It takes a half-hour DART from Dublin’s city centre to find Kevin Godley. The Mancunian musician who banged the drums in Hot Legs and 10cc (and gave them their arty edge) and visionary music video director who’s worked with U2, Sting and Paul McCartney, to name but a few, has spent the past few years residing in Newtownmountkennedy, County Wicklow. We’re meeting each other halfway. Idyllic Dalkey on a sunny day stung by the cold nip of spring.

Godley is now using Ireland as the base for the launch of his latest, typically forward-thinking project. With Andy Wood, he has created WholeWorldBand, an app that allows people the world over to collaborate via iPhone with audio and visual content from their favourite artists. Completely collaborative and interactive, you can remove certain parts of songs, add your own, and plonk yourself alongside your musical heroes in video form. Jamming all over the world, essentially. With the app dropping in March, Kevin Godley is understandably a busy man at present, his primary aim being to capture content in time for the launch. That work began in Temple Bar’s Sun Studios the previous afternoon, with Hot Press present to see Gemma Hayes, Liam Ó Maonlaí and Mick Pyro lay down their tracks. They’re clearly enamoured with Godley, who shoots them while they play and offers direction, and quite taken with his new fangled idea. It’s all go, with Kevin soon set to capture Ron Wood in a similar fashion, but this afternoon offers some brief respite. Apart from the pesky journalist. I meet the man in The Queens on Castle Street as he thinks about ordering a pasta dish. Open, honest and with a raft of great yarns to tell, he’s also strikingly unassuming for a man that has achieved so much. Any slight compliment is met with kind thanks and he is softly-spoken almost to the point of a whisper, inviting you closer to hear his incredible story.
Born outside Manchester in 1945, Kevin Godley arrived at art college at precisely the right time. With the likes of The Beatles and Rolling Stones ushering in the changes and youth culture beginning to flourish, Godley was eager to get involved. Along with Lol Crème, he joined Hot Legs and a line-up that included Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman. They would famously go on to relaunch themselves as 10cc in ‘72. The band then went on a tremendous commercial run as songs like ‘Rubber Bullets’ and ’I’m Not In Love’ became smash hits, with Godley and Crème provided the experimental counterpoint to the pop partnership of Stewart and Gouldman. That division led to a permanent split after four years. Goldey & Crème struck out on their own, recording together and soon entering a more visual medium. As the ‘80s arrived and the video age was born, the pair dove right in, directing for themselves and then others. They were behind iconic videos for everyone from The Police and Frankie Goes To Hollywood to Duran Duran and Go West before Godley decided to go solo. He has worked with the likes of Blur, Bryan Adams and Paul McCartney (creating the promo for the 1996 Beatles single ‘Real Love’) and his celebrated collaborations with a re-invigorated U2 began with ‘Even Better Than The Real Thing’. On top of all that, he masterminded One World One Voice, an album and documentary that brought huge stars and world musicians together to raise awareness of environmental issues.
With such a winding, illustrious career involving so many famous faces behind him, I’m eager to hark back to the old days quicksharp. Given his buoyant form regarding the new app, however, maybe we should start briefly in the present tense.

You’ve suggested that WholeWorldBand is just what the music industry needs. Where did the kernel of the idea come from?
Well, I directed a TV programme for BBC2 in 1990 [One World One Voice, documenting his attempt to create a global ‘chain tape’] and at the end of it, the idea was kinda set in stone. I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if people could keep adding to it?’, which they couldn’t back then. Something about it was stuck in my mind and when we moved to Ireland in 2008, the idea resurfaced, probably because I was using computers more, getting into email and online. Some lightbulb went off. I filmed myself on the laptop playing an iDrum programme and sent that off to a couple of friends – Andy Wood and a pal in New York – and they both did something to it. We mixed it together and just took the concept from there.
Why do you feel this is an important project?
One thing about the app that I think is unique is that people can earn money from it. There’s a revenue stream attached to it, it’s not just about us creaming the money off. I think that’s attractive. People who might not be major stars yet but are making some headway are a little bit flummoxed as to what their choices are. I can earn a bit from downloads, with Spotify I earn fuck-all, signing to a label is probably a really bad idea, what do I do? It’s not an easy concept to put over to people in five minutes so I was very encouraged by the reaction to it. Artists seem really receptive to the idea of other people joining in with what they’re doing.
It seems to be an online extension of an ethos you’ve held for decades. Music as a unifying force and the importance of collaboration.
Absolutely. But in a sense even more so. Everyone was brilliant yesterday. I’d never seen Mick Pyro perform on his own before. He’s very intense, he did about three or four versions of the same thing. Gemma was amazing and Liam did everything!
I did enjoy seeing him whip out his Irish harp...
Yes! He did a couple of tracks with bodhrán and piano… Liam put a bodhrán down, playing to a particular track. But if you isolated that bodhrán track, you can create something new. You’ve a way of creating new stuff instead of just reacting to what’s been made already.
It seems a long way from your musical beginnings, where the only way to jam was together in a tiny room.
Yeah! That’s true. It’s probably the best way to collaborate because you’ve got that eye contact. In a sense, we’re driven by what’s available and finding ways around technical problems. It’s fucking exciting!
Going back to another place of excitement, you grew up in Manchester as British rock ‘n’ roll just broke. Did you get the sense something big was happening from an early age?
When I was at grammar school, there was something in the air. The radar was picking up something interesting from across the water but it wasn’t clear what it was. I didn’t really have the right receptors to pick it up then, there wasn’t much on TV, though Radio Luxembourg was sneaking around, fizzing away in the background. A little bit later when I got into art college and started mixing with other people, there were ‘happenings’ and ‘events’ going on. And The Beatles were happening at the same time. Everything was opening up. It was a time that belonged to youth, really for the first time. Everything was possible. More than anything else, The Beatles were the ones doing it.
Was it true you were flung out of class for tapping along to an Elvis song?
That was when I was a kid in primary school. The teacher used to do music lessons, which consisted of her playing operatics on an old gramophone as an example of what music should be like. I think she played Elvis as an example of what music shouldn’t be like and I started banging on the desk [starts tapping away at the table energetically], which didn’t go down well! The power of rock ‘n’ roll.
That seemed to pave the way for art college, where you met your long-term artistic ally Lol Crème.
Yeah, it was an extraordinary time. When albums like Revolver would come out, all work in the college would stop. You could walk around all the different departments, from fine art to sculpture and photography, and everyone was pouring over the album sleeves and playing the records! [laughs] There was one particular tutor we had at our first year at art school together, a guy called Bill Clarke. He had a very strange way of operating. If you would usually write with your right-hand, he’d make you use your left. He’d sometimes get us to paint with a blindfold on, or standing on one leg. It sounds ridiculous but he was trying to get something out of us that we didn’t know we had. Reach a part of us that was nothing to do with thought or consideration, doing something instinctive and using your intuition. That’s always stuck with me. Whenever you’re doing something creative, it’s very easy to settle for something that’s ‘rather good’. But that’s not good enough, you’ve got to push forward to see if there’s anything amazing out there. And if there isn’t, that’s okay too.
You’re now known as one of the originators of that first wave of ‘art rock’ but your father wasn’t too impressed with you attending, was he?
To be honest, I couldn’t do anything else, I was hopeless. He wanted me to come into the family business which, strangely enough, was selling radios, televisions, tape recorders, cameras and musical instruments!
Everything you went on to use.
Exactly! It’s nuts isn’t it? But I was hopeless at business, I just didn’t have the aptitude for it at all.
You’ve said your time at art college was spent trying to find a way not to grow up. A career in music seems as good a way as any.
The day we graduated from art school, we drove to London for a recording session. I never did anything ‘professionally’ from then on. It was a way of holding back the clock, not having to get a job. Just do something that we liked and keep kidding our parents that the diploma we were getting – and the next one! – was incredibly useful and would ensure we got proper jobs.
Then, with Hot Legs, the music took off. How did you adapt to being a rock star?
[Smiles] I was never a rock star.
Well a lot of people seem to think you were.
Ha! I don’t really have the physical aptitude for it, in that sense. But it was great. I suppose success made my parents go, “Actually, he knows what he’s doing – my son the pop star”, as opposed to “that fucking idiot playing drums!”
Were you soon buying instruments from your dad’s store?
Once we had a hit, I bought them from other people. We didn’t sell very good instruments!
Hot Legs broke during that period where you would have been on the same circuit with some legendary acts.
There was a lot going on. It’s interesting, because I’m writing my memoirs.
I can’t wait to read them.
Me either, the memory’s not what it should be! But yeah, music in Manchester was very big at the time – there must have been about ten clubs all putting on bands, people rubbing off each other. Myself and Lol got involved through Graham [Gouldman]. Graham knew Eric [Stewart], who played with The Mindbenders. They found a studio, they needed someone to play drums… one of those strange coincidences. Myself and Lol just brought our strange, exploratory sensibilities to that situation. The first thing we did was this mad thing ‘Neanderthal Man’, which was a hit! Fucking crazy. We were testing the equipment, playing the drums with Lol strumming along on a bass drum microphone. We mixed it down just as a music publisher was visiting. They heard what we were doing and immediately went, “It’s a smash!” They actually said things like that in those days. Then someone promptly wiped it by mistake and we had to start over.
Did it quickly descend into the usual clichés of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll?
Oh god, not for me! I’ve never really been like that. A few drugs here and there. No sex. Quite a lot of rock ‘n’ roll.
Would you have hung out with your contemporaries?
I was very friendly with Phil Manzarek from Roxy Music. He used to live near us in Surrey. I met Bowie a few times but no… We were more ‘backroom boys’, we should really have been wearing white coats and tinkering with stuff like scientists. We were just interested in sonic experiments really. The whole ‘going out on the road’ thing was a bit weird. So no, we weren’t The Rolling Stones.
Looking at the early stages of art rock and glam, you had all these beardy, tough Northern men taking to the stage in effeminate, outlandish costumes. Did that ever jar or was everyone happy to put on the stilettos and eyeliner?
I remember Mick Ronson having a problem with it. He was just like, “I’m not wearing a fucking dress!” But you try stuff. It’s funny, when 10cc was born, we were given the alternative by Jonathan King. He suggested: “We can do one of two things, we can just go out the way we are looking like normal people… or we can wear transparent hotpants. What do you think guys?” We went the normal route, but I still sometimes fantasise about the opposite one!
Jonathan famously gave you the 10cc name, which has become the stuff of legend [it allegedly refers to slightly more than the amount of semen an average man ejaculates].
We have nothing to do with sperm! Other than being born because of it. Jonathan came down to Strawberry Studios to see something we’d done and the night before he ‘had a dream’. He saw the name of the band in lights above the Hammersmith Odeon.
Not like Martin Luther King’s dream then.
I wouldn’t compare Jonathan to Martin Luther King in any way, shape or form!
No. Were you shocked when you heard the news of his arrest [in 2001 the impresario received a seven-year sentence for committing sexual offences against five boys aged 14–16 in the ‘80s]?
It was a different sort of time, a different world. I was a little bit surprised, but not a lot. Everyone was into something. We never really got into Jonathan’s private life. We were never interested and we weren’t with him for that long before Mercury signed us. But he was great to us. He launched us, believed in us and put us out there. Regardless of what people think of him – and people do demonise other people – we found him to be a good bloke. He’s not Ian Brady.
Going back to the ‘70s, that step on from Hot Legs was a big one – 10cc and worldwide fame. Looking back, you’ve said it aggravated you when people talk about ‘70s acts such as Roxy Music and Bowie and ‘10cc never get a look in’.
It still does. Because I don’t think it’s anything to do with the music itself. It’s because we didn’t have any kind of visual presence. People like Roxy Music, Bowie, Queen… they all had a very strong visual sense of themselves, very identifiable. We sounded like 20 lunatics from Hollywood but we looked like we were – four wankers from Manchester! Thinking back, we had two art school graduates in the band, why didn’t we actually do something about it? Crazy!
Yourself and Lol decide to leave quite soon after the group signed a massive deal with Mercury.
We must have been crazy!
Why did you have to get out?
The four years we spent with the band were pretty intense. We only had four albums but we were working all the time. Before we started work on our last album, How Dare You!, we had a pre-production meeting. It went something like, “ok guys, what we need is a couple of funny songs, a real slow one, a long one…” I just thought, “hang on a minute, what’s this?” Because prior to that, the albums we’d brought out hadn’t been calculated. Suddenly we had a formula, who 10cc were was being defined and that wasn’t appealing. Eric and Graham had written a song [‘People In Love’] that was… [whispers] garbage. Around this time, myself and Lol had been experimenting with this device, the Gizmo, that we’d invented. We were enjoying that more than the thought of doing another 10cc album. It’s pretty clichéd isn’t it? Musical differences.
You’ve all stayed friendly and even collaborated since, but was it a tough break personally at the time?
A little bit. They thought we were crazy and they were probably right. People are much more sophisticated now and knowledgeable about how band dynamics work. There was none of that then.
To an extent, you were the guinea pigs helping future acts figure it out.
Yeah! Well The Beatles had done it before, and split up. We should have recognised we weren’t all happy, put it on pause, gone off for awhile and learnt something before going back to home base. That wasn’t possible, it was sort of ‘one for all and all for one’. We didn’t really have a choice.
Your first project as Lol & Creme was the sprawling concept album Consequences, which was seen as indulgent on release but has won a cult following since.
It has, which is bizarre! I tend to call it con-sequences. We wanted to do something that was completely different. We just followed our nose to see what would happen. At the time it was criticised as something incredibly self-indulgent, which it probably was, but nobody really knew what we were doing. I remember one incident where our management team came to hear what we were doing. We sat them down in a darkened room and played the stuff. They came staggering out saying, “That was amazing… wow.” Then they walked into the live area of the studio to talk and we realised there were two open microphones. We heard them going, “What the fuck is that? It’s not ‘I’m Not In Love’ is it? How the fuck are we going to sell that?!” We were laughing, but we had that problem the whole way along. People were trying things like getting Peter Cook in because he was a well-known person, a grown-up.
From what I know about Peter Cook, he was most definitely an unparalleled comedic genius, but maybe not much of a grown-up.
Well, as it turned out he was worse than we were! But he was an absolutely extraordinary man. We got on very well. We spent about three months together working on completely different time tables. We’d sync up for three hours in the middle of the day and he’d cave in as we got higher. He was drinking and we were smoking, so it didn’t quite work. But we got some interesting things. What I got from Pete was that this was something completely different and he just threw himself into it. Got into living in the studio, getting up and doing stuff. We’d play something to what he said, or he’d react to us. Improvisational to a certain extent. And what a funny guy, hysterical.
Around this time the whole punk thing was exploding. How did you feel about this new phenomenon?
Terrified. Well maybe that’s the wrong word, it just felt like our timing was right fucking off, we were like the last of the great dinosaurs! We waited ‘til everyone else did their concept album and then did ours just as the tectonic plates were shifting. We felt some cultural shift going on, we knew something was up and it wasn’t going to be an easy ride. I actually found it quite interesting though, I was quite attracted to punk. But there was nothing I could do about it, we’d set ourselves a course. We were two-thirds through the project and had to see it through.
Moving into the next decade, if you felt 10cc didn’t have much going on visually, you suddenly decided to go in the opposite direction entirely. Why make the leap into video directing?
It came about by accident. We had a single coming out called ‘An Englishman In New York’, not the same as the Sting song. Video was teetering around the edges of the industry and we thought, “How can we promote this? Maybe we could do a little film?” We came up with an idea for a film and took some storyboards to the record label. They thought it was quite cool but told us we couldn’t do it ourselves, they’d have to put us together with someone who has made videos before. We worked with Derek Burbidge, who’d directed the first few Police videos and we completely baffled him. We took over the shoot, and he let us do what we want. We took to it like ducks to water. Of course, if you look back at that video now, it was a real pile of old poo. The upshot was that Steve Strange had just signed to our label with Visage, one of the first New Romantic bands. He was looking for someone to direct a video, because it was a very visual movement. I knew him from the club scene and he didn’t get on with the straighter directors, wanted something a bit more interesting. He saw one of our videos and asked us to do something for him, which we did for the princely sum of five grand. Half of which went to the make-up! It was a hit and then Toyah Wilcox came to us, Duran Duran came to us and we were wondering what the flipping’ hell was going on! The important thing was that we were musicians, so there was more of a chance we’d know what they were trying to say with the music. We weren’t these upmarket film fellas.
It’s amazing to look at the list of names you worked with from then on, all those immediately recognisable videos. How do you remember the time?
We had good relationships with everybody. It was very different. What happens now is you get called up by a record label and told they’re making a video for so-and-so and want it a bit like something they’ve already seen. And they only have five quid. And by the way, there’s four other people scripting for it as well. You no longer make it for the artist, you make it for the marketing department or the label. Back then, no one knew what a music video really was. The lunatics were running the asylum. We’d missed it the first time around in the ‘60s, when the lunatics were running the music business. But this time round we got to that place where what we said goes. So we were allowed to do some pretty wacky things.
Music television may have died a death but increasingly the internet, and sites like YouTube, are providing an outlet for these videos. You see artists like Lady Gaga and Kanye West giving great care and attention to their promos, taking risks with this new medium. Does that remind you of the ‘80s, where new ground was being broken?
Very much so. Everything goes in cycles. MTV was amazing in the beginning, suddenly all these artists had a global gallery to hang their work in. But gradually it became more and more corporate and watered down. MTV had rules, but they never told you what they were. Things like not showing someone smoking or showing a nipple, but it wasn’t that specific, there was no rulebook, which was pathetic. Obviously it’s turned to crap and they just have bad reality programmes now. As you said correctly, it’s all gone online. There are less restrictions and you can do what you want. Though I’m sure that’ll change in the next five years, and it will go somewhere else.
Your next major step was to create the charity production One World One Voice. A massive collaboration between dozens upon dozens of internationally acclaimed artists and musicians from around the world, there must have been huge practical difficulties pulling it together. I imagine it was quite chaotic?
It was, the most frightening thing I’ve ever done. We started off in New York with Sting and Afrika Bambaataa. I had to fly out early to talk to Sting and my crew couldn’t fly with me. So I went to his apartment in New York on my own. And Sting and Trudie were away. I was let into their big apartment by Central Park and had to sleep overnight, on my own. I heard a noise as night fell, so I was creeping around and saw someone in a bed. Aargghh! It was the housekeeper – I didn’t know she was there, she didn’t know I was there and we scared the shit out of each other! That whole time was scary. I’d no idea what we were going to do. Sting and Trudie came back the next day and we settled down to talk about the theory behind it, keep it simple, something lots of people could play with. Once we got a piece of music started, we had people ringing ahead, finding out who was in town. We couldn’t email people an mp3, so we were playing stuff over the phone. It was like a fishing exercise, reeling them in as we went around the world. We were recording on DAT and assembling all the stuff, there was no ProTools in those days. Thinking ahead, “What do we have in the key of E, are there any bass players around?” It was frantic. We would breeze into town and capture what we could.
I was surprised by how many musicians were open to the project. These big names, and some notoriously difficult to deal with types like Lou Reed, were all keen to participate.
We’d done a video with Lou before that he’d liked. So that was a help. Once you get to a certain point on a project, there’s a tipping point where it becomes magnetic. People want to be a part of it. Plus, it didn’t demand too much of people. It allowed them to react to things rather than sitting down and agonising over it.
Moving closer to home, and your new home of Ireland, you have, of course, worked with U2 for years. You met them just as they had ‘dreamt it all up again’ and went on to create some of their finest videos. Why has that relationship endured?
We push each other. One thing I like to do is put people in unfamiliar situations and see how they perform. As opposed to standing there singing into a microphone, which we all know Bono can do extremely well. But having him lying on the floor, being thrown out of a wagon, having a camera go 360 degrees around him, is a different kettle of fish. If you’re a natural performer like he is – going back to Bill Clarke again – it brings out that extra thing that you didn’t know you had. There’s a ‘moment of jeopardy’, which is how Edge describes it. Things going wrong, which gets the adrenaline going.
When things are going wrong, are there clashes of heads? Larry’s been known to drag his heels when presented with ideas from the more ‘arty’ end of the creative spectrum.
There’s a fifth member of U2 and it’s not Paul McGuinness. It’s U2. What I mean by that is, every member of the band might have a different opinion but, in the end, they know if the finished thing is right for them. It’s like a hive mind. They’re as willing as anybody to try stuff. It becomes obvious pretty quickly what’s going to work. When we were doing ‘Sweetest Thing’ we knew it was going to work. What we were doing was quite radical. We only discovered that thing of Bono not singing the night before, because of the hat. There was something of the Buster Keaton about it. Maybe we don’t sing. Let’s try it. We did and it was meant
to be.
Back to yourself, what prompted you to move to Wicklow in 2008?
Myself and my wife Sue had always fantasised about living here. Having come here a few times, we just liked the vibe. There’s something in the air that’s different. In England, London particularly, if you want to meet someone in the creative community, you usually end up calling their PA, or their ‘people’ call your ‘people’. Here, it’s like their sister knows your brother, so it’s only two degrees of separation! Everything is so much more relaxed.
You have arrived just as the country entered the doldrums…
Don’t blame me for that! [laughs] I’ve only shot two or three things since I’ve been here and they’ve all been incredibly low budget, or virtually no budget, but I’ve found that people are willing to come out and do stuff. They’d rather do something for nothing rather than nothing for nothing. Rather than sit at home and vegetate. Get out there and doing shit in the hope of stirring something up. That’s great. No one gets paid but you get some great work out of it.
You’ve a steady family life now living in Wicklow with your wife and dogs. Have you found a certain balance at this point?
No, I’m not very balanced. Unfortunately I’m a bit of a workaholic, I find it very difficult to switch off and would probably work 24 hours a day if I could. But my wife works with me. She’s a very smart lady and she gives me a kick now and again with some ideas I’d never think of. It’s great. I suppose it’s what drives me really. I just enjoy all the diverse things I’ve been doing. I feel really privileged – god, I sound like Bob Hope! I’m not a youngster anymore, I’m a fucking old git. Most of the people I know are probably retired or picking up a set of golf clubs. Whereas I’m doing more than ever.
I’ll finish up by throwing an old quote back at you. You’ve of your early career: “There never was game plan or bigger picture.” Is there one now?
Well, I’ve more of a game plan than I’ve had before. There’s a number of satellite projects floating around, with WholeWorldBand being the nearest and dearest. It could be very popular with both the public and musicians if it’s handled in the right way. That’s of paramount importance. I’ve got a couple of movie scripts I’ve written, an art exhibition, the memoirs, I’m helping someone adapt a novel for television… It’s probably why I have this ache in my right arm. I’m a one-handed typist – repetitive strain injury.
Maybe you should revisit your old tutor’s advice and type left-handed.
And blindfolded. Yeah, just use the left and sit with my back to the computer, you never know what might come along!

Kevin Godley and Andy Wood preview their WholeWorldBand app at The Music Show, in the RDS on February 25 & 26.