VERY GODLEY

DAVE THOMPSON INTERVIEWS SINGER-SONGWRITER KEVIN GODLEY (OF 10CC FAME) ABOUT HIS FIRST SOLO ALBUM, MUSCLE MEMORY.

- DAVE THOMPSON

He was the deep voice on “Rubber Bullets,” and part of the choir on “I’m Not In Love.” He sang of “An Englishman In New York,” lamented the “Snack Attack” and he soared skyward on “Cry.”

Between the early 1970s and the late 1980s, Kevin Godley possessed one of the most recognizable voices in rock, while he was also one half of the team that produced some of the most captivating videos of the MTV era, from Duran’s “Girls on Film” to the Police’s “Every Breath You Take,” and onto Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s initial visual assault.

He conceived and directed the 1990 One World One Voice project (and looks forward to its reissue later this year), and he has been quietly active ever since, but never — for long — in musical terms. One of the world’s great singers, one of its greatest ever songwriters… he just found other things to do.

Until, sometime around 2016/2017, when he had a rather peculiar idea.

It was 10 years since he and fellow ex-10cc-er Graham Gouldman struck out as GG/06, a short-lived but extraordinarily thoughtful duo who cut half a dozen songs for their website and then parted again. A couple of years since Hog Fever, an audiobook that just happened to have a handful of songs in the midst of it. And talking to Goldmine in 2016, he acknowledged “I’d love to write and record a (solo) album, but it’s an outmoded format. I think Kanye West has the right idea. Keep improving the recordings; keep updating them, changing them. Confound the audience as well as thrilling them.

“That said, I’d love to make more music for its own sake.”

So he did.