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money-spinner came from sport. In British chart terms, it was the age of the football (soccer) record; teams of sportsmen trooping into a studio to lend their often dubious vocal talents to their team’s song. Strawberry Studios would be responsible for many of these, including several big hits; Leeds United’s imaginatively titled ‘Leeds United’ breached the British Top 10, while both of Manchester’s professional teams, United (‘Willie Morgan On The Wing’) and City (‘The Boys In Blue’) enjoyed Strawberry’s services, with the former, an ode to one of the side’s most gifted players, even earning a cover version, by The Ted Taylor Orchestra!


Gouldman recalls, “We did the football things; we’d be asked and say ‘You know, it’s a football record, let’s try and make a good football record, and it’s business for the studio. Who are we to get picky?’ That was our attitude, and at the same time we were doing an album with Neil Sedaka, or an album with Ramases, and I think it showed we could turn our hands to anything, or in other words, there were no depths to which we would not sink.”


Ramases and Neil Sedaka


Of all these projects, Ramases’ Space Hymns remains a genuine favourite. Ramases himself believed he was the


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"Would you pick a fight with these men?" A very early 10cc promo shot. L- R: Gouldman, Godley, Stewart, Creme.


reincarnation of the Egyptian pharaoh of the same name, and Gouldman enthuses, “It was great. It was a really fine album to make. We would sit down on the floor with acoustic guitars, that kind of vibe, very hippy and mystical.”


Released on Vertigo, in the days when its label design really could induce that, Space Hymns apparently did very well in Holland, but in terms of really putting


“We liked the vibe so much we started adding recorders, tone generator, anvil, and backwards echo. Dick Leahy from Philips came in and he said, ‘What the hell’s that you’re playing? It sounds like a hit record to me. Can we release it?’


Strawberry on the map, the most notable sessions were those with veteran rocker Neil Sedaka.


Sedaka had been drawn to Strawberry first after hearing Crazy Elephant’s ‘There Ain’t No Umbopo’, and then when Tony Christie recorded Sedaka’s ‘(Is This The Way To)


Amarillo’ at the studio, and gave the songwriter his first hit in years. Sedaka would record two albums, Solitaire and The Tra La Days Are Over, at Strawberry, a combination that gave his career a whole new lease of life with a return to both the UK and US charts.


Despite all this activity, however, the team were not neglecting their own musical ambitions, no matter how hard-pressed they were to find time for them. Early in ’72, Gouldman got together with producer Eric Woolfson (later a member of The Alan Parsons Project, and later still an aspiring solo artist, whose ’90 album would feature contributions from Eric Stewart), to record a new solo single, ‘Growing Older’; it was followed by a group decision that while session work was all very well, it was not making any of them feel particularly fulfilled. There and then, Gouldman remembers, they made a pact. They wanted to create “something good and lasting”.


Godley: “Ramases and Neil Sedaka were definite high points because they were album projects and gave us relief from the lunacy and solid opportunities to extend ourselves into more genuine experimental areas as in Space Hymns, or hone our skills playing together as a band as on both Neil Sedaka albums.”


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