The songwriter wrote hit songs and made a splendid solo album several years before his global success in 10cc.
Fifty years ago, Graham Gouldman co-wrote the worldwide hit “I’m Not in Love.” The song, penned with fellow 10cc member Eric Stewart, sold over three million copies in 1975. It is still heard today, and it’s been covered by The Pretenders, Diana Krall, and Queen Latifah, to name a few. The band 10cc would have other hits (you know ‘em: “The Things We Do for Love,” “Dreadlock Holiday”) and they released several albums in the seventies through the early eighties. Ten years before “I’m Not in Love,” Graham Gouldman was another young songwriter, trying to write hits for his band, The Mockingbirds. It wasn’t until he began giving his songs to others that the hits started coming. And when he did, it made him the “it” songwriter in England.
Gouldman was attracted to music at an early age. “I was always interested in music, from the age of seven,” he told author Liam Newton for his book 10cc: The Worst Band in the World. “My uncle bought me a radio to listen to Radio Luxembourg and I remember going to bed with it stuck in my ear. I was learning it in my sleep the way you learn a language.” Hearing the Beatles’ “Please Please Me” on the radio started the spark that led to writing his own songs. “I’ve never had a religious experience,” he said, “but I guess it would be something akin to that. It knocked me out.” He formed the Mockingbirds when he was a teenager to play his originals, but the band’s early recording of “For Your Love” sat unreleased. Still, he believed in the song, so he offered it to The Yardbirds, who turned it into a top 10 smash in the UK and the US. It also changed the course of music, after Yardbirds’ guitarist Eric Clapton, who hated the song, left the band and joined John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Clapton, of course, went on to bigger things, and Gouldman, overnight, became a professional songwriter at age nineteen.
Graham Gouldman, born May 1946, grew up in North Salford, in Manchester. His parents were amateur actors who wrote and directed plays. Growing up in an artistic environment, his music interest was encouraged, and his father even helped Graham write some of his song lyrics. “My dad should have been a professional writer,” he told Newton. He was gifted a guitar at age twelve and he later learned to play bass, the instrument he used on stage with 10cc. Gouldman’s first group was The Whirlwinds, a cover band that played at dances, and by 1963, began performing at clubs on the weekends. Another band The Whirlwinds often shared booking with was The Sabres, which included art students Kevin Godley and Lol Creme. Years later, Godley and Creme, along with Eric Stewart and Gouldman would form 10cc in 1972.
According to Newton, Graham “borrowed” the chord sequence to write “For Your Love” from The Animals’ song “House Of The Rising Sun.” It hardly mattered. The Yardbirds soon returned for a second song and Gouldman’s “Heart Full of Soul,” this time with Jeff Beck on guitar, went to # 2 in the UK and # 9 in the States. The Yardbirds followed it with “Evil Hearted You,” the third top ten UK single written by Gouldman. Next, the Hollies came calling, and they recorded Gouldman’s “Schoolgirl” and “Looking Through Any Window,” the latter becoming the group’s first US top 40 single. “Bus Stop” became his biggest hit for the Hollies, reaching # 5 on both the UK and US pop charts. Gouldman’s father wrote the song’s first line and Graham wrote most of the rest riding on a bus. “The whole thing came to me in my head,” he explained. “I didn’t have a guitar, but I couldn’t wait to get home and put it in with the rest of the song.” Gouldman also wrote hits for Herman’s Hermits (“Listen People” and “No Milk Today”), and it seemed as if the young man had an endless touch of gold.
But while other bands reaped the benefits of his songwriting talent, Gouldman did not have the same luck with The Mockingbirds, the group he formed after breaking up The Whirlwinds. The Mockingbirds, which included Kevin Godley on drums, signed with Columbia Records, but had no hits on their own. Gouldman also worked in production, and on one job, he produced a cover of the Box Tops, “The Letter” for Eric Stewarts’ Manchester band The Mindbenders. The single was a paltry hit, and after the group’s bassist left the band, Gouldman briefly joined on guitar and bass. He produced a few other singles for the band that went nowhere, and The Mindbenders disbanded in late 1968. Graham Gouldman’s last chart hit of the sixties was “Tallyman” by Jeff Beck in August 1967. After only a few short years, Gouldman’s hit making dried up, and just as quickly as it had started, it was over in a flash.
In 1968, Graham recorded his own album. Herman’s Hermit’s Peter Noone was picked to be co-producer on the project, but according to Gouldman, he was barely in the studio. Instead, Graham produced the album himself with future Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones, who provided the arrangements. The Graham Gouldman Thing is late-60s gem with baroque arrangements and his own version of hits he wrote for others. There are orchestral takes on “Bus Stop” and “No Milk Today,” and a groovy, organ-driven version of “For Your Love.” The first single from the album “Impossible Years” didn’t make the pop chart, and the album dropped out of sight as well. It is available to stream these days, and Gouldman made a sequel of sorts, And Another Thing in 2000, with a mix of new tracks and songs he wrote in his younger days. Although the hits stalled in 1967, The Graham Gouldman Thing is a satisfying peek into the prior work of Graham Gouldman and John Paul Jones, before they had greater fame and success in the 1970s.
There are several videos of Graham Gouldman performing live version of his sixties songs on YouTube. The acoustic performance of “Bus Stop,” with Neil Finn of Crowded House and Roddy Frame from Aztec Camera looking on, is an example of the type of live shows Gouldman was doing after he and Stewart disbanded 10cc in the early eighties (Godley and Creme left earlier in 1976). I have always liked this song and watching this performance made me realize just how amazing it is. Especially since it was written when Graham was just a teenager. The look on Neil Finn’s face, as he watches Gouldman perform the tune, says more about the song than anything I could describe here. I’m sure he’s thinking, “I wish I wrote that!”