10cc – I’m Not In Love

Three weeks of tape loops in Stockport

In the spring of 1975, 10cc were in Strawberry Studios in Stockport, the room they owned, trying to rescue a song three of them had already thrown out.

Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman wrote I’m Not in Love after Stewart’s wife told him he did not say he loved her often enough. His first version was a light guitar tune with a bossa nova rhythm. Kevin Godley and Lol Creme heard it and did not want it on the album. The tape went on the shelf. People who worked at the studio kept humming the melody in the corridor, so Stewart asked for another chance. Godley said yes, on one condition: the band would sing the backing, instead of playing it like a normal arrangement.

The four of them spent about three weeks on those voices. They sang each step of the scale, holding the note for as long as a breath lasted, and they did that sixteen times. The recordings were mixed down and cut into tape loops, one loop for each note: thirteen loops, each about twelve feet long. In the mix they raised the notes they needed, and the “ah” sat behind Stewart’s lead vocal like a choir. You also hear a Fender Rhodes electric piano, a plain rhythm guitar, a little piano, and, only in the middle section, a short bass guitar part. A toy music box was recorded twice and left in. There is no bass guitar running under the rest of the track. Then came the whisper. Godley was trying the line “Be quiet, big boys don’t cry” when Kathy Redfern, the studio secretary, came to the door with a phone message and spoke softly so she would not interrupt. The band wanted that voice on the record.