10cc - I'm Mandy Fly Me - clip from TOTP

A quite "beatlesque" song from 10cc, one of the most underrated bands of rock history - and one of the best, as well.

If How Dare You! has a clear masterpiece then it is indeed "I'm Mandy Fly Me." Inspired by a number of promotional posters National Airlines put out in the mid-seventies this shimmering jaw-dropping number is as triumphant as any single The Beatles did in the late seventies and 10cc managed it without a George Martin at the console. Lushly orchestrated with some extraordinary Beach Boys inspired harmonies, "I'm Mandy Fly Me" is just exquisite from beginning to end and is a wonderful companion piece to "I'm Not in Love" as well as "Clockwork Creep" (a snippet of which opens the track). Powered by Eric Stewart's beautiful lead vocals and astonishing guitar work, 'I'm Mandy Fly Me" is one of the great Stewart and Gouldman compositions (although it should be noted that Godley chipped in his considerable songwriting skills as well). Gouldman recalled in a nineties radio interview how the song came about and how Godley's songwriting contribution came into play:

"So I brought it back, the idea back to the studio, where we were writing for the How Dare You! album, and put it to the guys: "Anybody interested in this 'I'm Mandy Fly Me'". I'd switched it to Mandy. And Graham said "yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I've got some ideas, I've got some chords. Let's slot those things in, try it, mess it around". We wrote it, and we didn't like it. We, we scrapped it. It just wasn't going anywhere.
But, enter from stage left, ha ha, the "wicked villain" Kevin Godley, twiddling his mustache, says "I know what's wrong with it. Let's sit down again." He said "I think it just gets too bland, it just goes on, on one plane, your verses and your middles and your der-der-der, they're all going on the one plane. What it needs is someone to go 'Bash' on the side of your head". So we changed the rhythm completely, and we put two whacking great guitar solos in there, in the middle of this quiet, soft, floaty song. Once we'd got that idea in, it, it just gelled into something else. Again, impossible to dance to, as a lot of 10cc tracks were, but once Kevin had put that in, he became the third writer in the song so we were quite democratic in that way. "

The main criticism over the years of How Dare You! is that the second half doesn't live up to the first. 10cc perhaps would have been better off placing "I'm Mandy Fly Me" towards the end of the second side because it really is a hard track to follow.

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Dátum: 10.10.18 17:43

Autor: missthing18

Dĺžka: 5:40

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