Godley & Creme – Doyle’s Space: Music Hall of Fame – Shining Star Award

Kevin Godley and Lol Creme were one of the most unusual and inventive partnerships to emerge from British pop music, combining songwriting, studio experimentation, visual art, technology, humor, and an almost cinematic approach to music. Their story began long before they became famous. Godley was born October 7, 1945, in Prestwich, Lancashire,

while Laurence Neil “Lol” Creme was born September 19, 1947, in Manchester. The two knew each other from childhood and became friends while growing up in the Manchester area. Both developed strong interests in art as well as music, and both eventually attended art college. Their friendship turned into a musical partnership in the early 1960s when they played together in local rhythm-and-blues groups, including the Sabres, while Godley also spent time in the Mockingbirds with Graham Gouldman, another future member of 10cc.

Their shared artistic background would become extremely important later, because neither man thought of music as simply a matter of making records; they were interested in creating complete artistic experiences, something that eventually made them pioneers of the music-video era. In 1967, Godley and Creme recorded “Seeing Things Green”

backed with “Easy Life” under the bizarre name Yellow Bellow Room Boom. Their next important step came in 1969, when they were brought into the orbit of producer and manager Giorgio Gomelsky, who envisioned them as a recording duo somewhat along the lines of Simon & Garfunkel. They recorded as Frabjoy and Runcible Spoon, releasing “I’m Beside Myself”

backed with “Animal Song” on Gomelsky’s Marmalade label. An album was planned, but Marmalade collapsed financially before it could be released. The surviving recordings remained obscure for decades before appearing in expanded form on the 2022 anthology Frabjous Days: The Secret World of Godley & Creme 1967–1969. During this period they were also working at

Strawberry Studios in Stockport with Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman, and the four men discovered that their combination of songwriting, musicianship, production skills and studio experimentation was remarkably effective. The next stage was Hotlegs. Godley, Creme and Stewart were involved in a huge amount of studio work,

much of it connected with American bubblegum producers Kasenetz and Katz, and in 1970 the trio recorded “Neanderthal Man.” Released under the name Hotlegs, the primitive-sounding, heavily rhythmic novelty-pop record became an international success, reaching No. 2 in Britain. Hotlegs even toured with the Moody Blues and provided backing for recordings by Neil Sedaka.

When Graham Gouldman returned to the fold, the four musicians moved toward the identity that would make them famous: 10cc. The group officially emerged in 1972 with Godley, Creme, Gouldman and Stewart, four unusually versatile musicians who could write, sing, arrange, engineer and play numerous instruments. Their first major single,

“Donna,” reached No. 2 in Britain, and the group quickly established itself as one of the most inventive British bands of the 1970s. Godley and Creme were central to the 10cc sound. They helped write songs including “Donna,” “Rubber Bullets,” “The Dean and I,” “Silly Love,” and “Life Is a Minestrone,” while contributing their distinctive vocals,

harmonies and experimental production techniques. 10cc’s albums Sheet Music, The Original Soundtrack and How Dare You! demonstrated how the quartet could move effortlessly from sophisticated pop to satire, progressive rock, comedy, experimental recording and beautifully constructed ballads. “I’m Not in Love,” written principally by Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman,

became the band’s international masterpiece, but Godley and Creme’s contributions to the band’s overall identity were substantial. By the middle of the decade, however, the four members were increasingly divided over musical direction. Godley and Creme were becoming particularly interested in experimental technology and visual presentation,

while Stewart and Gouldman were more interested in the conventional songwriting side of 10cc. After How Dare You! in 1976, Godley and Creme left the group. Their departure was partly motivated by the Gizmo, or Gizmotron, an ingenious device they had developed that used rotating wheels to vibrate guitar strings,

allowing an electric guitar to produce sustained, violin-like tones. Their first major project outside 10cc was designed partly to demonstrate what the Gizmo could do. The result was Consequences, released in 1977 as an extraordinarily ambitious three-LP set. It combined electronic and instrumental passages with spoken-word

material featuring comedian Peter Cook and contributions from the great jazz singer Sarah Vaughan. The project was deliberately eccentric, conceptual and theatrical, but its scale and experimental nature made it a difficult commercial proposition, especially at a moment when punk was dramatically changing the British musical landscape.

Consequences was poorly received initially, although its reputation improved considerably over the years as listeners came to appreciate its ambition and strange beauty. Godley and Creme then began developing a more concise musical identity. L appeared in 1978, followed by Freeze Frame in 1979,

an album that combined sophisticated pop songwriting with unusual studio treatments and an art-school sensibility. Their first major step into video came with “An Englishman in New York,” from Freeze Frame, whose promotional film they directed themselves. This proved to be a turning point. Their talents as musicians were increasingly matched by their talents as visual artists,

and music-video directing gradually became as important to them as recording music. Their next albums, Ismism in 1981, Birds of Prey in 1983, The History Mix Volume 1 in 1985 and Goodbye Blue Sky in 1988 showed that they had not abandoned music, but their priorities were changing. Ismism produced their two biggest British hits,

“Under Your Thumb,” which reached No. 3, and “Wedding Bells,” which reached No. 7. “Under Your Thumb” was especially memorable for its eerie narrative about a man on a train confronted by the ghostly voice of a woman who has apparently killed herself, demonstrating the duo’s fondness for unsettling stories hidden inside catchy pop songs.

The History Mix Volume 1 was one of their strangest albums because it functioned partly as a remix project, partly as a career retrospective and partly as a new artistic statement. It drew on their work with 10cc, Hotlegs and their earlier projects while using contemporary sampling and electronic techniques. The centerpiece was “Cry,”

their most successful single in America, reaching No. 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 19 in Britain. Produced with Trevor Horn, the song had begun with an old lyrical fragment and was transformed into a dramatic electronic ballad. The record itself was excellent, but its extraordinary promotional film became the defining achievement of their visual career.

The video featured a series of human faces apparently changing into other faces through carefully controlled dissolves and wipes. It created the illusion of faces morphing into one another before digital morphing technology became commonplace. The technique was accomplished with analog video technology rather than modern computer-generated imagery,

and the result remains one of the most recognizable music videos of the 1980s. By this time Godley and Creme had become major music-video directors for other artists. Their work extended across an astonishing range of performers and styles. They directed Duran Duran’s controversial “Girls on Film” and later “A View to a Kill,” helping establish the highly stylized visual language associated with MTV.

They directed the Police’s “Every Breath You Take,” “Synchronicity II” and “Wrapped Around Your Finger,” Herbie Hancock’s groundbreaking “Rockit,” Visage’s “Fade to Grey,” Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Two Tribes” and “The Power of Love,” Culture Club’s “Victims,” Go West’s “We Close Our Eyes,”

Wang Chung’s “Everybody Have Fun Tonight,” Yes’s “Leave It,” Lou Reed’s “No Money Down,” George Harrison’s “When We Was Fab,” Sting’s “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free” and later “Fields of Gold,” and Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush’s “Don’t Give Up.” They also worked with artists including Huey Lewis and the News, Asia, Toyah, Ultravox and others.

Their approach was rarely a simple performance film; they looked for visual concepts that would interpret, extend or sometimes deliberately contradict the music. The pair’s video work was particularly important because they treated the music video as a legitimate art form rather than merely an inexpensive promotional tool. “Rockit,” for example,

incorporated animated robotic figures and surreal imagery and won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Special Effects in 1984. Godley and Creme themselves received MTV’s Video Vanguard Award in 1985 in recognition of their contribution to the development of the medium. “Cry” subsequently received

three MTV nominations at the 1986 awards, including Video of the Year, Best Concept Video and Viewer’s Choice. Their reputation also extended into the Grammy Awards: Kevin Godley received three Grammy nominations for video-related work, including Best Music Film for The Police Synchronicity Concert and Sun City and Best Concept Music Video for George Harrison’s “When We Was Fab.”

Their work demonstrated that directors could be as important to a music video’s identity as the performers themselves. The duo continued making music alongside their video career. Birds of Prey moved further into electronic music, while Goodbye Blue Sky in 1988 took a darker, more organic approach, using guitars, organs and harmonicas while addressing the threat of nuclear war.

It proved to be their final studio album together. Although they had spent more than two decades as a creative partnership, the relationship eventually became strained and they went their separate ways around 1988–89. Their split was not simply the breakup of a pop act; it ended one of the most productive partnerships between music and visual art in the history of the British recording industry.

After the breakup, Kevin Godley continued working extensively as a director of music videos and television commercials. His later credits included work associated with artists such as U2 and the Beatles, including the 1996 video for “Real Love.” He also received the honorary recognition of an honorary degree from Staffordshire University, reflecting his unusual career as both a musician and visual artist.

Lol Creme moved further into production, directing and electronic music and eventually became associated with Trevor Horn and the Art of Noise. Creme formally joined the Art of Noise in the late 1990s and subsequently participated in a variety of production and multimedia projects. He also directed the 1991 film The Lunatic and continued working in advertising and visual media. There was a partial reunion with the 10cc world in the early 1990s.

Godley and Creme contributed vocals to 10cc’s 1992 album …Meanwhile, although they were not restored to the band’s creative partnership with Graham Gouldman and Eric Stewart. Godley later reunited musically with Gouldman under the name GG/06 in the 2000s, producing new material that demonstrated that the old songwriting chemistry had not completely disappeared.

Creme meanwhile continued collaborating with Trevor Horn and other musicians, including work connected with the Producers. Thus, although Godley and Creme never returned to their original duo on a permanent basis, elements of their musical partnership continued to surface in later projects. Their legacy has grown substantially since the 1980s. At first they were sometimes regarded as an eccentric footnote to 10cc,

particularly because Consequences seemed almost impossibly ambitious and their later records were difficult to categorize. With time, however, their importance has become much clearer. They anticipated the importance of sampling, electronic manipulation, multimedia presentation and conceptual music videos, while retaining a strong gift for melody and harmony.

Their video for “Cry” is especially important because its face-to-face transformations anticipated techniques that became commonplace once digital morphing arrived. Their work for the Police, Duran Duran, Herbie Hancock, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, George Harrison, Sting, Yes, Peter Gabriel, Asia,

Kate Bush and many others helped establish the grammar of the modern music video. Their recorded legacy has also received renewed attention. A major retrospective, Frabjous Days: The Secret World of Godley & Creme 1967–1969,

A major retrospective, Frabjous Days: The Secret World of Godley & Creme 1967–1969, finally brought together their earliest recordings, while the extensive 11-CD box set Parts of the Process: The Complete Godley & Creme, issued in 2025, collected their complete studio-album catalogue along with rarities, singles, B-sides and extended versions. The set demonstrates just how much ground they covered, from the experimental Frabjoy and Runcible Spoon recordings through Consequences, L, Freeze Frame, Ismism, Birds of Prey,

The History Mix Volume 1 and Goodbye Blue Sky. What makes Godley & Creme particularly remarkable is that they never fit comfortably into one category: they were musicians, songwriters, engineers, inventors, filmmakers and visual artists. Their importance ultimately lies not in the number of hit singles they produced, but in the way they helped erase the boundary between a pop record and a piece of multimedia art.