When Godley & Creme premièred their 1977 debut concept album Consequences to their record company at a church in Amsterdam, several of the sales team fell asleep before the halfway mark. At just shy of two hours, that baffling, indulgent folly remains one of the most impenetrable records created by people who were nominally pop stars, having bossed much of the decade as half of the inventive yet usually accessible 10cc.
The duo’s decision to bet the farm on this peculiar passion project was ridiculed as they emerged blinking from 18 months in the studio to find Britain had gone punk – and that the last thing the nation wanted was what Kevin Godley later described as “a semi-avant-garde orchestral triple album with a drunk Peter Cook and me singing with Sarah Vaughan. The result is a weird mix of sheer brilliance and utter shit. I could be wrong.”
Yet, because they were so absurdly talented and versatile – and also, almost unfairly, sublime singers – the pair bounced back from the derision hurled at their grand flop about a pissed solicitor, his French wife, an eccentric composer and meteorological warfare. Subsequent releases corrected their course, via detours, towards what might be recognised as popular music; albeit a subversive, mischievous strain.
This astonishing 11-CD box set gathers all their work (not counting their brilliant era even before 10cc as Frabjoy & Runcible Spoon): seven albums plus multiple B-sides and mixes. It’s a universe of strangeness and charm.
L, featuring Andy Mackay, is both satire of and homage to Zappa. Freeze Frame gave us An Englishman In New York, as their parallel career in video production warmed up. It doubled down on treated voices while roping in Paul McCartney for some backing vocals.
On 1981’s Ismism, they even collided with the pop charts again, via the eerie Under Your Thumb and pitch-perfect Motown pastiche Wedding Bells. The record reminded us there was nothing these two couldn’t do – if they wanted to. But they’d already had the hit parade thing with 10cc; and, Godley has said, a lot of dope was smoked.
The underrated Birds Of Prey swings between sexy and twitchy, while The History Mix Volume 1 is an hour-long remix of their entire oeuvre, an audio collage as chaotic as it was then cutting edge. It also yielded Cry, further proof of the beauty they could conjure up.
Goodbye Blue Sky is obsessed with the environment and harmonicas. Yes, harmonicas. It’s almost as if they were erratic, wilful geniuses or something. All hail their vision, pratfalls and triumphs.
Parts Of The Process: The Complete Godley & Creme is on sale now via Demon/Edsel.
