When he was about eight years old, Gouldman 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 realized wielding a pair of drumsticks wasn’t quite what he had in mind. When he was eleven years old Graham picked up his first guitar, brought to him by a cousin from a Spanish holiday. “As soon as I held it,” he remembers, “I was gone”.  He improved his playing skills very quickly and his father stimulated him to continue. It was 1957, 1958, the years of rock ‘n roll. Gouldman not only listened to what his father had to say, but also how rock ‘n roll heroes like Chuck Berry, Duane Eddy and Hank Marvin played their guitar. By playing al the 45 rpm singles on 33 rpm speed he learned to play songs like Apache and Rebel rouser, in the wrong key, but with all the notes sorted out.

When the early sixties arose teenagers went wild on the music The Beatles and several other Merseybeat bands made. Young Gouldman was also hit by what The Beatles did. Like a lot of boys he started to dream of playing in his own band and, in his personal case, about writing songs of his own, like Lennon and McCartney did, or Burt Bacharach and Jimmy Webb, two of his other early inspirational sources.
And Gouldman made his dream come true, due to his talent and to the wonderous, inspiring and creative atmosphere popular music was embedded in in the sixties. As calculated music industry is nowadays, as spontaneous and accidental it was in the sixties. One could literally run into a studio in the morning, record a song, and having it sold in the record store in the afternoon. ‘The whole scene was much more exciting and experimental’, Gouldman recalled in 1995.
 

(The Whirlwinds, Graham Gouldman standing second from the right)

Gouldman left school in his hometown of Manchester as soon as was legally possible. Six years after playing his first guitar the 17 year old Gouldman formed his first Manchester band, the Whirlwinds, in 1963. It had Gouldman and Steve Jacobson on guitar, Bernard Basso on bass guitar, Mo Sperling on drums and Malcolm Wagner on vibes. The band tried to improve its skills in the practice room of the Jewish Alliance Brigade, a Manchester organisation for jewish youngsters. There was a lot of competition going on with another band, the Sabres, consisting of Gouldman’s upcoming 10cc-collegues Lawrence ‘Lol’ Creme and Kevin Godley, with whom Gouldman attended the Sedgeley Park County Primary School in Manchester, and Creme’s cousin Neil Levine, who later would become 10cc’s road manager. The Whirlwinds and the Sabres competed for the occuppation of the practice room and for which bandwould get the most gigs at weddings and parties. The Whirlwinds fell apart after six months, an episode that brought the release of  one single, with the Buddy Holly-cover Look at me on the A-side and Baby not like me, the first song ever written by Lol Creme, on the flipside.