Andrew Gold - ...and on guitar (1981)

Andrew Maurice Gold was born on August 2, 1951 in Burbank, California, and eventually followed his parents into show business, as his mother was singer Marni Nixon, who provided the singing voice for numerous actresses, notably Natalie Wood in West Side Story, Deborah Kerr in The King and I, and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, while his father was Ernest Gold, an Austrian-born composer who won an Academy Award for his score for the movie 'Exodus'. He began writing songs at the age of 13, and while in school in the UK for one year, the 16-year-old Gold scored his first recording contract on the strength of a selection of demos he submitted to Polydor Records' London office. That contract resulted in the single 'Of All the Little Girls', which was recorded with his friend and collaborator Charlie Villiers, and released in 1967 under the name Villiers and Gold. By the early 1970's, Gold was working full-time as a musician, songwriter and record producer, as well as being a member of the Los Angeles band Bryndle, alongside Kenny Edwards, Wendy Waldman and Karla Bonoff, who released the single 'Woke Up This Morning' in 1970. Four years later he played a major role as multi-instrumentalist and arranger for Linda Ronstadt's breakthrough album 'Heart Like A Wheel', as well as her next two albums. After Ronstadt's 'Hasten Down The Wind', he began a career as a solo artist, but was still loyal to Rondstadt, playing the majority of instruments on her only No. 1 Billboard hit single 'You're No Good', as well as playing in her band from 1973 until 1977, and then sporadically throughout the 1980's and 1990's. In 1975 Gold played most of the instruments on Art Garfunkel's solo hit 'I Only Have Eyes For You' and also released his eponymous debut solo album. His second studio album 'What's Wrong with This Picture?' came out in 1976, and contained the hot single 'Lonely Boy', which reached No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 1977. The same year he played guitar on two cuts of Eric Carmen's album 'Boats Against the Current', including 'She Did It', and in 1978 his single 'Thank You for Being A Friend' from his third album 'All This And Heaven Too', peaked at No. 25 in 1978, and later gained more popularity as the theme song for 'The Golden Girls' TV series, as performed by Cindy Fee. His biggest hit in the UK was 'Never Let Her Slip Away', which peaked at number five on the UK Singles Chart on two occasions, firstly by Gold himself in 1978 and again by dance-pop group Undercover in 1992, with Gold's friend Freddie Mercury being an uncredited background singer. 

In 1981 Gold produced, co-wrote, sang and played on three songs that appeared as bonus tracks on the re-issue of the hit-making pop-rock band 10cc's 1981 album 'Ten Out Of 10', after which Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman invited him to become a member of the band, but business conflicts prevented him from joining their ranks. In late 1983 10cc broke up, and in the aftermath, Gold and Gouldman formed Wax, who recorded and toured for five years, enjoying international success, particularly in the UK, where the duo had several hits including 'Right Between The Eyes', and their biggest hit 'Bridge To Your Heart'. Gold played on Cher's hit 1989 album 'Heart Of Stone' and during the early '90s he wrote and composed hits for Trisha Yearwood as well as Wynonna Judd, for whom he co-wrote the No. 1 single 'I Saw The Light' with Lisa Angelle. In the 1990's, Gold once again joined forces with ex-bandmates Karla Bonoff, Wendy Waldman and Kenny Edwards to re-form Bryndle and release their first full-length album 'Bryndle', but left the band in 1996 to release the children's Halloween-oriented novelty album 'Halloween Howls With John Waite', featuring the track 'Spooky Scary Skeletons', and the same year he released his sixth solo album '....Since 1951'. In 1997 he released the 60's influenced psychedelic 'Greetings From Planet Love' under the pseudonym 'The Fraternal Order Of the All' on his own QBrain Records label, and if you love what XTC did with The Dukes Of Stratosphere then you really do have to hear this truly brilliant album. Gold essentially played all the instruments and sang all of the vocals on original songs in the style of his favorite 1960's bands such as The Beatles, The Byrds and The Beach Boys, and it's all done with much love and respect. He continued to record and release solo albums in the 2000's, as well as forming a Byrds tribute band Byrds Of A Feather, which performed in the Los Angeles area. In the late 2010's he was diagnosed with kidney cancer, and although he responded well to treatment, on 3 June 2011 he died in his sleep from what is suspected to have been heart failure, at the criminally young age of 59. Gold truly was the consummate musician, being able to play a large variety of instruments, as well as writing and producing hits for himself and other artists, and helping them out whenever he could by playing piano, drums, ukelele and acoustic guitar on their albums, and this tribute includes just a small selection of them where he added his electric guitar to their songs.   

Track listing

Disc One
01 Of All The Little Girls (single by Villiers & Gold 1967)
02 Woke Up This Morning (single by Bryndle 1970)
03 Sweet Turnstyle Blues (from 'Gypsy Moth' by Stephen Ambrose 1972)
04 Train Song (from 'Love Has Got Me' by Wendy Waldman 1973)
05 Isn't It Always Love (from 'Isn't It Always Love' by Karen Alexander 1975)
06 Highway Affair (from 'Farewell Fairbanks' by Randy Edelman 1975)
07 Jesus For Tonight (from 'Michel Polnareff' by Michel Polnareff 1975)
08 Love Out In The Street (from 'Playing Possum' by Carly Simon 1975) 
09 Roll Um Easy (from 'Prisoner In Disguise' by Linda Ronstadt 1975)
10 Looking For The Right One (from 'Breakaway' by Art Garfunkel 1975) 
11 On And On (from 'Careless' by Stephen Bishop 1976)

Disc Two
01 If You Have Crying Eyes (from 'Black Rose' by John David Souther 1976) 
02 Complainte Pour Ste-Catherine (from 'Kate & Anna McGarrigle' by Kate & Anna McGarrigle 1976)
03 I Hear The Laughter (from 'Endless Flight' by Leo Sayer 1976)
04 She Did It (from 'Boats Against The Current' by Eric Carmen 1977) 
05 Isn't That So? (from 'Glenda Griffith' by Glenda Griffith 1977)
06 I Can't Hold On (from 'Karla Bonoff' by Karla Bonoff 1977)
07 Runnin' And Hidin' (from 'Mr. Lucky' by Fools Gold 1977) 
08 Don't Make Me Over (from 'Shot Through The Heart' by Jennifer Warnes 1979)
09 I Did My Part (from 'Heartbreak Radio' by Rita Coolidge' 1981)
10 Runaway (bonus track from 'Ten Out Of 10' by 10cc 1981)

10cc - Roots (1973)

While researching 10cc for last week's post, I discovered that their story was even more convoluted than I'd ever imagined, and after reading about the member's varied pre-10cc careers it prompted another post, so although this one is a bit long and involved, do try to stick with it to the end as it's a really fascinating story.
Three of the founding members of 10cc were childhood friends in the Manchester area. As boys, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme knew each other, and Graham Gouldman and Godley attended the same secondary school. Their first recorded collaboration was in 1964, when Gouldman's band The Whirlwinds recorded the Lol Creme composition 'Baby Not Like You', as the B-side of their only single, 'Look At Me'. The Whirlwinds then changed members and name, becoming The Mockingbirds, including singer-guitarist Gouldman, bassist Bernard Basso and drummer Kevin Godley, and recorded five singles in 1965–66 without any success. In June 1967, Godley and Creme reunited and recorded a solitary single 'Seeing Things Green' / 'Easy Life' on UK CBS, under the name The Yellow Bellow Room Boom. In 1969 Gouldman took them to a Marmalade Records recording session, and owner Giorgio Gomelsky was impressed with Godley's falsetto voice and offered them a recording contract. In September 1969 Godley & Creme recorded some basic tracks at Strawberry Studios, with Stewart on guitar and Gouldman on bass, and the resultant single 'I'm Beside Myself' / 'Animal Song' was issued under the name of Frabjoy and Runcible Spoon. Gomelsky (an ex-manager of The Yardbirds) planned to market Godley & Creme as a duo, in the vein of Simon & Garfunkel, but plans for an album by Frabjoy and Runcible Spoon faltered when Marmalade ran out of funds. 

However, solo tracks by Godley and Gouldman were released on a 1969 Marmalade Records music sample album '100 Proof'. Gouldman's track was 'The Late Mr. Late' and Godley's was 'To Fly Away', later reappearing as 'Fly Away' on the debut Hotlegs album 'Thinks: School Stinks'. Gouldman, meanwhile, had made a name for himself as a hit songwriter, penning 'Heart Full of Soul', 'Evil Hearted You' and 'For Your Love' for The Yardbirds, 'Look Through Any Window' and 'Bus Stop' for The Hollies, and 'No Milk Today', 'East West' and 'Listen People' for Herman's Hermits. At the same time the fourth future member of 10cc was also tasting significant pop music success, as guitarist Eric Stewart was a member of Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, a group that hit No.1 with 'The Game of Love', and also scored a number of other mid-1960s hits. When Fontana left the band in October 1965, the group became known simply as The Mindbenders, with Stewart as their lead vocalist, and the band scored another big hit with 'A Groovy Kind of Love' in 1965. In March 1968, Gouldman joined Stewart in The Mindbenders, replacing bassist Bob Lang and playing on some tour dates. Gouldman also wrote two of the band's last three singles, 'School Girl' in 1967 and 'Uncle Joe The Ice Cream Man' in 1968, neither of which bothered the charts.In the dying days of The Mindbenders, Stewart began recording demos of new material at Inner City Studios, a Stockport studio then owned by Peter Tattersall, a former road manager for Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas. 

In July 1968, Stewart joined Tattersall as a partner in the studio, where he could further hone his skills as a recording engineer. In October 1968, the studio was moved to bigger premises and renamed Strawberry Studios, after The Beatles' 'Strawberry Fields Forever'. In 1969, Gouldman also began using Strawberry Studios to record demos of songs he was writing for Marmalade, as he had become much more in demand as a songwriter than as a performer, and by the end of the year he too was a financial partner in the studios. By 1969, all four members of the original 10cc line-up were working together regularly at Strawberry Studios. Around the same time, noted American bubblegum pop writer-producers Jerry Kasenetz and Jeffry Katz of Super K Productions came to England and commissioned Gouldman to write and produce formula bubblegum songs, many of which were recorded at Strawberry Studios, and were either augmented or performed entirely by varying combinations of the future 10cc line-up. Among the recordings from this period was 'Sausalito (Is The Place To Go)', a No. 86 US hit credited to Ohio Express and released in July 1969. 

In fact the song featured Gouldman on lead vocal, with vocal and instrumental backing by the other three future 10cc members. In December 1969, Kasenetz and Katz agreed to a proposal by Gouldman that he work solely at Strawberry, rather than move constantly between Stockport, London and New York. Gouldman convinced the pair that these throwaway two-minute songs could all be written, performed and produced by him and his three colleagues, Stewart, Godley and Creme, at a fraction of the cost of hiring outside session musicians, and Kasenetz and Katz booked the studio for three months. The three-month project resulted in a number of tracks that appeared under various band names owned by Kasenetz-Katz, including 'There Ain't No Umbopo' by Crazy Elephant, 'When He Comes' by Fighter Squadron and 'Come On Plane' by Silver Fleet, all three with lead vocals by Godley. When the three-month production deal with Kasenetz-Katz ended, Gouldman returned to New York to work as a staff songwriter for Super K Productions and the remaining three continued to dabble in the studio. With Gouldman absent, Godley, Creme and Stewart continued recording singles. The first, 'Neanderthal Man', began life as a test of drum layering at the new Strawberry Studios mixing desk, but when released as a single by Fontana Records under the name of Hotlegs in 1970 it climbed to No. 2 in the UK charts and became a worldwide hit, selling more than two million copies. Around the same time, the trio released 'Umbopo' under the name of Doctor Father, being a slower, longer and more melancholic version of the track earlier released under the name of Crazy Elephant. 

Reverting to the successful band name Hotlegs, in early 1971 Godley, Creme and Stewart recorded the album 'Thinks: School Stinks', which included the hit 'Neanderthal Man', and then recalled Gouldman for a short tour supporting The Moody Blues, before releasing a follow-up single 'Lady Sadie' / 'The Loser', following which Philips reworked their sole album by removing 'Neanderthal Man' and adding 'Today', and re-issuing it as 'Song'. The band also continued outside production work at Strawberry Studios, working with Dave Berry, Wayne Fontana, Peter Cowap and Herman's Hermits, and doing original compositions for various UK football teams such as Manchester United. In 1971 they produced and played on Space Hymns, an album by New Age musician Ramases, and in 1972–73 they co-produced and played on two Neil Sedaka albums, 'Solitaire' and 'The Tra-La Days Are Over'. It was Neil Sedaka's success that prompted the four musicians to try to make it on their own merits, and the germ of 10cc was born. Once again a four-piece, the group recorded a Stewart/Gouldman song, 'Waterfall' in early 1972, and Stewart offered the acetate to Apple Records, but ended up waiting for months before receiving a note from the label saying the song was not commercial enough to release as a single. 

Undeterred by Apple's rejection, the group decided to plug another song which had been written as a possible B-side to 'Waterfall', a Godley/Creme composition entitled 'Donna'. The song was a Frank Zappa-influenced 1950s doo-wop parody, a sharp mix of commercial pop and irony with a chorus sung in falsetto, and the rest, as they say, is history.  

Track listing

01 Baby Not Like You (Creme) - The Whirlwinds (Gouldman) 1964
02 Seeing Things Green (Godley/Creme) - The Yellow Bellow Room Boom 1967
03 Easy Life (Godley Creme) - The Yellow Bellow Room Boom 1967
04 School Girl (Gouldman) - The Mindbenders (Stewart/Gouldman) 1967
05 Uncle Joe The Ice Cream Man (Gouldman) - The Mindbenders (Stewart/Gouldman) 1968
06 I'm Beside Myself (Godley/Creme) - Frabjoy And Runcible Spoon 1969
07 Animal Song (Godley/Creme) - Frabjoy And Runcible Spoon 1969
08 The Late Mr Late (Gouldman) - Graham Gouldman 1969
09 To Fly Away (Godley) - Kevin Godley 1969
10 Sausalito (Is The Place To Go) (Gouldman) - The Ohio Express (10cc) 1969
11 There Ain't No Umbopo (Godley/Creme) - Crazy Elephant (10cc) 1970
12 Neanderthal Man (Godley/Creme/Stewart) - Hotlegs (Godley/Creme/Stewart) 1970
13 Roll On (Godley/Creme/Stewart) - Doctor Father (Godley/Creme/Stewart) 1970
14 Umbopo (Godley/Creme) - Doctor Father (Godley/Creme/Stewart) 1970
15 When He Comes (Gouldman/Katz/Kasenetz) - Fighter Squadron (10cc) 1971
16 Come on Plane (Gouldman/Katz/Kasenetz) - Silver Fleet (10cc) 1971
17 Today (Godley/Creme) - Festival (10cc) 1972
18 Warm Me (Stewart/Gouldman) - Festival (10cc) 1972
19 Have You Ever Been To Georgia (Gouldman) - Garden Odyssey (10cc) 1972
20 The Joker (Gouldman/Greenfield) - Garden Odyssey (10cc) 1972
21 Travellin' Man (Gouldman) - Tristar Airbus (10cc) 1972
22 Pig Bin An' Gone (Godley/Creme/Stewart/Gouldman) - Grumble (10cc) 1973

10cc - Hot Sun Rock (1978)

10cc achieved their greatest commercial success in the 1970s, although they'd been around for a number of years before that, plying their trade as jobbing songsmiths and session musicians. The band initially consisted of four musicians – Graham Gouldman, Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley, and Lol Creme – who had written and recorded together in various partnerships for about five years before assuming the name 10cc in 1972. The band featured two songwriting teams, one 'commercial' and one 'artistic'. Stewart and Gouldman were predominantly pop songwriters, who created most of the band's accessible songs. By way of contrast, Godley and Creme were the predominantly experimental half of 10cc, featuring an 'art school' sensibility and cinematically-inspired writing. Every member of the group was a multi-instrumentalist, singer, writer and producer, and the writing teams frequently switched partners, so that Godley/Gouldman or Creme/Stewart compositions were not uncommon. With such a wealth of songwriting talent on board, it's no wonder that there were a surfeit of songs recorded at their own Strawberry Studios, and so most of their early singles had a non-album track on the flip. This collection is made up of b-sides of their singles between 1972 and 1978. 

Track listing

01 4% Of Something (b-side of 'Johnny, Don't Do It!' 1972)
02 Hot Sun Rock (b-side of 'Donna' 1972)
03 Speed Kills (b-side of 'Headline Hustler' 1973)
04 Bee In My Bonnet (b-side of 'The Dean And I' 1973)
05 Waterfall (b-side of 'Rubber Bullets' 1973)
06 Gizmo My Way (b-side of 'The Wall Street Shuffle' 1974)
07 18 Carat Man Of Means (b-side of 'The Worst Band In The World' 1974)
08 Good News (b-side of 'I'm Not In Love' 1975)
09 Get It While You Can (b-side of 'Art For Art's Sake' 1975)
10 Channel Swimmer (b-side of 'Life Is A Minestrone' 1975)
11 Hot To Trot (b-side of 'The Things We Do For Love' 1976)
12 Don't Squeeze Me Like Toothpaste (b-side of 'Good Morning Judge' 1977)
13 I'm So Laid Back I'm Laid Out (b-side of 'People In Love' 1977)
14 Nothing Can Move Me (b-side of 'Dreadlock Holiday' 1978)