All the hits – live in concert! – I’m Not In Love, The Things We Do For Love, Rubber Bullets, Donna, The Wall Street Shuffle, Art For Art’s Sake, I’m Mandy Fly Me, Good Morning Judge, Life Is A Minestrone, and of course the best summer vacation song ever – Dreadlock Holiday (come on, sing it now – I Don’t Like Cricket! – tell us that one’s not gonna be stuck in your head for the rest of the day!). Such an incredible string of great songs.
Among the most inventive and influential bands in the history of popular music, and with 30 million albums sold worldwide, and over 2 Billion streams total for such monumental hits as I’m Not In Love (featured in Guardians of the Galaxy), and Dreadlock Holiday, 10cc are one of the very few acts to have achieved commercial, critical and creative success in equal measure.
And now, following their barnstorming Australian tour of 2023, 10cc return in 2025 to get audiences up on their feet, clapping, dancing and singing along to one of the most outstanding collections of eclectic hits ever to have emerged from the UK.
Graham Gouldman puts the 10cc’s longevity down to the quality and individuality of the band’s songs. “They don’t seem to date. We never followed any trend we simple wrote for our own pleasure. The fact that the songs are being played as often on the radio today as they ever were shows how true that is” he says.
The missing link between The Beatles and the Gorillaz, 10cc ruled the pop world in the 70’s – a time when the charts were dominated by some of the most creative and colourful artists in pop history. 10cc worked not on image or celebrity-status, but on the art of making highly sophisticated rock masterworks into simple-sounding pop hits. The result was some of the greatest pop records of the 20th century.
What does 10cc mainstay Graham Gouldman think of the outpouring of love for his band? “Year on year we get busier and busier. It’s great, we love touring and playing together and we get on really well. The audiences these days are very gratifying. You get the people you would expect, who grew up with 10cc, but you also get young kids who know the songs too. Whether they’ve discovered 10cc for themselves, via the internet or radio, or just grown up with their parents playing it in the house, I don’t know. But we get a great mix of people from the generations.”
Gouldman goes on to praise the outstanding musicians featured on stage with him – “The band, as it stands now is absolutely fantastic. Our main strength is the songs, nothing else. This is as near as you’re ever going to get to hearing the perfect 10cc. Hit after hit after hit. It’s relentless. We show no mercy.”
Tickets on sale Wednesday August 21 www.davidroywilliams.com
