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10cc "Mirror Mirror" (1995)
Yvonne's The One/Code
Of Silence/Bluebird/Age Of Consent/Take This Woman/The Monkey and The
Onion/Everything Is Not Enough/Ready To Go Home/Grow Old With Me/Margo Wants
The Mustard/Peace In Our Time/Why Did I Break Your Heart? Now You're Gone/I'm
Not In Love (Acoustic Re-Recording)
'Mirror, mirror on the wall, did 10cc really
have so far to fall? Divided in two it's less than half the draw, but there's a
reason Eric and Graham weren't playing ball. At least a few songs that still
stand tall - well, more than on 'Meanwhile' after all...'
Eric Stewart and
Graham Gouldman still hadn't quite repaired their friendship after the split in
1983. Being press-ganged into making a tenth 10cc album nine years later (when
Mercury discovered they still technically had the band under contract) hadn't
helped their working relationship - and yet they still had to make an eleventh
if they wanted the ghost of contracts past to leave them alone to see out their
twilight years in peace. It's hard to make an album when the record label wants
you to rather than when you want to and 'Mirror Mirror' suffers from all the
problems of its predecessor 'Meanwhile...' by sounding all too often as if the
band would rather be anywhere but the studio most of the time. Maybe the beach,
where the cover photograph and inner photos were taken, including what was in
all likelihood the only day Eric and Graham spent together on the whole project
(and even here they almost have their backs to each other as they look in
different directions. You see, after the miserable sessions for 'Meanwhile...'
the duo were keen not to make the same mistake again and 'Mirror Mirror' is
actually a very 10cc-ish concept album about 'mirroring', with Eric and Graham
effectively offering us two solo albums for the price of one (before coming
together with the earlier one-off 1992 re-recording of 'I'm Not In Love' at the
end).
This is, of course,
a problem - 10cc aren't 10cc without those harmonies and it's all too obvious that
you're hearing lots of little Grahams or lots of little Erics. It's also a fact
that neither man's solo records ever sounded like 10cc - it's the teamwork that
made those albums, with the slightly different madness and energy of each
member bouncing off each other, especially in the Godley and Creme years. At
least 'Meanwhile...' had the odd chorus harmonies and a full reunion in the
case of 'The Night The Stars Didn't Show' with Godley and Creme guesting
(neither turn up on this album). However 'Mirror' is also a better album in
several respects and solves one problem 10cc had been having since Godley and
Creme left in 1976 where they became the Eric Stewart show with the odd
Gouldman cameos and it's great to hear Graham getting his fair share of the album
at last. The band had made this work before too: it's almost like 1983 all over
again, when Eric was busy making the deeply serious band album 'Windows In The
Jungle' while Graham was off making the nicely silly solo album for children
'Animalympics' and both are pretty excellent works in two very different ways.
The working arrangements also means that 'Mirror' does have a little bit more
of the old 10cc joi de vivre, with both men at least excited to be in their
half of the studio (well, we say that as a metaphor as they'd have to be big
studios - Graham was in London and Eric was in France) and there's a lighter,
happier feel than the darkness of 'Meanwhile...' which often seemed so at odds
with 10cc traditions. Of course both sides would still have sounded better had
Eric added his characteristic guitarwork to Graham's recordings and had Graham
added his characteristic harmonies to Eric's recordings and it would have been
nice if the last 10cc album released under the 10cc name had actually featured more
than one previously released recording featuring the two men together. That
was, after all, the original plan - both Eric and Graham started work on their
songs intending them to be demos the others would finish off, but as time went
by they both became more protective (the two 'new' songs with credits to both
men, 'Take This Woman' and 'Why Did I Break Your Heart?' were leftover from the
'Meanwhile...' sessions and were worked out by both men a little bit, but were
very much written by Graham and Eric respectively). But even at 2.5cc (yes,
we've delayed using that joke till now, aren't you proud of us?) there's still
room in this engine to offer...something.
Given that we're
talking about what are effectively two very different records here, we're dividing
our review in two. Here's Eric's album: an eccentric collection of heartfelt
love ballads, Beatle co-writes, songs of angst and guilt, songs of sex and
sensuality, regular pop and some comedy reggae. It's like a sampler from all
his past styles with 10cc, though perhaps only 'Yvonne's The One' (which is
really much more of a Paul McCartney song) and the eerie 'Code Of Silence'
really add to his back catalogue. The tracks do, at least, follow on to some
degree from last 'proper' album 'Windows In The Jungle' ('Meanwhile...' was a
special case made in a hurry) with similar themes of life being too short for
distractions to get in the way and that it's the smaller moments that have the
most impact. 'Yvonne' seems to be a casual acquaintance at best and even though
'volcanoes erupted' when Eric's narrator saw her, he seems to have only met her
three times. The two wereb't quite as compatible as they first seemed though -
and life's too short. 'Code Of Silence' urges Eric's partner to talk about
what's troubling her or he can't help her - and life's too short to suffer
alone. 'Age Of Consent' fills in more everything you needed to know about
Eric's erotic side (Exclamation Marks!!!) with an illicit affair taking place
in public, despite the nerves of his partner
- because life's too short. 'Everything Is Not Enough' is the most
straightforward pop song on the album about how power and riches aren't
everything - because life is too short to miss out on love and fun and
friendship ('and that's a sin'). 'Margo Wants The Mustard' is a Godley/Creme
style novelty song about a middle aged lady who wants a little spice in her
life - because life's too short. Finally, 'Why Did I Break Your Heart?' still
agonises over a love affair that went wrong, possibly from decades ago, with
Eric still in pieces over what might have been - because life is too short to
be alone. In other words even the comedy songs have an added attack of the
grumps, a sense of time closing in and a feeling that the characters are in the
last chance saloon of their lives.
Graham, though, is
writing from a fairly happy place. If Eric is writing his songs from the point
of view that 'life is too short so don't waste it' then Graham is asking 'why
not?' His equally eccentric selections for this album include a nature study, a
comedy about marriage, a confusing metaphor about a monkey peeling an onion, a
nostalgic Wax reunion, the sweet sentiment of love song 'Grow Old With Me',
poetic prog rock and the sad loss of 'Now You're Gone', which is the one song
here that 'mirrors' Eric's 'Why Did I Break Your Heart?' By and large, though,
Gouldman's contributions are upbeat and ask 'well, why not try it? Life is
short'. 'Bluebird' tells us that 'inside everybody is a story to be told' and
wonders why we settle for the drudgery in our lives when if we wanted to we
could be as free as the birds - because why not? 'Take This Woman' takes
marriage very lightly and after taking this woman to be his wife, the narrator
wishes someone would take her away again - well, it was worth a try. 'The
Monkey and The Onion' (I think...it's a weird song) tells us that life is a
puzzle with no answer, so instead of debating it we should be living it. 'Ready
To Go Home' has the narrator returning to his childhood home and hoping that life
will begin again without the baggage of the past - because why not? 'Grow Old
With Me' has Graham happy that his gamble in love paid off and that his dreams
have come true and he was right to allow himself to fall in love again -
because why not? 'Peace In Our Time' is both grateful for what has been and
hopeful for what might come and is the closest 10cc ever came to writing a
religious song (though which religion - if anything it's closest to paganism -
is left unexplained) - because why not, what is there to lose? Switch the
tearful 'Now You're Gone' (where the narrator's girlfriend died and life will
never be the same - because life is short) around with Eric's go-get-em 'Margo
Wants The Mustard (because why not?) and you'd have an almost exact mirror
running parallel between the two halves of tracks. 10cc could have made even
more of this actually - instead of hiding the fact the two weren't working
together (which is after all, fairly obvious from the liner credits) they could
have put one song after another, alternating happy and sad to better reflect
life's rich tapestry of emotion. Or put all the sad Eric songs at the beginning
and all the happy Graham ones at the end, with a crossover in the middle.
However putting the 1992 re-make of everyone's favourite in-denial song 'I'm
Not In Love' is a worthy closer, the song reflecting as it does someone poised
between wanting to embrace the new (because why not?) while being scared of
things going wrong (because life is too short to be unhappy).
The end result is
an album with many nice things that feel like they get lost down the end of the
sofa rather. This is, after all, a 58 minute album (or 61 if you own the
Japanese model with the second version of 'I'm Not In Love') which makes it at
least twenty longer than any previous studio 10cc record. They always say that
comedy works best in little bits, which might be why 10cc never tried a double
album (along with the fact that at their perfectionist speed it would have
taken years, like Godley and Creme's 'Consequences' did) - but then 'Mirror
Mirror' isn't much of a comedy record in 10cc's tradition either, with only
'Take This Woman' and 'Margo Wants The Mustard' coming from the wackier side of
10cc's collection of pens. The sad truth is that, even for a band who last
sounded like 10cc on the generally under-whelming 1981 record 'Look Hear', this
really doesn't sound like a 10cc record. Less sombre than 'Ten Out Of Ten' and
'Windows In The Jungle' and less dark than 'Meanwhile...', 'Mirror Mirror' is
musically halfway there with its generally ear-catching pop and the generally
lighter subject matter. But it all feels a little bit too 'normal' to be a 10cc
record: this may not be a road that runs particularly middle for most bands but
Eric and Graham are right down the
middle of it here. Graham himself commented afterwards that this was the only
10cc album he could ever imagine another band performing (well, except 'Margo
Wants The Mustard' perhaps) and that's the problem in a nutshell. Why listen to
10cc trying to sound like other lesser band when they could have been diving
into their unique personalities and bouncing ideas off each other? Life's too
short for a disc full of soppy love songs, humourless comedy and songs about
monkeys, onions and bluebirds.
On the other hand
though, over in the other mirror, this final 10cc record does offer a few
things you won't hear anywhere else, namely the guest cast. For what other
album out there features Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Tim Rice and
should-have-been-a-sir Andrew Gold? Fittingly for such a record Macca's
contributions are both old and new, obvious and obscure: he'd long been a 10cc
fan since he and his brother Mike McGear recorded at 10cc's Strawberry Studios
in Stockport and he'd cameod on Godley and Creme's 'Get Well Soon' in 1978
(well, apparently - I've worn my cassette copy out and I still can't hear him).
After 10cc broke-up Eric ended up in his un-named bands, guesting on 'So Bad'
from the 'Pipes Of Peace' album in 1983, appearing in the ill-fated 'Give My
Regards To Broad Street' film of 1984 and best of all co-writing half of
McCartney's quirkiest and most 10cc-ish album 'Press To Play' in 1986. One of
the prettiest outtakes from that album was the sweet acoustic ballad 'Yvonne's
The One', which Eric dusted off here in manic reggae power pop form (Macca's
original demo, still unreleased at the time of writing sadly and I fear it will
be a long time before his deluxe sets get as far as 'Press To Play', is best).
Eric rang Paul up to ask to 'borrow' the co-written song and mentioned that he
was after an unusual sound to go along with a moody track he was working on,
'Code Of Silence'. Paul suggested using frogs and crickets, gathering them up
from his own garden to add an eerie backing track and stayed in the studio long
enough to add some synth-strings and electric piano. Tim Rice, meanwhile,
befriended Gouldman while working on the Guinness World Records series of books
(in which he features a lot, what with 10cc and the many cover versions of his
songs) and the pair of songwriters vowed to work together one day. 'The Monkey
and The Onion' is the result, which either sounds like Graham trying to write
in a more 'normal' style or the famously straight-laced Rice trying to act
'weird', I'm not sure which! Finally, Andrew Gold's presence on 'Ready To Go
Home' was only intended as a short-term favour, with Grahan's old friend from
his Wax days dropping in to hear how things were going and adding a harmony
part where Graham wanted Eric's to go. Though Stewart and Gold weren't the best
of friends after Andrew's brief spell trying to shape 10cc in 1980 (ending up
in just one release, the sarcastic postmodernist single 'We've Heard It All
Before!'), Eric commented that the harmony was too good to interfere with and should
be kept. Given Andrew's untimely death aged just 59 not all that long
afterwards, it works as a fitting coda. Sadly less audible are two old 10cc
friends who really should have made their presence felt more: drummer Paul
Burgess, who was with the band between 1977 and 1983 (you can tell when he's
playing and the drum machine gets turned off - they're the better performances
on the album by and large) and Rick Fenn, guitarist from 1978-1981 who does a
good job of sounding like Eric on the 'Graham' tracks. No other 10cc album
features guest parts (not unless you count ex-10cc members on 'Meanwhile...'
and actually it works rather well, with all the people in this paragraph adding
their own sound without taking anything away from the style of Graham or Eric.
However, most fans
would still much rather have had an album of Eric and Graham writing and
playing together, bouncing ideas off each other and creating the old magic
through friction. The sad truth is that none of what Graham or Eric have made
in their solo careers to date have come anywhere close to being as good as they
were when they were working together. They're not a band titled '1cc' after
all, this band was always intended as a group project, a democratic partnership
where anyone could sing anyone else's songs (and often did) and the ten
possible writing partnerships were exploited every album so every track went
somewhere a little bit different. 'Mirror Mirror' continues that sad tradition
- even though it features perhaps the best half-solo album of Eric's career and
the best half-solo of Graham's since 'Animalympics', it still pales into
insignificance compared to what the pair used to be able to do together. Even
the packaging is pretty awful compared to the great images of old: the cover is
meant to be of a couple of computer-generated 'people' made out of mirrors and
posing like Graham and Eric, only the picture it's based on isn't anywhere in
the booklet (neither of them is wearing a hat for starters) and it's hard to
work out what's going on (not that that ever stopped 10cc covers in the past,
but this time you're not interested enough to care what's going on!) And as for
the inside, shots of a monkey and a rather scarily big onion seem obvious,
while the blow-up doll for 'Take This Woman' is tacky - maybe if the package
designers had been brave enough to find images for every track instead of just
a few this might still have worked. But like the album itself it feels
half-hearted, with a sense of 'that will do, life's too short' rather than
'let's give it a go - why not?' Had the pair spent even a week together at the
beginning and end shaping and perfecting material it could have been such a
different story, because the material is certainly stronger than the average on
'Meanwhile...' (even if there's no one song as sharp as 'Shine A Light In The
Dark') and includes a couple of real gems in 'Yvonne's The One' (whatever the
band have done to this poor over-dressed song compared to the McCartney demo!),
'Ready To Go Home' and at a pinch 'Why Did I Break Your Heart?' and 'Now You're
Gone' as well. While neither 10cc reunion album is really recommended - both
are made to make up the numbers rather than through any burning desire to get
back together again - there's a great 40 minute album between the two somewhere
and more than half of it comes from this one.
Things are further
confused because the version of 'Window Window' I'm discussing is the longest
one, the fourteen track version released in Japan (where 10cc were having
something of a renaissance at the time after Graham's frequent touring there)
in the Summer of 1995 and in the rest of the world six months or so later at
the end of the year. Before that Europeans and Americans got a very different
ten-track version that was heavily slanted towards Graham: I'm Not In Love
(Remix)/Peace In Our Time/Ready To Go Home/The Monkey and The Onion/Why Did I
Break Your Heart?/Code Of Silence/Take This Woman/Grow Old With Me/Age Of
Consent/Everything Is Not Enough. Just to confuse matters even more, Japan then
re-released the album in 1996 with a fifteenth track unreleased anywhere else -
a 'Rough Art Mix' (as in, 'roughly state of the art') of 'I'm Not In Love'.
This has confused the heck out of different collectors down the years so do be
warned - not all mirrors look alike!
'Yvonne's The One'
dances with all the reggae and carnival of 'Dreadlock Holiday', which came as a
right shock to those of us collectors who knew it as a typically sweet and
tender Paul McCartney ballad. Macca doesn't seem to have minded the bright new
makeover though, adding some rhythm guitar to Eric's backing track, which is
somewhat drowned out by all the production gimmicks. Which is a shame because
'Yvonne' isn't really a production gimmick kind of song. A tale of lovers
passing in the night the narrator falls in love at first sight in verse one at
their first meeting, tries to keep his cool in an '#I'm Not In Love' manner in
verse two at their second meeting and realises that it's never going to work by
the time of verse three and their final meeting. Though the song's wistful
pristine melody and faintly silly lyrics are pure McCartney ('Yvonne's the one
I've been counting on...so I said so long Yvonne!'), the idea sounds more like
one of Eric's and is at one with his other 'the romance only happened in my
head' type songs like 'I'm Not In Love' and 'Shock On The Tube'. Yvonne's a
pretty well rounded character for someone the narrator only meets three times
though and though she doesn't know anything about the love affair they have
that's being played out in the narrator's head, his visions of their future
together sadly sound all too real: lots of love and laughter at the beginning
before 'the sadness grows into her eyes'. A sad song about aging and losing
innocence, there's even a painful middle eight (which is rather lost here but
is the best part of the song on McCartney's original arrangement) where Eric
laments the fact that he was never brave enough to speak up: 'She'll never know
how much I love her, I never got to tell her, I never got a chance to say
farewell!' Quite what this has to do with the carnival party going on in the
backing is another matter, but the song itself is a good one - far too good to
have laid unused since 1986 and another major weapon in my deeply unfashionable
argument that the 'Press To Play' era McCartney might just be the greatest solo
McCartney of them all. The better the original demo (with Eric on rhythm guitar
this time) is out, the better - 10cc's version just can't compare and loses
most of the original's innocence. You can't keep a good song down though
whatever you do to it and this album is already better than 90% of 'Meanwhile...'
'Code Of Silence'
is a sequel of sorts to Eric's 1981 ballad 'Don't Turn Me Away'. The love of
his life is hurting and he wants to help her, but she insists on keeping
secrets and insisting everything is alright. This lack of trust that he can
help her feels worse to the narrator than any problem ever could be and the
'code of silence' between them festers in a most unhealthy way. Though the pair
are simply lying in bed in the darkness facing away from each other, it feels
like a million miles between the couple and Eric adds a whole host of sound
effects to suggest that they're at least a jungle apart (with crickets and
frogs provided by one Paul McCartney from his own garden). Eric is good at
dramatic slow-burning songs like this one, but after a promising beginning this
song never really goes anywhere and in fact ends up going round in circles,
with every verse leading to the same chorus which begins 'But a code of
silence...' There's no real attempt from the narrator to reach out and ask her
directly what's wrong or promise to put it right - he just suffers in silence,
wishing she would trust him. The performance too feels suitably detached, with
repetitive synth notes held throughout most of the track and the same booming
artificial drums every few bars or so, for almost six whole minutes. A few
tweaks, the addition of a typically great Eric Stewart solo (or even a chorus
that sounds different to the verses) and a shorter edit and 'Code Of Silence'
could have ended up one of the strongest songs on the album. Instead it's the
track you forget about sandwiched between two of the more commercial moments
here.
'Bluebird' is
Graham's first track on the album and it sounds lovely, even though it's as
silly as any 10cc song when you analyse it (without, in this case, meaning to
be silly). Multiple Gouldmans admire a bird they've seen in the sky who they
feel can 'teach me how to sing' and is 'the guardian of my soul'. The story
then moves on to human and their wish to be as free of responsibility as the
birds or something like that, though we never get a real grasp of what's
exactly happened in song. Chances are it's the first reference in the album to
'Hyme The Rhyme' Gouldman, Graham's dad who died very late on in the
'Meanwhile...' sessions at the age of 83 and gets a namecheck on the album.
Graham promises to 'always be there' for his brother, praises his mother for
'always knowing what to do' and yet for his own courage and support looks up to
the bluebird in the sky for inspiration to 'spread my wings'. Like all too many
Gouldman songs, it sounds as if the very real and very moving idea in the song
got distorted somehow by his inherent musicality - this song is so sure it's a
pop song the lyrics just won't go to the dark places the theme hints at and instead
of something genuinely uplifting and powerful we get a Hallmarks Greeting Card
about love and loss. The melody is very pretty though and the main thoughtful
guitar riff has been a thread sewn throughout all eras of his songs for 10cc,
making this one of the more traditional and recognisable moments on the album.
Graham's excellent triple-tracked harmonies are pretty wonderful too, while
Adrian Lee deserves special praise too for his sensitive and subtle keyboard
work which augments the main track compared to many on the record.
'Age Of Consent' is
one of the strangest songs on the album, seemingly having in more common with
the dark, subconscious aura of 'Meanwhile'. Eric's cad of a narrator urges his
intended to be seen with him in public even though she's clearly not
comfortable with the idea. 'You don't have to be coy' he grins, while the
threat hinted in the song is that she's under-age - at least a lot younger than
he is - and unable to say no to him. It could be that the she's barely sixteen,
the title being a pun on the idea that the modern era is the 'age of consent'
and she's now joined it too after the narrator's years of impatient waiting.
'We're here to enjoy everything - everything that the traffic allows!' Eric
laughs at one point, after a verse of touching the wine and then touching her. The
best gag though: like the girl the restaurant has a 'pretty front - boy what a
front!' Note too the heavy lift from The Beatles' 'Dear Prudence', another song
about impatiently waiting for a girl to 'look around round round' and enjoy the
great things the world has to offer - only this time the things it has to offer
sound slightly sleazy. The rather creepy feel of the song is enhanced by the
slow tempo and the slow strutting peacock of a guitar riff which represents a
complete inversion of Eric's usual bouncy, happy-go-lucky feel. An interesting
experiment and certainly one that comes off better than the similar songs on
'Meanwhile...' as it's not just being nasty for nastiness' sake, with Eric's
vocal another good one. However it's just so un-10cc ish and so out of left
field that you can't quite bring yourself to enjoy it either, with Eric doing
rather too convincing a job at playing a dirty old man.
The Eric/Graham
co-write 'Take This Woman' is sung by the latter and is the most overtly 10cc
song here with 'comedy' lyrics about marriage and everything that goes with it
that wouldn't be out of place on 'Deceptive Bends', only not quite as good.
Graham's narrator regrets marrying, he once agreed to take this woman - and now
all he wants is for someone to take her and lock her away. Oh how our sides
split. There are some good details about the eccentric character the narrator
has married though, even if the main plot is way off: the first disagreement
comes when his girl asks to take her drums to bed ('Your rhythm method's gonna
leave me dead!'), the second comes over her eating habits ('Caviar every night
is insane!'), the third when he goes round to meet the in-laws (and 'Sees the
noose in her hangman's eyes'). A cautionary tale against whirlwind romances
everywhere, the pair really should have spent some time living together first
so they could find out the worst things about each other first. However all
come goods by the end of the song when the pair embrace after a row and their
touch 'feels like a million volts!' as the pair remember why they got together
in the first place. By the end the narrator is keen, in the single best/worst
couplet on the album, not to 'falter' as
he remembers taking her down the 'altar'. (astrological note: they clearly have
a matching Venus/Mars and not much else in their synastry, so the sexual
chemistry is there but not much else). However what could have been a sweet
song is undermined by the old 10cc problem of too much thinking and not enough
heart. The song keeps switching gears: there's a 'comedy' bass vocal ('And she
said...') and at an odd moment at 1:55 when the track falls down a hole and
goes from being staccato reggae to slushy romance. Sadly that the reggae is
even more irritating and outdated than on 'Yvonne's The One', while the lush
orchestra is like the bad parts of 'The Anonymous Alcoholic', only drunker. In
short 'Take This Woman'...please, take 'Take This Woman', full of the sort of
things everybody thinks every 10cc is full of (but full of traps the band are
generally too clever to fall into), I never want to hear 'Take This Woman' ever
again...
As for 'The Monkey
and The Onion', the song is best described by the expression 'What the???'
Graham's collaboration with Tim Rice, it's either a literal song about a monkey
peeling an onion and crying until he feels there's nothing left or a metaphor
for mankind and life as he cries his way through wishing his life was better
before finding he's dead. Either way, this isn't what you'd call a 'normal'
song but the worst of it is that this song sounds as if it's the most
straightforward pop song on the album. Graham sounds as he believes every word
he sings and the strings are the sort of thing you normally hear on number one
records, not oddball songs about monkeys and onions (both words are used a lot
across the song by the way - and yet neither of them have any natural rhyming
words; well 'donkey' I suppose but Graham chickens out of getting that into the
lyrics too; if I know Tim Rice this was probably his idea - 'Hey, Graham, did
you know there are words in the dictuonary nobody ever uses because they don't
rhyme?' It's a surprise this album doesn't have a companion song about a zygote
eating spaghetti). As with so much of this album, there's a lovely melody that
gets wasted and a far better idea at the heart of this song that gets buried in
there: 'Never take my love for granted, yet never put it to the test' Graham
warns as it finally looks as if 'Onion' is about to turn into a tearjerker
about guilt and promises that makes sense, 'As we run off in all directions
nothing's quite the joy it seems'. However what's that next line? 'Too much
investigation - you know the rest!' No, we don't know the rest or even what's
just come before. I'm definitely getting old now I can't understand 10cc songs,
but unlike their usual cerebral tests left for fans to unravel, you can't help
shake off the feeling that this track is one big joke - that unravel it as much
as we like there's nothing there at the end of it all, just tears from layers
of sodding onion. And with a melody like that it could have been so much more!
Fittingly the track
that follows that grass is always greener (but the onion is always less oniony)
fable is Eric's 'Everything Is Not Enough'. Another very dark 'Meanwhile...'
style song about greed and power, you can't quite work out which side the guitarist
is on. In many ways it sounds like a confession, especially the third verse
where Eric chastises himself for not counting his blessings - he 'feels rough
and thinks this can't be me, I'm such a happy guy!' but maybe he wanted the
extra fame from being a big rockstar so badly that the poor sales for
'Meanwhile...' shook his confidence. Cleverly that windows of reality in the
jungle moment is kept for the lyrics: musically and performance wise this song
just oozes cool. Eric is the ultimate rockstar-with-sunglasses-and-a-yacht
here, cruising his way on top of a backing track that play so much as swagger.
Eric promises that the time is ripe for a change ('So let's go!') but despite
this song's big dreams and realisation that 'nobody will love you if you moan
all day - you have to play easy to get your way' it's just more of the same
from 'Meanwhile...' and though slightly better made it still doesn't sound like
the sort of thing 10cc should be doing. Leave the generic songs about grabbing
power and trying to sound cool to lesser bands!
The second album
highlight is Graham's heartfelt 'Ready To Go Home', another song about the
death of his dad with whom he was close. Coping with some un-named tragedy, the
narrator finds himself breaking down and pleading to 'go home' - the pun being
that he's both ready to face his broken-hearted family and the childhood home
that will never be the same and that he's ready to meet his maker and embrace
death himself. Closer in style to the last days of 10cc in the glorious 1980s,
this is sombre and moving without any need for comedy or jokes. It sounds even
less like the style of popstars Wax, but that's what we have on this track with
a superb lead vocal from guest Andrew Gold, who with his vocals roughly in the
same key as Eric Stewart, was meant to be recording a demo where the
guitarist's vocals would go. 10cc were sensible to leave this song intact
though: even though Eric is generally the better, more expressive singer he'd
have struggled to come even close to Andrew's moving work here which might well
be his single best vocal and which fits like a glove with Graham's harmony. The
two old friends have never sounded better in fact, which makes you wish that
maybe Graham had been recording a third 'proper' Wax album rather than an
eleventh 10cc one nobody wanted to make. It's hard not to feel sympathy as the
character feels so tired and emotional he 'lays me down' waiting for the next
day to come - though whether that is left travelling to a physical home or
embracing death is again left unspoken. The song isn't perfect: the 'Wax' style
synths are as 1980s and artificial as ever and the lyrics are occasionally
over-written ('When the evening shadows fall the time has come'). However it's
poignantly written, passionately sung and a lot more memorable than anything
else on this album, or in fact anything Graham had written in at least fifteen
years. A songwriter himself, daddy Gouldman would have been proud to have
written this.
To add to the
emotional weight of this part of the album, Graham now talks about living for
as long as possible on the sweet love ballad 'Grow Old With Me'. Recalling a
promise made decades before, Graham gets a bit treacly as he remembers growing
older and closer, bouncing between two different time zones as he zooms from
the beginning of the relationship to somewhere near the end. Structured a
little like Cat Stevens' 'Father and Son', the main verses are older and slower
and more reflective, urging caution and patience, while the faster counter-verses
date from the earliest days when the narrator is left in 'no doubt' that he'll
be in love forever. Lovely as this song is, it's not terribly original and
suffers from not being 10cc enough - in fact in the olden days this is the sort
of soppy song the band would have parodied in a 'SSSSSilly Love' type manner.
That's age for you though and there's still something deeply satisfying about
the lovely slow unwinding of this song, especially the twirl of Beach Boys
style harmonies at the end. Gouldman has never sounded this contented in song
before and it's lovely to hear, with contentment very much the plus side to
bands growing older.
Then again, 'Margo
Wants The Mustard' puts the listening age for this album at, I don't know,
three? The tale of a middle aged woman who wants to have some fun in her life,
she's spreading spice into her life. Quite apart from the allergies I have to
anything that mentions Spice because of that awful girl group, this is just a
silly song that seems written to sound like 10cc always used to ('Life Is A
Minestrone' lyrics set to this album's third go at 'Dreadlock Holiday') without
any idea of understanding or properly remembering what those old songs were
really like. There's no attempt to really get into the mind of a middle aged
beach-goer here, though there is a passing interesting minute when Margo
becomes a symbol for 'bottling it and putting it on the whole human race' who
are all living well within their means, it's just an excuse to come up with
some vaguely funny words and string them together. To be fair the title is
funny, once, but after you've read it in the shop or online you really don't
need to hear it as the song will go in exactly the direction you think it will
from the title. had this song been shorter or played with more energy and had
it lost those clichéd steel drums it might have been a lot more palatable. As
it is, it's a waste of an energetic Eric Stewart vocal and some of his best
guitar playing on the record.
The most 'Wax'ish
song on the album, 'Peace In Our Time' is a collaboration between Graham and
one-time Lindisfarne collaborator Steve Piggott on a very 1980s sounding song
that thinks very deeply yet sounds very shallow. Graham's narrator is searching
peace and thanking his creator. However he's doing this while singing against a
'woah-a-woah' pop chorus and a guitar riff that wouldn't be out of place on a
Justin Timberlake record. Which is not to say that this song is bad, just that
like a lot of 'Mirror Mirror' the music and lyrics are going in two such
different directions that it's hard to keep track of how you're meant to be
feeling. Though slightly over-written, there's an impressive heart about the
words that plead for tolerance and salvation and ask for something, anything to
shine a light in the dark (recalling the best song on 'Meanwhile...') There's a
sense, too, that the good times are on their way, with the metaphor of
centuries of winds blowing some plant life back into the desert a hopeful sign
for all humanity. Graham's vocal, though, is more living the la vida loca than
living in paradise and there's a sense that someone somewhere was more
interested in getting a hit single than saving our souls. Like a lot of these
10cc reunion tracks, a remix one day with all the excess production baggage
taken out might reveal a sweeter, stronger song than anybody remembered.
There's no doubting
the heartfelt late night lament of 'Why Did I Break Your Heart?', with Eric
still guilty for some unspoken deed committed in his wayward youth. His narrators
have been gradually becoming more and more sentimental down the years, with
this track taking up where 'Memories' and the like left off in the 1980s, with
this song inspired by an old box of 'photographs and memories'. Eric remembers when
he met his first love so clearly and thought they had 'the recipe for life, the
perfect fusion', but he's less clear about when things started to go wrong and
why and chastises himself for being in the wrong over something he doesn't want
to admit to. The song admits 'we analysed ourselves - it didn't really help',
because there was no reason for things to end - they just did - and now Eric
needs the comfort he felt the first time round to get him over the breakup. The
timeline is all over the place in this song - in the opening verse it's a
distant memory, but by the end it feels like a raw wound that's only just
happened and which the narrator feels will never heal. Eric's written a better
middle eight down the years too. However, it doesn't matter - true love is
timeless whether good or bad and the similarity of the verse-chorus-middle
eight actually benefits this track which is about the narrator's obsession and
inability to let go and move on. It's worth comparing this song to the last
great of Stewart romantic ballads on 'Windows In The Jungle' when a couple have
just met and the real world keeps intruding on their personal romantic world;
this time the real world seems to have won and got between them, but Eric's
narrator has never been more focused or single-minded. The performance makes a
good song great: Eric soars from grumpy denial to bitter falsetto on this track
and has rarely sounded better, while this album's typical use of cold synths
works nicely on this track for once, with Eric's warmness and open-ness
contrasting with the cold shoulder he's getting from his ex-lover. The end
result is one of the very best songs on the album, full of a very real pathos
and guilt that's a lot more successful than attempts at screwball comedy or hit
records. It's a fine and fitting way for Eric's work under the 10cc banner to
bow out.
Graham bows out
with a good song too with 'Now You're Gone'. Though like many heartfelt tracks
on this album it's been '10ccfied', given what even its own writer calls in the
credits a 'dummy vocal' (literally: Graham sings 'D...a dummy' over and over
while slapping his thighs), the original core song is another moving one and
it's welcome to hear it played simply and acoustically without 'Mirror Mirror's
usual production excess. Graham too is remembering a first love, who 'didn't
need me, though I needed you' and who read the signals 'wrong', pushing her
into marriage before she was ready and failing to realise the relationship was
one-sided. Now she's free and happy and he's miserable and more trapped than
ever, Graham even admitting that his narrator has 'murder in his mind' at the
bitterness he feels though the character never acts on it (the closest he comes
is threatening suicide in the last verse; 'No more setting sun 'cause soon I'll
be gone'. The hurt in this song comes through loud and clear, whatever daft
vocal a second Graham is singing alongside the main one and it's a good
contrast set against 'Grow Old With Me' from earlier, with Graham growing old
alone. Like many songs on this album Graham could have done more with it, as
three minutes doesn't seem long enough to explore this unusual set-up and the
song ends abruptly, drifting away on a sudden fade and a 'doo doo doo'. However
what is here sounds very good indeed.
10cc's career then
ends (at least assuming they don't surprise us at some point with a new album,
though after 21 years I'm starting to have my doubts about that...) where it -
almost - began. Eric and Graham join forces for a slightly stripped down take
on the old warhorse 'I'm Not In Love', a track they began performing in 1992 to
promote 'Meanwhile...' as cheaply and efficiently as possible and which their
record company loved so much they asked them to make it their next single.
Graham for one was horrified ('What do you mean we should publicise the new
album with a track from an old one? That's nuts!') but it makes sense as a fond
farewell. The version of the track here is often said to be 'similar enough to
make you wonder why they bothered' by most reviewers but that's not true: this
is effectively the basic Gouldman-Stewart co-write before Godley and Creme came
up with the distinctive idea of the 'aaah'ing one-note choir and before Kathy
the Strawberry Studios receptionist got added into the mix. Eric sings the song
not so much from teenager crush denial as from a knowing wink from old age, as
half of a married couple who had to wait a 'long time' but got there in the
end. Without so many glossy backing vocals Graham gets more to do too and his
guitar is even more central to the mix than Eric's keyboard work. Though
simpler and less impressive than the 1976 original (on 'The Original
Soundtrack' album if you were wondering), especially the sudden low-key ending
which ends not with a bang like the original but a whimper, this version has its
charms too, with the charming simple harmony vocals of Eric and Graham all that
this song needs to convey the I-love-you-but-I-can't-admit-it vibe of the
original. Certainly it's a lot more palatable than what Eric and Graham had
been doing to their old 10cc material in concert on the 'Hits Alive' tour...
Overall, then, I'm
not in love with this album by any means but 'Mirror Mirror' is a lot worthier
of the band name than 'Meanwhile...' had been. The decision to give half the
album to Eric and half to Graham is this record's greatest strength and
weakness in different ways: on the one hand both men sound much happier and
more focussed working separately and this is arguably the only time in 10cc
history that Graham gets an equal share of a band album to himself; on the
other these songs could have been so much better had the one provided the other
with a middle eight or a harmony vocal here and there and 'Mirror Mirror' very
much sounds like two solo albums stuck together, which frankly is a waste of
two songwriters as compatible as these two. 'Mirror Mirror' is a horribly bland
and uneven album at times, with songs like 'Margo Wants The Mustard' and 'Take
This Woman' right up there as the worst the band ever offered the world, while
even the passable material often sounds worse thanks to the production excess.
However at other times this album shines, with four strong numbers ('Yvonne's
The One' 'Why Did I Break Your Heart?' 'Ready To Go Home' and 'Now You're
Gone') the backbone of what could have been a really impressive attempt to
update the old 1970s 10cc sound into the 1990s. Though the concept of the pair
of writers 'mirroring' each other doesn't quite come off as things stand here,
it's a very 10cc ish idea that might have worked wonders years before (just
imagine Stewart Gouldman Godley and Creme getting half a side of a double album
to themselves to fill in with whatever they want!) and a far better solution to
the 'make an album or be sued' approach than the unhappiness of 'Meanwhile...'
In fact, given the fact that hardly anybody involved in this album actually
wanted to make it, the surprise isn't that 'Mirror' makes so many mistakes but
why it doesn't make more. Though born of perspiration more than inspiration,
'Mirror Mirror' is proof enough that even on auto-pilot 10cc were not just a
very very clever band but a very very good one as well.
A NOW COMPLETE LIST OF 10cc ARTICLES TO READ AT ALAN’S ALBUM
ARCHIVES:
'Thinks...School Stinks!' (1970)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/news-views-and-music-issue-36-hotlegs.html
'10cc' (1973) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/news-views-and-music-issue-80-10cc-1972.html
'Sheet Music' (1974) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/news-views-and-music-issue-125-10cc.html
'The Original Soundtrack' (1975) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/news-views-and-music-issue-32-10cc.html
'How Dare You!' (1976) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/10cc-how-dare-you-1976.html
'Deceptive Bends'
(1977) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/10cc-deceptive-bends-1977.html
'Bloody Tourists' (1978) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-73-10cc-bloody-tourists-1978.html
‘Look, Hear (Are You Normal?)’ (1980) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/10cc-look-hear-are-you-normal-1980.html
'10 Out of 10' (1981) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-80-10cc-10-out-of-10-1981.html
'Windows In The Jungle' (1983) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-86-10cc-windows-in-jungle-1983.html
'Meanwhile' (1992) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/10cc-meanwhile-1992.html
'Mirror Mirror' (1995) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.nl/2016/09/10cc-mirror-mirror-1995.html
Pre-10cc: 1965-1973, A Guide to Mindbenders, Mockingbirds and Frabjoy and
Runciple Spoon!
The sidetrips of Godley
and Crème 1977-1988 https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/10cc-side-trips-of-kevin-godley-and-lol.html
Non-Album Songs Part One
1972-1980 https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/10cc-non-album-songs-part-one-1972-1980.html
Non-Album Songs Part Two
1981-2006 https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/10cc-non-album-songs-part-two-1981-2006.html
Surviving TV Clips, Music Videos and Unreleased Recordings https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/10cc-and-godley-creme-surviving-tv.html
Solo/Wax/Live/Compilation
Albums Part One 1971-1986
https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/10cc-solocompilationlivewax-albums-part.html
Solo/Wax/Live/Compilation Albums Part Two 1987-2014 https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/10cc-sololivecompilationwax-albums-part.html
Landmark Concerts and Cover Versions http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/07/10cc-five-landmark-concerts-and-three.html
10cc Essay: Not-So-Rubber
Bullets http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/06/10cc-essay-not-so-rubber-bullets.html
