Hi, everybody, Welcome to conversations. My guest today is Graham Goodman. Now, Graham was one of the original members of ten CC, responsible for some of those great songs, but he also wrote songs for other artis some tremendous songs for big names. But he'll be here on Saturday, August I with ten CC at the Adelaide Entertainment Center. Graham Goodman, Welcome to the program. How are you.
Thank you very much. I'm very well, thank you.
Who would have thought? Now I know your age and it's very did you ever think that you'd be still doing rock shows or music shows as you need eighty.
No, definitely not, But then we never thought about that. We just thought. I was never aware of any sort of time limit at all. I think if I wasn't in you touring with the band, that I'd be still be involved with music, either writing or do producing something like that, because it's something I've always loved and it's the only thing I can do really well.
It's start when you were when you were young, Yeah, truly young. Yeah, it's the story true that your mother identified that you know, you were more inclined to the music and the arts rather than traditional school work, and.
Yeah, both my parents did. I mean I was very lucky that both my parents were artistic. They recognized I had a gift at an early age and I didn't do very well at school and that didn't bother them at all. Actually, and now they always encouraged me when I started, you know, being creative. There was really encouraging. I mean it could have gone the other way. Had I been better at school and shown some sort of acumen, then maybe they would have encouraged me to you know,
get a proper job, but they didn't. They encouraged me in my music and fortunately it all worked out.
Where did you grow up.
I grew up in Manchester, North of England. Yes.
Were your mum and dad musical or artistic in any way?
My dad definitely. My dad actually used to help me with lyrics. He came up with song titles the songs that I wrote in the sixties for people like the Yardbirds, the Hollis Herman's Hermits. He was very involved with writing the lyrics for all of those songs. And my mum was used to run the fan clubs for the various bands that I was in pre TENDSEC so they were
and they were both involved in amateur dramatics. Although my father could have been a professional writer had things have been different, but he was bringing up you know, we're sort of working class family and for him to take the chance of being a full time writer would have been too risky, I think for him.
But what did he do? That was his job?
Well he had he was in the in the in the fashion business. But when people say what did what was? What did he dad? Do? I say he was a writer. He wrote, you know, he wrote plays, he wrote poetry, he wrote articles for newspapers and most importantly for me, helped me with my lyrics.
Well, I did hear the story, and I'd love you to recount it. If the inspiration for the Holly song no Milk Today.
That that was? That was buzz stop. Actually, well there's two songs actually mentioned there, but no Milk Today was his idea completely. He'd been to visit one of his friends. His friend wasn't there, and he turned on the doorstep and there was an empty milk bottle there. He came back to me and said, I've got an idea for
a song, No Milk Today. I told him it was a dreadful idea, not knowing what was he had in mind, of course, but he explained that, you know, it was what the milk bottle represented, the fact that love had there was no love in the house, every everything had gone from the house, and that he came with this beautiful line, the bottle stands forlorn, a symbol of the dawn. Anyway, we did. We've completed the song, fortunately, and it was a very big hit for Hermit's Hermits.
The bottle stands forlorn, the symbol of the dawn. I hope you played him. I hope he gave him royalties for that?
I did you did?
Did he get credits? Did he get writing credits for it?
Do you know? Right from the start we never actually he was never credited, but I always talked about him, and I'm not quite sure why that happened. It could have been Goldman Gouldman, but maybe his name was on top of stamp, right on top of mine.
So you're an eleven year old kid, you're showing an aptitude for music. What what is inspiring?
What?
What? What music are you listening to?
Okay, so right, I got my first guitar when I was eleven. That was a big turning point, A massive turning point actually. But the music I've been listening to we talking about sort of late fifties. We're listening to a little Richard Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, the Everly Brothers.
Then we're moving into like sort of early sixties motown, all the sort of great British bands like the Animals, the Kinks and then the Beatles, which was the biggest inspiration for me and millions of other aspiring songwriter musicians.
That's intrigued to me because those are all like rock and roll songs basically. Yeah, But TENCC was more a softer rock. I would have.
Thought, don't, I won't, I will refuse to pigeonhole soft rock rock, hard rock, alternative art rock. I've heard it all, and to me, it's TENSC music because if you think of that, we had three number one records in the UK. One was Rubber Bullet with loll singing, the second one was I'm Not in Love with Eric's singing, and the
third one was Dreadlock Holiday with Me singing. So I can't think of more three more different kinds of records, which shows a versatility of the band and the fact that we had so many different influences and they you know, they all showed themselves on those records.
There's so many questions and I've always from that answer you gave me the can I go back to the one that intrigues me most, Dreadlock Holiday. It's such a different piece of music to the stuff. It's a real reggae feel. Yeah, it must have been inspired by something.
Oh yeah, definitely was. I mean what we were Eric and I were writing after we'd both been on holiday to the West Indies. I'd been to Jamaica and Eric had been to Barbados, and we were talking about various things that happened to us, and I had the guitar and I started playing the opening guitar chords, you know, that little roof, And when we got to the so we did. We were writing about our experiences, as I say, But when we got to what was going to be
the chorus. I remember the conversation I'd had with someone in Jamaica at the hotel that we were staying at, and we were talking about sports, and I said, what about cricket? Do you like it? He said no, So I'm surprised, he said, I love it, so he kind of gave me. He gave me the line did you get through? And it just sort of the memory of that conversation sort of came back into my head as we were, you know, writing the song, and it was it was perfect.
That song, to me, tells the story of somebody is being threatened or being held up.
Well, well it's it's it's a that's part of it. But what the song is really about, and the video that we made for it shows it, is that it's this sort of white guy trying to emulate West Indian cool, you know, and it's just failing at it miserably. That's really what the song's about. And it's you know, a lot of our songs are not about anything specific, and you know, I like it when people put their own
spin on what song's about. I mean that that's not not as ambiguous, say, you know, as other songs that we've written. But but that song has been very good to us.
I don't like it. I love it. So we're going to go to the break with breadlog Holiday. Graham Gorman is my guest. Folks. Ten CC will be here at the Adelaide Entertainment Center on Saturday August, the second back after the break. Welcome back everybody. Graham Gordman, the original member of ten CC, is speaking to us. Are you in Manchester? Graham?
As as we say, I'm in London at the moment, it's London, it's home. Yes.
So you're an eleven year old kid, you get your first guitar. What brand was it?
I don't remember. It was a a cousin of mine brought it back from from Spain. I think customer Fiver if that. It had a really high action, but it didn't matter. I absolutely fell in love with it just holding it, and I actually wrote something the first day I got it. When I say wrote, it was like three chords with using one finger, but it was something
and it was a start. So the combination of getting the guitar at that time, being encouraged by my parents, and probably as importantly the music that I had listened to from well, I started becoming aware of music when I was about six or seven and loved it. So all those things went into my DNA. You could say, who taught you?
Who taught you?
I'm self taught.
You're self taught.
Yeah, I mean a lot of a lot of my contemporaries are self taught. We didn't what we wanted to play. You couldn't learn to say, you couldn't go to a music school and learn to play the blues. Say, you know, you learn yourself. And I always thought that. You know, I'm big on chords. I know a lots of chords, and I sort of would struggle to find what I was hearing in my head. But because I struggled and then I found it, I never forgot it. So it wasn't like I learned it from a book.
So that intrigues me. Eleven year old kid learning to play chords was self teaching to play chords.
But lots of it's not unusual, you know, a lot of my contemporaries do. They did the same thing. You know, I can't speak for anybody else, but when I speak to people of my sort of generation and musicians, it's pretty much the same story. It's pretty much the same influences. They got a guitar that they paid for on high purchase.
It used to be called or they never ever you know, going to the guitar shop and their parents putting down the deposit and had to pay twelve pounds of I don't know, three pounds a week or ever, it was still that the guitar was paid off. And having this, I mean, like the first sort of proper guitar I had, I think I was about fourteen or fifteen, was a Fender Stratocaster, which was like the king and still is the king of guitars. And I remember going with my
parents to get the buy the guitar. Then when I got it home, I'd keep it in my bedroom with the case open. So the last thing I saw at night was this beautiful pink strat and it was the third thing I saw in the morning. And I still feel exactly the same way about that, about that that particular guitar.
Now in nineteen sixty three, stratig find Strata Caster is worth a lot of money.
Yeah, not a lot of money. Yeah yeah. I still I don't have the original one, but I've got I've got three very I've got two nineteen sixty twos and a and a reissue shadows Hank Marvin Resue one as well, so I've got three very nice ones.
You were influenced by Cliffordge. You know the story of your Guide to the cliff Ridgard and the Shadows concert. Can you really like that?
Yeah? Yeah, I love Cliff and the Shads. And I went to the concert with my dad actually knew somebody. I think it was at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester and it was sold out, but my dad knew someone that worked there and got the tickets and it was just amazing. And I mean things have come in a way come full circle in that when we play in Perth, Yeah, coming up in our Australian tour. Hank Marvin has been to a couple of our gigs and we'll be inviting him again and he actually I put
out a new solo album last year. The album is called I Have Notes, and Hank plays on one of the tracks.
He was a guest on Conversations not that long ago, Okay, he was Adelaide with these well these more jazz influenced that's right.
He's doing that sort of yeah, like gypsy king type type music. Yeah, yeah, wonderful.
I was also intrigued that your dad wrote a poem about that time you saw.
Yeah. It was called We found it. After he passed away in ninety one, we went through all my mom and I went through all his papers and we found this poem that was unfinished, but it was called Cliff and the Boy. It was so so lovely, and you know, it tells how it was, how much of an influence it had on me, how it changed me. And it's true it was lovely to have that.
How did make you feel reading that? Like I said, it's a visit from the past from you.
It is, yeah, very very special, I must say, very special.
Did you think of putting it?
I'm going to. I'm going to read it when we when we finished, I'm going to get it out. We Actually I went through all his papers with my mum and a friend of his who's a who was a novelist, friend of his, and put together a book of his work. So when people say to me, you know, what was your dad like and what did he do? I could go just read this various articles, stories that he wrote,
various experiences he's had. So it was something tangible that we created of the represented you know, part of what his he was like.
Did you consider putting that poem to music or putting music to that poet?
No, I haven't. I never thought of it. Never thought of it. Actually I'm thinking about it now. Never consider that who knows.
Did your mum work.
My mum, well, she she was a housewife. She looked after me and my dad. During the war, she worked making Lancaster bombers, like all her contemporaries, everybody you know, indeed the war effort.
My stepman was from Sussex, all right, young lady during the war and she talks about those days. Yeah, probably don't get enough appreciation for what they did now.
I remember taking her to the RF Museum, Royal Air Force Museum, which is not far from where we lived, and they had a Lancaster bomber then, and she looked at it and burst into tears, kidding. A lot of memories there, just of I brought back so many, you know, she used to tell funny stories about her time. Then. It obviously brought back great memories, even though it was in wartime.
Did she tell you what part she has modern? What party you built?
She was doing sort of secretarial work.
Oh my gosh, Andy, are you an any child?
I am? Yes.
Did that influence you negatively or positively?
Do you think positively in that? I think if I was an amateur shrink, I would say that the fact that I was always was helped forming bands and working,
you know, bringing people together. I think that maybe I was trying to sort of get brothers in a way, or that I've never had any brothers, but I feel like the boys that I've worked with, particularly some of the boys that i've worked with for that one of the guys, Rick Fenn, who actually lives near a baron Bay here, and I have worked together for like fifty years, over fifty years together, and so I think that I that was my wanting to be have brothers.
Your drummer, Paul Burgess has been with you for that long.
Yeah, he's been with a bit longer because Paul and I met in when in nineteen seventy three when the original ten c C went on the road, Paul joined us and has been with us ever since.
Graham Goldman, original member of ten CC, is my guest. Folks. We'll take a break Graham and the band. Graham and the Band will be here on August at the lad Entertainment since a Saturday night. Can't miss it. Back after the break, Welcome back to conversations, everybody. If you just
tuned in, I'm chatting with Graham Goldman. Graham, the original member of ten CC, a young fellow growing up passionate about his music, encouraged by his mum and dad to play, gets his first guitar when he's eleven, teaches himself to play. I don't know how they do that, but they do it. And can you remember your first band? Tell us about your first band.
The very first band I had when I was at primary school and I'm not sure how old I was, but it was me and I had a drum, not drums, a drum. My friend Joel had a guitar that he couldn't play, and the other boy, his name was Guy. We built like a bass made out of a like a like a broomstick, a piece of string and on a attached to a box. And it was sort of
during the skiffle era. I think that was a very important I should have mentioned that before, but that period Lonnie Donegan in particular, and the skiffle era was really important a lot of I think it encouraged a lot of people to pick up a guitar, and really, God knows what the noise was like that we made, but it was something and we enjoyed it, which was the
main thing. So that was the first band. But then things got a bit more sophisticated, and I was in a band called the High Spots and the Cravats, and then the sort of band that first started to do something was called the Whirlwinds, and we were very much based on sort of like Cliff and the Shadows. We wore suits and had friendly guitars like a lot of other bands, and that was a lot of fun until I got fed up with the sort of music we were playing.
We were doing a lot of cabaret shows. I didn't like the songs that we were doing, and myself and Bernard and Steve the guitar player formed a band with Kevin Godley, who I'd met at a club in North Manchester that we all used to rehearse at, and we formed a band called the Mockingbirds. So that was the period. I'm sort of like seventeen eighteen now nineteen maybe, and
we're playing we're semi professional. Nothing ever happened, but of course one of the great things about it was it forged relationship between myself and Kevin Godley, and Kevin was very friendly with LORL Kream, So immediately we've got like three quarters of what was to become tenseec oh.
My goodness are you. Did you have a day job as well? Did you have to have a Yeah?
I worked in an outfit to shop, but I eventually got the sack because I was playing with the band, having to leave early to go to gigs or arriving late the next morning because I got back late from a gig, and the guy that owned the shop did me the biggest favor. I have to say. I wasn't cut out for a to be working an outfit a shop, but I did learn certain things about how to fold the shirt.
Which very important.
At least I got something out of it.
So are you writing songs at that age of seventeen?
Yeah, I started dabbling really and really encouraged by the Beatles. That was the main, my main inspiration and still the sort of benchmark for me of what I'm I sort of try and achieve. And then I wrote I was actually still in the shop when I started writing for Your Love, which became the first song that was recorded by another artist, the Yardbirds that became a hit in nineteen sixty five.
I'm intrigued by this story. The record company rejected.
Yeah, the record company rejected the Mockingbirds version of it, and accepted did. We recorded two songs, One was Fear Love and one was another song, which was horrible. But yeah, so because of that, you know, sort of a negative turned into a very amazing positive that the Yardbirds at the time were looking for to be, you know, something more commercial. They wanted to hit because up to that time they were like a rhythm and blues ban fantastic band.
I mean I'd seen them with the original band with Eric Lapton, and I saw them with Jack Beck as well. It was amazing, big influence on me. So to be a fan of theirs and then have them record one of your songs was great.
See I'm intrigued by the story where you opened for the Yardbirds and then and then you know this in the following sit they're singing your song. Yeah it was a positive or negative?
Oh No, I thought it was a positive, definitely. What it was was they were on a program called Top of the Pops, which was like the major weekly pop show. I mean, if you got on Top of the Pops you almost guaranteed a hit. So they used to have warm up bands to keep the audience entertained while they were sort of setting up camera angles and lighting et cetera.
And we were actually one of the band and I think we did it a couple of times, was a warm up band for Top of the Pops and on this particular week, the yard Burst were ondoing for Your Love. So it's kind of a strange situation, but I was very happy about it.
I know it might sound as I'm being overly commercial and money grabbing here, but you still get you still get royalties for songs like that going back fifty Yeah.
Yeah they yeah, yeah, you still got you still got paid. Yeah, they're still yeah, generate ro rotters.
Yeah. So when did when did TINCC really start there?
Well that was in seventy two, so that was when we released our first single, Donno in nineteen seventy two. So I met Kevin and Lowell and Eric. I met because I, my manager at the time, had an office at an agency in Manchester called Kennedy Street Enterprises and
I met Eric. Then we became friends. He was with Wayne Fontana and the mind Benders that eventually became the mind Benders after Wayne left and I joined the mind Benders for a very short period right before their demise, but Eric and I sort of hit it off became you know, friends and call it the music colleagues. And don't quite remember how Kevin and Loll and myself and Eric all came together. I knew how I met Eric, but not surely quite sure how Eric and sorry, Loll
and Kevin joined us. However we did. Eric had started a recording studio with a guy called Peter Tattersall and was looking for investment, which so I invested in it became a partner, and that became Strawberry Studios, and that's really what became the home of what would become TENSEC because at the time, before we were the ten c C or called ourselves TENCC, we worked as a kind of like session band, you know, like the house band, so people are coming and record stuff and we'd be
the sort of backing musicians. Then we did two albums with Nil Sa Darka, and that one of them was actually just prior to us being becoming TENSEC and one was just after. So we were doing all sorts of work. So working with him was great. I mean, we were making football records. We do anything because we enjoyed it, you know, it didn't matter that it wasn't necessarily our taste musically, but it was just a joy to do it.
So those sixties, in the seventies, early seventies years, they're intriguing, like the glamour of being a rock star, the clothing, the heir, the lifestyle. You strike me as a much more conservative person than Yeah, but what we were like in those days, we were.
We were never rock stars. We were musicians, you know. We we weren't remember that we were born in the studio, not on the road, so we had our own studio. This made a massive difference. I think that we weren't used to a sort of you know, sex and drugs and rock and roll lifestyle on the road. So when we first went out playing gigs, we were like cutting, kind of like shocked at the that there were screaming girls and things. But really, you know, let me put
it this way. We had our moments, but I don't go into but we were never We never threw a television out of a window.
Disappointing, Sorry about that. Did you meet the Beatles in those days?
Yeah, well we actually some of them. Well, I worked with Ringo Star with the Bring I saw on the All Star Band, which was brilliant. I did two tours with him and would have done more if not for my tend C C commitments. I think it was in nine. I can't remember what year it was. It was early seventies, but Paul McCartney's brother, Mike mcghear, who actually saw a few weeks ago, recorded an album at the studio and Paul produced it, so he was coming in. I think
it was seventy four seventy three. We were making the sheet Music album, so we were recording during the day and then late afternoon Paul would come in with Mike and they and his musicians and they carry on recording. So the actual studio was absolutely crammed with equipment and it was but it was brilliant that you know, Paul was around and we used to hang out with him a bit and that was great.
Didn't realize he had a brother actually that he was.
Yeah, it's he's a step brother. Do you know the Scaffold? Have you heard of the Scuffle? There are Liverpool trio poets and they had quite a few big hits. Literally the Pink is one of them.
Okay, I've heard of that.
Right, Okay, So that's Mike, Yeah, lovely.
Guy Graham Goodman is my guest with ten CC. They'll be here in Adelaide Saturday, August the second, Adelaide Entertainment Center. More to come after the break. Graham Gordman is my guest on conversations, an original member of ten CC. The band is back together and they're touring Australia. They'll be here in Adelaide on the August the second. Okay, so you move out of the studio onto the road. How did you adapt to that lifestyle and how and when did the big hits start to come.
Well, we'd already had when we went on the road. We'd already had Donno was a hit, and I think Wall Street Shuffle as well. So and also we had two albums out, so we had quite a lot of material. So Eric had already been in a band that had been on the road forever, and I'd been in more not as much with the bands that i'd been and I was more of a semi up to that point and have been semi professional as a musician, and Kevin along not at all. But we adapted to it really quickly.
We enjoyed playing. It was a lot of fun, it was creative, it was something we all wanted to do so that was why I was so good. We really loved it.
I sent you got a little bit annoyed with me when I tried to categorize your music when I said, soft, I do want to read this quote. They didn't rely on any mede your celebrity status, but on the art of making highly sophisticated rock master works. In the sequy Poppets. The result was some of the greatest pop records of the twentieth century.
Big accolades. It's a big accolade. Yeah, that's lovely, Yes, thank you very much.
Did you think you were highly sophisticated.
I thought we were more sophisticated than a lot of our peers. But there were other bands that were as sophisticated, you know. I mean when I think of our contemporaries, I think of like People band, although we're quite different, but sort of our aims are the same. Was Queen because of their musicianship productions. I think lyrically, we were on our own note. I don't know. We were just very very we We were different, you know, we had Our music has been so diverse, you know, it's hard to.
It is dread like Holiday is so different too. I'm not in love for instance.
Correct, there you go. And also there's another difference, actually a big difference between us and Queen, I should say, is that whoever got the did the job best got
the job. That's why we had three different singers on three different number one records, where it would always be generally and I know that Queen did have other had Roger and the Brian sung as well, but it was generally Freddy's voice that was the recognizable one, and Brian's guitar was instantly recognizable, whereas with us we would have different people playing guitar or particularly in the singing. There was more to do with the lead vocals where we had we mixed it up a lot.
Do you play bass in the current.
Yeah? Yeah, I played some guitar as well. I'm a guitarist, but I play bass as well. I love the bass.
How do you play bass and sing at the same time. That's always intrigued me.
I don't know, how do you do that? I don't know, you just do it. It's one of those things because people say, how do you write a song? You know, it's like it's a gift, you know, it's not clever, really, I mean, there are you have to be clever about. You can think about arrangements and instrumentation, but it's still always it's just instinctive. Really, I mean, you know when to not repeat that bit and I want to hear something new now, and then I want to hear that
bit again. And why we have that, I don't know. I suppose it's to do with at a very early age having an interest in music and just absorbing all different types of music, whether it's sort of classical jazz or rock or heavy metal or swing or whatever whatever it happens to be.
Do you write music, Do you write, like.
Physically write it.
No, it's all done by Yeah, it's a gift though, you see you can't It's like you can't teach anybody to write a song.
I see these, but how to write a hit song? The first thing I do is look at the author and see if he's written a hit song. And normally it's like a publisher or someone that's been around people that write hit songs.
But well, you've had you've had had breaks over the years from the band. What did you go off and do when you had a break.
During the nineties, I was not playing so much. I was always involved in music, so it was either producing or writing songs with other for other people. But then towards the end of the end of the nineties into the beginning of the two thousands, I got itchy and started going on the road again, but not as ten CC, but as a a kind of a semi acoustic show, which I actually still do as well as ten CC.
I have something called Heartful of Songs, which is myself and three other musicians where I played songs from my complete catalog, not just TENCC songs.
Yes, it's you can access it on YouTube if you just google. Yeah, a Heartful of Songs, and it's true to me. They're just just sitting there playing. Tell us the story about Robert Plant, lead singer of Zright. Can you share that story with us?
Yeah. I met him at a festival in he wasn't he wasn't performing, but he was at the festival and a mutual friend of ours introduced us and he said, I want to thank you because when I auditioned for led Zeppelin, I sang for Your Love, which which was great to be I think you might be a part of one of the greatest rock bands in history.
You're singing regularly when you're on tour. How do you look after your voice? What is there?
I just try and look after myself generally, get enough sleep. You know, we don't when a gig finishes, we're all going straight back to the hotel and that's it. But there's no going to clubs or anything like that. I definitely wouldn't want to do that. Just try and get a good night's sleep, rest up, look after yourself, you know, keep yourself in in good condition. And it's the knowing that you've got to show up and be on every night or however many nights you're doing, and you've got
to be one hundred percent. So that's that's the sort of driving force that makes you aware of you know that you have to look after yourself.
The dynamics of bands and band members, there's always intrigue me. The tensions within the friendships, the breakups. Yeah, here some thoughts on there, some of your experiences in there.
I think what happens is when you I mean, Tennessee is not a bad example of that, where we had four really amazing creative minds came together. Two of the boys, Kevin and Lowell, actually got fed up with the constant what became the constant cycle of writing, recording, rehearsing, going on the road. Then they are the record company. What another album, and the same thing happens again, and it wasn't fun for them anymore, and that's why they left.
They were also developing something called the gizmo or the gismotron, which was an attachment that you put on a guitar that makes the strings of the guitar vibreak and sort of play constantly like a bell on a violin. And they started making an album that featured this contraption and it turned into a three album set and we kept saying, you know, we've got to go back on the road and we're going to start writing for the next album. They said, no, we want to do this now. And
that was it. And it was like it was like a marriage in that, you know, like a divorce where both people on both sides wanted to try and keep us together. And I regret the fact that Kevin and Law left the band in nineteen seventy six. It was and Eric and I carried on to other and had a lot of success, but it wasn't quite the same because we had fifty percent of our team had gone.
Did you ever catch up afterwards subsequently?
Well, Kevin and I have kept in touch for all the time. We've done various projects together, and in fact, a few months ago we did we appeared together on a program called The Piano Room, which is on radio to BBC Radio two, and we played and sung together. We did I'm Not in Love, We did a new song, we did a cover version, and we've just carried out. Actually we're still doing stuff together because we enjoy it.
You mentioned Ringo star touring touring with us. You said that that was one of the most enjoyable things you've ever ever done. He's a lower profile of the Beatles.
Tell us about Ringo Okay, Well, he might be of a lower profile, but he's undoubtedly one of the world's most influential drummers. I mean, his drumming style is amazing. I mean when you I mean, do you think of the contribution those drum parts added to the you know, the brilliant songs of Jonan and Paul McCartney and George Harrison. It was integral. So it's very important even just for that. But I couldn't quite get over the fact that I was playing with a beatle and in fact the album
before last was an album called Modesty Forbids. The opening track is called standing next to Me, and it's about my time with Ringo and the All Star Band, and it just tells I just couldn't get over it. You know, I'd be playing away and when he came to the front of the stage, he'd be standing to my right and I'd be playing away and looking around and then god, it's ring Hoost. But he was lovely. It's very generous, very generous guy, very passionate about his music, does not
suffer fools easily. Always wanted to play. I think there was one night there was one of the gigs there was a problem with the roof and they wanted to move the venue and some people were going, oh no, it's too going to be too small, and Ringo said, we're going to play. That's what we're here for. Who cares. We'll cut down the equipment. And I love that attitude. I'm right with him there on that. You know, we just we can manage with We don't have to have everything.
You know, we're playing the songs and we'll go on with it.
So when you're playing the same This leads on from that observation. When you're playing the same songs every night, how do you maintain your enthusiasm? You resist.
I imagine myself in the audience and I'm hearing it for the first time. That's why I think, I think I've got what I've got a just give our All you have to do is do your best every night. That's the simple keep just keep that in mind. And it doesn't matter how many people are there either. You know, people have paid for a ticket, so you know, sometimes there's like a thousand people or ten thousand people, It doesn't make any difference.
Do you have a trick for maintaining your vocal cords? I know a guy's a singer in a band.
Not really just by by trying to keep singing something that I'm I need to do actually, but there's a lot of muscle memory involved and trying to sing at home, I find out I can't sort of let myself go as much. But once you're on stage you can. You can do it.
You've got a favorite song?
Not really, you know, I love doing them all. They're great, you know, I there's no there's no song I go, oh god, I'm doing this again. But I mean, I gover knows how many times we've done. I'm not in lover or dad lot, but I don't think about it. But you know what the main thing is, when you're playing a song and you see the smile on people's faces and how you think you're it's a privilege to be able to sort of bring that much sort of
joy to people. I mean sometimes people come up and say, you played that song and it had me in tears, And I think that's fantastic to move someone so much, and I hope in a good way. Maybe it's a memory of something or a relationship or somebody who knows, but yeah, just to be able to move people in a in a good positive way. But it's when they sort of smiling and having the you know, like we get lost in the music, they get lost in the the audience gets lost in the music as well.
Graham, thanks so much for your time. I've enjoyed it immensely.
Very good. Thank you.
Sam here, welcome to LA When you get here, and I'll give you the final Primo here TENCC, You're bringing the Ultimate Ultimate. That's not a typo, the ltimate my Greatest Hits tour to Australia. We'll be here in Adelaide at the Adelaide Entertainment Center on Saturday August the two Graham Goldman, thank you so much for your time.
My pleasure. Nice talking to you, Graham. Cheers.
Thanks folks for joining us