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Thanks to the novelty hit nature of the million-selling forty-five ‘Neanderthal Man’ (only prevented from topping the British singles chart in the summer of 1970 by Elvis Presley’s ‘The Wonder Of You’), little attention was paid at the time to the other recordings cut by pre-10cc act Hotlegs.
That’s a shame, because the album Hotlegs Thinks: School Stinks (quickly remodelled and repackaged as Song) was a veritable smorgasbord of turn-of-the-decade studio pop moves that deserves to be considered alongside the heavyweights of the era. With its roots in the aborted 1969 Frabjoy & Runcible Spoon (aka Kevin Godley & Lol Creme) album for Giorgio Gomelsky’s Marmalade label, the Hotlegs LP was a daringly ambitious creation, peaking on the White Album-era McCartneyish ballads ‘Take Me Back’ and ‘Today’, the equally beautiful, Beach Boys-inspired ‘All God’s Children’ and the sumptuous, 13 minute song suite ‘On My Way/Indecision/The Return’ (our version of Side Two of Abbey Road”, according to Godley).
Housed in newly-commissioned, more sympathetic artwork, and featuring a new essay on the band, this definitive Hotlegs anthology reassesses their position in the overall scheme of things. Gathering together every track issued in the group’s name, including both versions of the album, a couple of non-LP singles and even a US-only remix of The Hit, You Didn’t Like It Because You Didn’t Think Of It reveals that, notwithstanding that anomalous novelty song, Lol Creme, Kevin Godley and Eric Stewart were master pop craftsmen even before adding Graham Gouldman to the line-up and changing their name to 10cc...
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