Written by Lol Creme and Kevin Godley, two of the smartest songwriters I know, “Old Wild Men” is a song from an album, Sheet Music, by one of my old favourites, 10cc. Godley and Creme were both in their twenties when they wrote the song and envisioned life as old rock and rollers. A totally different take on Pete Townsend’s “My generation”, 9 years earlier.
“Old men of rock and roll, Came bearing music
Where are they now? They are over the hill and far away
But they’re still gonna play guitars, On dead strings, and old drums
They’ll play and play to pass the time, The old wild men
Old wild men, Old wild men, waiting for miracles”
The other half of 10cc were Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman. Stewart was a bit of a star in the 60s as frontman with the Mindbenders, which even included Gouldman just before they called it a day. Gouldman wrote career-building hits for the Hollies, Hermans Hermits, the Yardbirds (who later morphed into Led Zeppelin) and others. In 10cc, Godley and Creme usually contributed the arty, more complex songs and Stewart and Gouldman, the smart pop songs, but that varied and Godley and Creme came up with their share of hits. It was a team effort. The only other band I can think of which had four successful songwriters is Queen.
Stewart was keen to produce so they built their own studio in Manchester: Strawberry Studios. The studio was even involved in recording notes for the Mellotron, an instrument which played prerecorded notes from tape loops. Orchestral musicians would painstakingly be recorded one note at a time. By 1972 they had become a proper band and released their first album. The band was different: clever, funny – check out “Rubber bullets” from the first album – and a huge hit of course.
The two 10cc songwriting teams created a satisfying balance of pop and art
music on their first four albums until Godley and Creme made a whole album of
their own music in 1976/77, “Consequences”. The consequence of that was, they
left 10cc. Godley and Creme didn’t like the new songs, didn’t like the set-up
for the coming album and decided they didn’t want to make any more albums with
10cc. A decision which they all regretted to some extent. Stewart and Gouldman
carried on anyway and had more hits (“Dreadlock holiday” for instance), but the
albums were less fun without the arty input from Godley and Creme.
I also bought Deceptive Bends (without Godley and Creme), but it was too lightweight for me and after that I’d also had enough of 10cc. At the same time, Godley and Creme’s albums were hard to listen to as the pop which provided that magical balance and which had worked so well earlier, was mostly not there. But they also began making music videos just as MTV was taking off and became groundbreaking masters of that instead. “Cry”, from 1985 is a good example of their writing skills and video innovation. Clever guys and good at whatever they put their hands to, in other words. I know quite a few old men of roll and roll, being one of them myself. But we don’t play on dead strings and old drums and don’t consider ourselves particularly over the hill and far away. On the other hand, we’re not waiting for miracles either.