Godley & Creme

Godley & Creme were an English rock duo formally established in Manchester in 1977 by Kevin Godley and Lol Creme. The pair began releasing music as a duo after their departure from the rock band 10cc. In 1979, they directed their first music video for their single "An Englishman in New York". After this, they became involved in the production of videos for artists such as Ultravox, the Police, Yes, Duran Duran, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Huey Lewis and the News and Wang Chung, as well as directing the groundbreaking video for their 1985 single "Cry". The duo split at the end of the 1980s. Both have since been involved in music videos, TV commercials, and sporadic music projects.

Kevin Godley and Lol Creme met in the late 1950s and for a brief time were in an amateur band together. In the early 1960s they joined white R&B combo The Sabres (The Magic Lanterns) together. Though they played in different bands, with Godley briefly in The Mockingbirds with Graham Gouldman, who would later work with Godley and Creme in 10cc.

After recording a one-off single under the name of 'Yellow Bellow Room Boom' for UK CBS in 1967 ("Seeing Things Green" b/w "Easy Life"), the pair began their professional music career together in 1969, performing pop music in Strawberry Studios at Stockport near Manchester with Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman. The duo also released a single in 1969, "I'm Beside Myself" b/w "Animal Song", under the name Frabjoy & Runcible Spoon after being signed on to Marmalade Records directly by label head Giorgio Gomelsky. A 7-song LP was slated for a late 1969 release on Marmalade; however, the label collapsed under the weight of its financial situation before the end of the year, and the LP was shelved until its release in the 2022 compilation Frabjous Days: The Secret World of Godley & Creme 1967–1969 on Grapefruit Records.

Joined by Eric Stewart to form Hotlegs they first secured a chart success with the song "Neanderthal Man" which hit #2 in the UK. The band, after serving as the backing band for two successful Neil Sedaka albums, evolved into 10cc in 1972 when Graham Gouldman joined. 10cc went on to record four albums and enjoyed chart success, most notably with their 1975 single "I'm Not in Love", a hit on both sides of the Atlantic.

After the release of 10cc's fourth LP, How Dare You! (1976), Godley and Creme left the band to perfect a device they dubbed "The Gizmo" (Gizmotron), a module which attached to the bridge of an electric guitar. The Gizmo used small motor-driven rotating wheels which were pressed into contact with the strings, thus creating a continuous, violin-like "bowing" effect on all or any combination of strings, generating infinite sustain in voicings ranging from a single note to a full chord. The device was originally conceived as a cost-saving measure for 10cc. The group already owned and operated their own studio, and all four were talented singers and multi-instrumentalists who could also produce and engineer their own records, so their plan was that by using Gizmo-fitted electric guitars, with additional studio processing and overdubbing, they could create an almost infinite variety of sonic effects and orchestral textures "in-house", saving them the considerable expense of hiring session players to add these textures using traditional instruments.

After recording a demonstration single using the Gizmo, their label (Mercury Records) allowed them to continue the project, and over the next year it expanded into a sprawling 3-LP concept album Consequences (1977) with an environmental theme. It contained vocals by Sarah Vaughan and an extended comedy performance by Peter Cook, and was issued in a lavish boxed set package with an accompanying booklet. According to the album's liner notes, the duo's original plan was to hire an all-star cast of comedians (including Peter Ustinov) to perform the album's spoken-word components, but this was soon abandoned, partly due to the cost and logistical difficulty, but also because they quickly realised after meeting Peter Cook that he was able to perform all of the major roles himself. Unfortunately, by the time Consequences was finally released in late 1977, punk was in full swing, and the album was savaged by critics.

In a 1997 interview, Godley expressed regret that he and Creme had left 10cc, saying:

We'd reached a certain crossroads with 10cc and already spent three weeks on the genesis of what turned out to be Consequences ... The stuff that we were coming up with didn't have any home, we couldn't import it into 10cc. And we were kind of constrained by 10cc live ... We felt like creative people who should give ourselves the opportunity to be as creative as possible and leaving seemed to be the right thing to do at that moment. Unfortunately, the band wasn't democratic or smart enough at that time to allow us the freedom to go ahead and do this project and we were placed in the unfortunate position of having to leave to do it. Looking back, it was a very northern work ethic being applied to the group, all for one and one for all. If we'd been a little more free in our thinking with regard to our work practices, the band as a corporate and creative entity could have realised that it could have been useful rather than detrimental for two members to spend some time developing and then bring whatever they'd learned back to the corporate party. Unfortunately, that wasn't to be.