THE GIZMO BOYS
How a 'new sound' was invented

BBC TV Top of the Pops Annual 1979 pp. 14-15
Edited by Ken Irwin

Once upon a time – as all good fairy stories go – there were two music-loving guys from Manchester. Their names were Lol Creme and Kevin Godley.

They teamed up to form a pop group which eventually became one of the best in the land. They called themselves 10cc, and they had a number of chart-topping hits to their credit.

But then, with success at their feet, Lol and Kevin grew restless. They were not happy, because they were desperately searching for a new sound.

Eventually, they found it – but only when they invented the Gizmo. And with their new invention they completely revolutionised the pop music business.

That, in a nutshell, is the fairytale story of Creme and Godley. But of course there is far more to it than that. And like all good fairy stories, this one had a happy ending.

At the height of their fame, Lol and Kevin left the 10cc group, high on the crest of the success wave. They simply wanted to develop a completely new sound.

Initially, it all started when they began to wonder if they could, in some way, make an electric guitar produce a sound like a violin. That was back in 1971, and they tried various experiments. Such odd experiments, too, like wrapping some old rubber inner-tubing round the end of an electric drill and holding it against a guitar's strings.

For the next two years they developed the idea and produced a couple of prototype models. They went along to the Physics Department of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, and asked for help with their experiments.

The result, after a great deal of research and soul searching, was the Gizmo – a mechanical device in the shape of a small box, which clamps on to the bridge of a guitar and mechanically bows and vibrates the strings of the instrument.

The notes the guitarist plays can be changed and sustained, thereby giving him a vast range of musical effects, but notably the sound of a string section.

In fact, the Gizmo does not simply make the sound of a violin (after all, if you want the sound of a violin, you might just as well play the old-fashioned violin!). It gives a more than reasonable imitation of a whole symphony orchestra, when used skilfully. It can also produce the lifelike sound of a choir of voices, which is quite unique.

Immediately they had invented the Gizmo, Lol and Kevin patented their invention, and sent it off to an American musical instrument firm to market it on an international scale.

The reason they sent it to America, they both say, is that, quite simply, they couldn't get anyone in this country interested enough in their revolutionary idea.

Lol and Kevin feel, very seriously, that they have now invented the most profound musical instrument since someone decided it would be better to bang strings rather than pluck them, and called the result of this experiment the piano!

The Gizmo is unlike any other previous invention of musical hardware in that it is not an electronic device. It is purely mechanical, a piece of engineering which can only change and sustain the sounds of an ordinary guitar. While the Gizmo has its own sound, similar to a string section, it is mechanically and completely under the control of the guitarist.

The Gizmo cannot create music. It can be attached and removed from the guitar in a matter of seconds. Once it is fitted, the guitarist can play it, or not, as he wishes.

Kevin and Lol now hope that their Gizmo gadget, selling at a moderate price, will be snapped up by every guitar player who has ever dreamed of making a noise like a full orchestra.

They explain the philosophy very simply. Says Lol: "Until we invented the Gizmo, life could be very difficult for a guy trying to write a tune. You had an idea in your head for some string treatment on a song. You had to hum it over to a musical arranger, who then worked it out for a set of musicians. He had to hire several top-class musicians from a symphony orchestra to get the whole thing going.

"But with the Gizmo, a bloke can work out new musical ideas on his own guitar. He can use his guitar strings as violins, violas, cellos and basses. By feeding it into the multi-tracking equipment in a recording studio, he can reproduce the whole works, just as it comes into his mind.

"With it, a guitarist will be able to go into the recording studio and produce a complete piece of music. It also removes the danger of a composer compromising his ideas in the process of translation through an arranger and then the individual musicians in the orchestra.

"String treatments can be tried and discarded if they do not work, without incurring the huge costs in time and money of bringing an orchestra into the studio."

The closest equivalents are the mellotron or the different kinds of synthesizer which certainly cannot be bought for less than £1,000. In this respect, says Lol and Kevin, the Gizmo is the first significant development in the guitar, as an instrument, since the invention of the electric guitar in the 1930s. Keyboard instruments have, of course, progressed enormously in recent years – but the guitar has been neglected!

The couple were so delighted with the first results of their Gizmo invention that they gave up performing and spent nearly eighteen months in the recording studios, producing a 'mixed package' of musical sounds which was issued by Phonogram Records under the title Consequences–a set of three LPs described as 'a kaleidoscope of contemporary music'.

Kevin Godley was born in Manchester on October 7th 1945. Lol Creme was born in the same city nearly two years later, on September 17th 1947. Kevin went to the same primary school as Graham Gouldman, and then went on to the North Cestrian Grammar School, Altrincham.

However his closest friend was his near neighbour, Lol Creme, with whom Kevin shared an early love of art as well as music. They met as young teenagers. Lol's main ambition, at school, was to become a cartoonist. Kevin and Lol teamed up in 1959, when they played together in a music group called The Sabres. Kevin played drums and Lol lead guitar.

Both lads went on to art college, but it soon became clear to both Lol and Kevin that, in spite of their art studies, their careers were headed more in the direction of the pop music field.

In the early 1960s the Manchester music scene was thriving. Lol Creme started writing songs, and the first song he wrote, Baby Not Like Me, was recorded by Graham Gouldman's group, The Whirlwinds, in 1964. Lol then hired himself out around town as a freelance guitar player, doing odd nights with artists like Johnny Kidd, Bo Diddley, and the group which was later to become Herman's Hermits.

Kevin, meanwhile, was playing drums as a semi-professional and he started playing with Graham Gouldman's new band, The Mockingbirds. Lol and Kevin then started writing together, and after they both left art college they made the joint decision that music was more important to them than art.

They both had a love and a feeling for the same kind of music. Their first joint achievement came in 1969 when Giorgio Gomelski released two of their songs on the Marmalade label, I'm Beside Myself and Animal Song. But the amusing fact is that, at Gomelski's suggestion, Lol and Kevin recorded the songs under the unlikely name of Frabjoy and Runcible Spoon.

Lol and Kevin were then brought in by Graham Gouldman and Eric Stewart to help them record a batch of Gouldman's new songs – and six months later Kevin, Lol and Eric Stewart recorded their own song, Neanderthal Man, which became their first big hit record. They recorded this under the name of Hotlegs. That record turned out to be a worldwide hit, selling more than two million copies.

Later the three lads, parading under the name of Hotlegs, were invited to support the Moody Blues group on a British tour, and Godley, Creme and Stewart then asked Graham Gouldman to join them as a foursome – and eventually they changed their name and became known as 10cc.

They got the name of 10cc from record-maker Jonathan King, and their first single under the new name was Donna. But it was their third record, Rubber Bullets, which shot them to stardom, because it went to No 1 in the charts. That was in 1973.

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