Gouldman by chance had a lunch booked with Ringo’s lawyer, and posed the question. He sent the track and eagerly awaited Starr’s response. “A few weeks later, they sent all the drum tracks fitted into my song. It was absolutely brilliant listening back to it. Funnily enough, it was the day after my mum’s funeral. I’m not a big believer, but I just felt that it was more than a coincidence that when I was at a very low point, I had this very good news happen. I will always link them together.”

Although he grew up Orthodox, Gouldman prefers to call himself Jewish by ethnicity, “which I’m incredibly proud of”, more than religious. “We do go [to synagogue] since my mum passed away, every Friday night because I want to say Kaddish for her, so there’s obviously something going on.”

 

He also won't work on Yom Kippur, something which wasn't always possible to avoid in the past. “There were things like doing Top of the Pops, but I always felt uncomfortable with it. And actually I’ve now told my agent I won’t work on those days. I spent years not bothering with it, but always felt strange. I suppose it’s the link with your tribe — and that is very strong.”

As for touring with 10cc as the only remaining founding member, he says they are purely a live band (“it’s a way of keeping the music alive”) and would never record. Does he miss the original line-up? “I am still upset that the four of us didn’t stay together. That’s all I’ll say. I think it could have been amazing. But Kevin Godley and I are very good friends. We’ve talked about it quite a lot — what we should have done, and we’re all clever with hindsight.”

Gouldman and I met first in what feels like another era, face-to-face in the comfort of his north west London home, before COVID-19 took hold. On his walls are stunning photographs taken in India, his and his wife Ariella’s favourite place to travel, details which seem ever more poignant now, when the world is in stasis.

“A lot of musicians go to India, there’s a spiritual connection, not just the music and the dance, there’s something about the people, they’re lovely. And the colours and the smells and the food. It’s the one place we will go back to again and again,” he said, with obvious passion.

The UK tour dates with his band Heart Full of Songs have since been postponed until September. “I just hope that they will take place,” Gouldman, 73, says when I contact him in the light of the current situation. “I do like to keep busy and I’m finding things to do to keep my spirits up, but I’m not really in the mood for writing songs. I am also exercising more.” He adds: “I would urge everybody to be unselfish when shopping. Please think of others.”

This plea resonates with one of the key themes of his excellent new album: peace and love, which we discussed days after the untimely death of Caroline Flack.

“One thing she [Caroline] said is we should be kind. Because of the anonymity on social media, people can just hurl out this abuse. You could say, ‘well, don’t listen to them’. But if you’re vulnerable, you’re going to be affected by it. And everyone’s got an opinion now, and people are really harsh, horrible. And if they are going to be abusive or cruel, well,” he says, offering a suitable retort: “Who are you, big shot?”

The album explores his other concern, climate change, on songs such as Wake Up Dreamer on which Gouldman sings, “Let’s stop dreaming and wake up to what’s happening to our planet”.

“I think when you get to a certain age, it’s like voting to remain in Europe, you do things that you think your children want because they’re going to be here a lot longer than you are. And so obviously climate change, which I’m well aware of, came into a couple of the songs, just because I think we’d be idiots to ignore it. I didn’t like the idea of leaving Europe at all. I’m not happy about it, but I’m happy that it’s all over. Hopefully I’ll be here for another 20-odd years, but my youngest son’s 26 and all the kids have a long way to go.”

Much of the album was written in the room where we are sitting, Gouldman often getting up at four in the morning when inspiration struck to pick up a guitar or write a lyric. That the album spans genres from swing to blues and pop-rock harks back to 10cc’s varied output.

That’s Love Right There is his first true foray into swing, however, and for that song Gouldman enlisted top British jazz players for authenticity. “There was a stage when I thought with That’s Love Right There, it’s not really me. However, what have I got to lose? I’ve never had that pressure, not even with 10cc because we always did exactly what we wanted to do. We never had someone from the record company saying, ‘you need something more upbeat’. How are you going to say anything against four writer/producers that have been really successful?” It’s hard to argue with that.

 

Modesty Forbids by Graham Gouldman is out now on Lojinx