Musician, songwriter, producer, arranger, singer, philosopher, wit.

Not a description of Oscar Wilde, but one of the UK's most popular yet unsung musical heroes, Graham Gouldman, whose catchy tunes and lyrical messages are still being enjoyed in most corners of the world some thirty years after his first hit. If songs like the timeless classic, I'm Not In Love, the poptastic Things We Do For Love or the quasi reggae Dreadlock Holiday mean little or nothing, then reader, read on, you've had your ears tuned to the wrong station all these years.

When he was about eight years old and all his classmates were dreaming of being train drivers or lion tamers, Graham decided he was going to be a drummer. Even at that tender age he knew music would be his destiny, but after a few tentative lessons he realised that wielding a pair of drumsticks wasn't quite what he had in mind. It wasn't until he reached the age of eleven, when a cousin returned from Spain with a cheap acoustic guitar that he realised this was it. "As soon as I held it" he remembers, "I was gone".

Graham left school in his hometown of Manchester as soon as was legally possible, and was soon fronting The Whirlwinds on lead guitar. This was The Sixties, the most exciting time in the history of western music when the Beatles were happening, Liverpool was the new capital of the world, Elvis was king, Motown was the coolest and Britain was spawning bands by the ton. The Hollies, Herman's Hermits, Gerry & the Pacemakers, the Yardbirds, Georgie Fame, the Rolling Stones, Manfred Mann, the Springfields and the Mockingbirds.

The Mockingbirds were formed after Graham tired of the Whirlwinds. Working by day in a gentlemen's outfitters and writing songs and playing by night didn't pan out at all and Graham was soon fired from his day job. It was, hardly surprised, a blessing in disguise. He'd already caught the attention of Harvey Lisberg, the energetic manager of the biggest act to break out of Manchester, Herman's Hermits. Harvey offered Graham a small retainer to sit in his office and write songs all day - a dream come true. Within months the Mockingbirds had signed to the Columbia (UK) division of EMI and were booked as the warm-up band at the taping of the Manchester based BBC TV show Top Of The Pops. As if this weren't enough, Graham had his first Top Ten hit, at the age of 19, with the haunting For Your Love, recorded by the Yardbirds.

Graham's song-writing career was off with a flourish. He penned two more big hits for the Yardbirds, Heartful Of Soul and Evil Hearted You and had his next Top Ten hit with Look Through Any Window which he wrote for The Hollies. Bus Stop followed and although Graham was still recording with and without the Mockingbirds, the hits continued. Pamela, Pamela was ex Mindbenders Wayne Fontana's biggest solo hit. Herman's Hermits hit the Top Ten with No Milk Today which featured the unforgettable suburban comment "the bottle stands forlorn, a symbol of the dawn", and East West which was covered in 1991 by fellow Mancunian Morrisey.

In between writing more hit songs for the likes of Jeff Beck, the Mindbenders, the Hollies, et al, the late Sixties saw Graham spend time in New York writing and recording for Kasenatz-Katz hit factory and invest with Eric Stewart in Strawberry Studios. Back in the UK after this spell in New York, Graham decided to get Eric, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme together to complete the Kasenatz-Katz recordings. Together the four then produced and played on two Neil Sedaka albums, The Tra La Days Are Over and Solitaire (both of which were recorded and produced at Strawberry Studios). There were only minutes before 10cc was born...

They signed to the UK record label and between 1972 and 1976 10cc had an outstanding string of hit record, such as the two No' 1's Rubber Bullets and the aforementioned I'm Not In Love, as well as I'm Mandy Fly Me, Wall Street Shuffle, Art For Art's Sake and many more, making them one of the most successful and influential English bands of the 70's.

Graham had found a natural song-writing partner in the sweet voiced Eric Stewart; I'm Not In Love became an all time classic love song. "I'd already written the sort of suspended chords at the beginning of the song" says Graham, "and Eric came up with the title... he saw it more as a song about not having to say 'I Love You', but I saw it more as someone trying to ignore the obvious". In the twenty something years since Gouldman & Stewart wrote the song, it's been covered by artists as diverse as the Pretenders (their version featured in the smash movie Indecent Proposal), Will To Power, and more recently The Fun Loving Criminals.

Between 1972 and 1976 all four of the band's albums were big hits; three hit the UK Top Ten. In 1976 Godley and Crème left the band, Stewart and Gouldman retained the name and continued the hits with Good Morning Judge, the No. 1 Dreadlock Holiday and the international smash, Things We Do For Love. Then fate turned nasty when Eric was involved in a serious car accident at the end of 1979; things were never the same again.

While Eric embarked on a long convalescence, Graham took stock of his career and decided to take on some solo projects. Having always harboured a love of film which rivalled his love of music, he had occasionally toyed with the idea of writing film soundtracks, but hadn't exactly been sitting around twiddling his thumbs looking for something to do. This was the ideal time to try something different. First he wrote the theme song to the respectfully successful Farrah Fawcett movie, Sunburn and a year later he released an album of songs written for the hugely popular animated feature, Animalympics, which continues to sell steadily on video.

As soon as he'd finished Animalympics, Graham was invited by none other than the Ramones to produce their Pleasant Dreams album for Sire Records. Thinking his musical ideas must be at least a million miles away from those of Joey and da brudders, Graham was, nevertheless, intrigued by the prospect of working with one of New York's finest groups of punk rockers. The result was that they all had enormous fun and the record was the third most successful of the Ramones' huge catalogue of albums.

Into '83/84 - Graham and Eric decided to formally disband 10cc, Graham subsequently formed Wax with American song-writer Andrew Gold, whose biggest hit to date had been Lonely Boy and whose theme for the evergreen TV series The Golden Girls had made him hot property. Wax signed to RCA and had hits with Right Between The Eyes (which sat at No.1 in Spain for six weeks as well as being a UK and US hit) and Bridge To Your Heart which was No.12 in the UK. Although Wax released their third and last album in 1989, Gouldman and Gold continued (and continued) to write together.

Into the Nineties, amid renewed interest in everything 10cc-ish, Graham re-united with Eric Stewart to record a new 10cc album, Meanwhile, which featured some input from Godley and Crème. Although a moderate success in the UK, the album was enormous in Japan. Before you could say "sushi", graham and Eric had jumped on a plane to Japan where their tour was so successful that the duo, with an extended line-up, were invited to return the following year.

Back into the swing of touring, 1991 and 1992 saw the band undertake tours of Japan, the UK and most of Europe. Touring continued into the following year when the band signed to the Japanese label Avex, recorded a live album and then started work on another 10cc album, MirrorMirror. Huge amounts of promotional work followed and Graham and Eric found themselves trekking up and down the country armed only with an acoustic guitar.

As if the Nineties hadn't been busy enough already, 1995 turned out to be one of the most active periods with tours in the UK, Japan and Europe, an acoustic show in the famous Lloyd's of London Building. To cap it all, a BMI citation for an unprecedented THREE MILLION plays on US radio for I'm not In Love. This followed the BMI citation for two million plays of Things We Do For Love and one million plays of Bus Stop. Graham was beginning to run out of wall space.

Recently, The Wax Files, which features songs from all three Wax albums as well as newly recorded material with Andrew Gold, was released in the UK, on the For Your Love label (through Dome records). Graham also wrote the soundtrack for Paul Hills' film Raving Beauties.

In 2000, Graham's long awaited solo album, And Another Thing... was released, featuring a number of collaborators as diverse as Andrew Gold, Suggs, Gary Barlow, Frank Musker, Gary Burr and Nashville writer Gordon Kennedy (responsible for Eric Clapton's Change The World).

Graham has been writing with and for a number of people. He and Tim Rice partnered on the song The Monkey And The Onion; Graham wrote The Way I'm Feeling Tonight with Paul Carrack for the latter's new album, and was writing songs with the late Kirsty McColl for her album and with Suggs for his. Graham also spent some time in Nashville writing with (amongst others) Country Song-writer Of The Year, Gary Burr. Graham is currently working with Cerys Matthews on her new solo album project.

Graham Gouldman is the complete musician; it's what he's always done. It's what he'll always do. And he loves it... "I just can't imagine doing anything else" he says simply, "I love working with new, sometimes unsigned artists because it's great to work with new people. I know I benefit from their fresh perspective. I can only hope they then benefit from my experience".

Now in 2002, Graham is preparing for an extensive tour of the UK to celebrate 30 Years of 10cc's timeless music.