10CC prove 70s songsstill live on for audience

As 10cc founding member Graham Gouldman says: “In a way it is more enjoyable now. It is less hassle. One of the differences is your approach to any difficulties you might encounter. You’re more mature.

“And you are surrounded by a fantastic bunch of people. It’s like being in a weird soap!”

Performing the music just does the rest – music that means a huge amount to millions of people.

“I’m Not In Love has got a kind of spirituality about it,” Graham says. “I always get taken away by it. I am not actually singing it, but it’s just like I am living it. I am in it. It’s a wonderful feeling. As soon as it starts, people recognise it and you get the applause.”

The point is that it takes people back, evoking memories – back, in Graham’s case, to a genuinely-exciting period in English music.

10cc emerged in an era of huge originality when so much was happening.

“I think we benefited from The Beatles hangover. We learnt such a lot from the way that they wrote their songs.

“I would say that was the main thing – that craft in their song writing. This country has always produced the greatest bands.”

It was an influence 10cc absorbed on their way to creating something genuinely new: “Lyrically I think we took things a lot further.

“I am not saying it was better, but there were subject matters we covered that nobody else had covered.

“We had a song called You’ve Got A Cold. We always felt we could write about anything. It was either being cocky or foolish. But we were always free. We were not following any trends. We even had our own studio, which was very unusual.”

With four singers and different song-writing combinations, it gave them huge flexibility: “It was more to do with chemistry than anything else. It’s about how you interact with one another.

“You had four people with completely different musical tastes – well, we had some common ground – but with completely different personalities coming together.

“It was a combination of a little friction and the differences that made it work. You can’t plan it. We just clicked right away.”

n 10cc play Worthing’s Assembly Hall on Friday, March 11 at 7.30pm (01903) 206 206 and Southsea’s Kings Theatre on Friday, April 8 at 7.30pm (023) 9282 8282.