10cc rocked my world in 1975 with the first song of theirs I ever heard, the ethereal "I'm Not In Love", a major hit spending three weeks at #2. Eric Stewart who started his career as a member of The Mindbenders, a band that once collaborated with Wayne Fontana to create the #1 hit "Game Of Love" a #1 in 1965. After Fontana split, The Mindbenders carried on with "A Groovy Kind Of Love" a #2 hit in 1966. Eric and Graham Gouldman left the Mindbenders and started a new group called Hotlegs with Lol Creme and Kevin Godley and released the single "Neanderthal Man" putting a #22 US hit single under their belts. While working on the Hotlegs project, UK producer and label owner Jonathon King ("Everyone's Gone To The Moon", #17, 1965) came up with a new name for them after he had a vivid dream where in it one of his label acts had made #1 Album and #1 Pop Song in the US simultaneously. The band's name? 10cc. King has a long and storied career as a barker producer, creating UK covers of US pop hits, strange names like Sakharin covering "Sugar Sugar" as a heavy metal tune and making them UK hits. So the suggestion to change Hotlegs to 10cc was agreed upon and the band set about their recording career. The first hit single in the US was "Rubber Bullets", (#73, 1973) but positively exploded with "I'm Not In Love" two years later. In 1976, there was an amicable division with Godley & Creme leaving to start solo careers. Stewart and Gouldman carried on the 10cc banner with 1976's "The Things We Do For Love". That song was included in their 1977 LP, "Deceptive Bends". The following year, they released "Bloody Tourists" that contained the reggae joint "Dreadlock Holiday". Apparently, the song came from an experience that Stewart shared with Moody Blues" vocalist Justin Hayward when they vacationed together in Barbados. Stewart saw a song in it changed the locale to Jamaica. If you follow the lyrics, the singer is telling a story to the antagonist trying to convince him that they have much in common. He is lost in Jamaica and was approached by several people, first four local men with one man offering money to get a silver chain, and one more when a woman approaches him with drugs to sell while he was minding his business "drinking his pina colada" poolside. I guess the fish out of water feeling got to him, but he turned it into one catchy tune! 10cc kinda faded away after that, as they were unable to catch the ear of the record buying public with their eclectic and exceptionally well produced songs. Godley & Creme got to the next level by turning into video directors, creating two classic 80's videos, Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" and then The Police's "Every Breath You Take". The videos "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" Wang Chung, "A View To A Kill" Duran Duran, and Peter Gabriel's "Don't Give Up" that featured Kate Bush were all directed by the famed duo.

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