From the backroom to a perfect 10

The 10cc lineup has changed but Graham Gouldman (C) and his band still perform anything from pop to sharp-edged rock.

The measure of how modest - and successful - Graham Gouldman has been comes when he quickly corrects the assumption that he was on the British number one single Neanderthal Man by Hotlegs in 1971.

He didn't play on it, although it was recorded in the British studio he co-owned by some guys he knew and subsequently ended up working with.

When Neanderthal Man, a metronomic piece of moronic rock which was recorded only to test the new studio's four-track facilities, was released, Gouldman was working in New York - and writing hits for others.

When it comes to writing chart toppers or classic songs, Gouldman is your man.

Consider this partial list: in the mid 60s he wrote For Your Love, Heart Full of Soul, and Evil Hearted You for the Yardbirds; he co-wrote Look Through Any Window, then wrote Bus Stop for the Hollies; he gave Herman's Hermit's No Milk Today and Wayne Fontana Pamela Pamela ... And all of them and more came in an 18-month period.

"Yes, 1965 and 1966 were very good for me," he laughs with what sounds like embarrassment. "I was 19 when I started. I was part of a bigger picture in that I was born at the perfect time in the perfect place. You've got to have a gift and ambition, but certain elements just clicked."

After his hit-writing career in England stalled he went to New York to co-write with Jerry Kasenetz and Jeff Katz, the evil geniuses behind the bubblegum pop of Yummy Yummy and Chewy Chewy.

For Gouldman, who enjoyed pressure and discipline, it was like joining the fabled Brill Building because he would go to work every day and just write songs. Although he didn't much care for the Kasenetz-Katz music, he liked them as people and New York hustling songwriters. He lasted less than a year.

Even then, knocking out rubbishy pop, he had successes. "I wrote a song as a complete joke and it sold a lot in France. I'm not even going to tell you what it was called," he says laughing. (It was Susan's Tuba by the universally derided 1960s band Freddie and the Dreamers)

"[Kasenetz-Katz] were looking for someone to raise their game. It was a bad idea artistically but had a wonderful side effect because, although I was living in New York, I was involved in Strawberry Studio in England.

"I said I didn't want to record in New York so went back to England to record with people I knew. In a way [Kasenetz-Katz] were partly responsible for bringing us together."

The "us" were his longtime friend and studio partner Eric Stewart, and songwriters/producers Lol Creme and Kevin Godley - who had recorded Neanderthal Man. The four of them became 10cc.

Then the hits started to come and Gouldman, the backroom songwriter, stepped on to the world stage.

10cc had a remarkable string of 70s hit singles, among them the poppy Rubber Bullets, the breathy I'm Not In Love, the Pink Floyd-like Art For Art's Sake, and the mock reggae of Dreadlock Holiday.

If there is a hallmark of Gouldman's and 10cc's songs, it is their diversity. Close harmony pop for the Hollies, sharp-edged guitar rock for the Yardbirds, and from doowop to carefully crafted mini pop-operas for 10cc on their 1975 classic album Original Soundtrack.

Gouldman, who turned 60 last month says his period with 10cc was a gift. It allowed them to be self-contained as a band and explore any musical possibility.

"We were four different characters bringing four different elements, but it was all compatible in a weird way. We'd all sung lead on different records before so when we got together it made every track different on our albums. We would change the sound to suit the song."

Over four albums, 10cc became one of the biggest and most musically respected bands of the 70s - and their subsequent reunions confirmed their individual and collective talents. They could turn their hands to anything, from pure pop to art rock and beyond.

If there is a signature to some of Gouldman's earliest songs it is the meaning he finds in the mundane: waiting at a bus stop on a wet day and offering a girl an umbrella; a note which reads "no milk today" taking on a deeper meaning.

"I was writing by myself back then but my late father was a playwright and poet so anything I wrote I would take to him. Quite often he would come up with titles and bits of lyrics.

"No Milk Today wasn't my idea. He went to visit a friend who wasn't in and saw on the doorstep a milk bottle with that note 'no milk today'. Most people would have ignored that but he said, 'What about that?'

"He said the empty bottle wasn't because you'd run out of milk, it was something much deeper. It's about the home now being empty, the relationship inside had finished.

"I think the idea of finding meaning in things like that has something to do with coming from the north of England and a working-class upbringing and observing the mundane and seeing it as some thing else."

Gouldman has come a long way from the bleak streets of his Manchester childhood but, ever modest, he downplays his successes.

"You do what you do to the best of your ability.

"There will be times when what you do doesn't work, but you keep doing it. It comes around."

* Songwriter and 10cc founder Graham Gouldman at the Bruce Mason Centre June 29 and 30