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Old 09-18-2014, 07:15 PM   #8
Undertoad
Radical Centrist
 
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Cottage of Prussia
Posts: 31,423
Quote:
Did they do anything else after that?
Glad you asked!

At the time of "I'm Not In Love", 10cc consisted of two distinct halves: Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman, and Lol Creme and Kevin Godley. The team would stick together for one more album, 1976's "How Dare You!" which was very brilliant, but more in English tastes than American.

After that, Godley and Creme left to work on their invention, a guitar effect called a "Gizmo". This little device attached to an electric guitar near the bridge, and had little spinning wheels; and when you pressed one of six buttons, the wheels would come into contact with the guitar strings. The wheels would play the string like a bow, and for the first time, you could get infinite sustain with a guitar.*

Two problems with this idea. One was that the device was very picky and hard to get working. Two was that the electronic revolution was about to happen, which would allow guitars to sound like just about anything. So the idea of making something to physically change a guitar sound was not happening. And even though Godley and Creme recorded a triple album called "Consequences" to promote the gizmo, both the effect and the album flopped.**

Godley and Creme didn't stop their partnership and decided to go on and make music videos. This was an idea that was perfectly timed, and a lot of your favorite music videos of the early 80s were conceived and directed by Godley and Creme.

Meanwhile, Stewart and Gouldman recruited a new set of musicians and continued on as 10cc. And they were great songwriters, and with this new band they had the hit "Things We Do For Love", and continued to make good records all the while. Gouldman after all had written many hits for other bands, such as "For Your Love" and "Heart Full of Soul" for the Yardbirds, "Bus Stop" for the Hollies and many more. And in the mid 80s, Paul McCartney decided he missed having a songwriting collaborator since Lennon; Eric Stewart became that collaborator, and they wrote McCartney's album "Press to Play".




* I owned a Gizmo, but I never did much with it. I eventually sold it to Marty Willson-Piper of the Church.

** I didn't sell my copy of "Consequences". It's a brilliant work of art, half music, half a spoken-word play about when nature decides it's had enough, and comes back to take revenge on humanity. Featuring the late great Peter Cook.
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