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Gouldman guitar solo, was very much in the mould of countless Beatles-influenced lightweight R&B numbers. It didn’t chart, and TheWhirlwinds broke up shortly after.


The Mockingbirds


By late ’64, however, Gouldman had begun writing his own material, and was soon looking to put together another band to play it. Retaining bassist Bernard Basso and guitarist Steve Jacobsen from The Whirlwinds, and indeed headhunting Kevin Godley, Gouldman formed The Mockingbirds, perhaps the greatest Should- Have-But-Didn’t band of the mid-60s.


Signing to Columbia, The Mockingbirds announced their debut single would be ‘For Your Love’, a song Gouldman wrote in the changing-roomof the men’s clothing shop where he worked. Columbia, however, had other ideas; they rejected it in favour of another Gouldman original, taped on the same day, ‘That’s How It’s Gonna Stay’, only for the song to resurface, on the same label, two months later, courtesy of The Yardbirds.


It was the first in a still unbeatable – not to mention unbelievable – string of hits and classics that Gouldman would write throughout the ’60s for (deep breath) The Hollies, Herman’s Hermits, Cher, Dave Berry, The Shadows, Wayne Fontana, Jeff Beck… everyone, in fact, but himself. Neither The Mockingbirds nor the solo Gouldman so much as smelt a hit.


The Mockingbirds, shudders Godley, were cursed. “We had one of the top songwriters in the country in the band, and we couldn’t get a bloody hit. No idea why – maybe we didn’t look right, maybe we didn’t sound right, maybe because we were tucked away in Manchester and weren’t accessible. We weren’t professional; we were an amateur band or a semi-pro band – I remember a choice I had to make when I was in my second year at art college, I was hauled over the coals by the principal of the college, ‘What do you want to do? Do you want to be a musician or do you want to be a commercial artist, because you’re spending too much time on music. You’re going to a gig till three in the afternoon, when you should be here at nine in the morning…’; and it was a bit like that.


“I used to skive off to do a gig, so it wasn’t ideal. But we never turned pro, in inverted commas. It was local gigs, a little club in Stoke called The Place, a club in Manchester called The Oasis, small clubs or ice rinks, not ‘concerts’, because people didn’t do concerts in those days.


“I think the most interesting thing we did, we used to do the warm ups at Top Of The


The Mindbenders, L-R: Eric Stewart, Bob Lang and Ric Rothwell.


Pops, when it was being filmed in Manchester. We met The Who there a few times, and we got a real taste of it. We were young – everything was an experience. We had no idea where any of this stuff would lead, we were doing it because it was a hoot. Driving from one place to the other, stuck in the back of a van with a bunch of blokes, falling asleep


songs, but we never, ever turned down a Graham Gouldman song, and I, still to this day, say, ‘Why didn’t I get him in Herman’s Hermits?’”


The Mindbenders


Instead, when Gouldman did join another band, following the demise of The


Mockingbirds and a stillborn solo career, it was the last days of The Mindbenders.


The Mockingbirds, L-R: Bernard Basso, Kevin Godley, Graham Gouldman and Steve Jacobson.


in a bass bin, that was kinda cool. We were doing it because it was fun and it was enjoyable; we never had a huge amount of ambition, because it wasn’t too serious. We were in a band, and that was enough.”


So they made their little records, and they scrabbled around the circuit, and all the while, Gouldman’s songs continued to conquer the world. Peter Noone recalls, “He was just a phenomenal songsmith. I mean, everything he played to me, I loved. And it’s the construction. We turned down Carole King songs and Neil Diamond


“I wasn’t an official member,” Gouldman relates today. “I only joined right at the end of their career, when Eric was the only original member left. I’d known him for a while; it was just Eric doing the clubs, and he said do you fancy coming on the road with us, so I did.” Nevertheless, both he and Stewart still recoil from the memory of the group’s final release, 1968’s ‘Uncle Joe, The Ice Cream Man’. Stewart remembered, “We were recording that at Olympic Studios, and the Stones were next door working on their album. Mick Jagger popped his head ’round while I was doing the vocal and said, ‘Why are you singing this shit?’ It was the final nail in the coffin.” The Mindbenders broke up almost before the record was in the racks, calling it a day at The Liverpool Empire on November 20, ’68, the last night of a UK. tour with The Who, Arthur Brown, Joe Cocker and The Small Faces.


Freed fromthe band, and the need to play ‘A Groovy Kind Of Love’ every night until he died, Stewart threw himself into his newly- purchased studio dream; Gouldman, meanwhile, returned to hismaverick wanderings, playing some sessions for Giorgio Gomelsky’s newly founded


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