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