THE GRAHAM GOULDMAN BIOGRAPHY
chapter three

Graham Gouldman continuously persisted in trying to get together a succesful band of his own. His next enterprise was called the Mockingbirds (see photograph) and had Bernard Basso playing on bass, Steve Jacobson on guitar and schoolfriend Kevin Godley on drums. Like the Whirlwinds the Mockingbirds were managed out of a Kennedy Street office by Harvey Lisberg, who also had Herman’s Hermits under his supervision and who would later become the manager of 10cc.
Following the example of the Beatles Gouldman started to write his own songs from this moment on, to provide his band a repertoire. His first songs he wrote in the back of Bargains Unlimited, a mens clothes shop in the Manchester suburb  Salford, where he worked as a servant at that time.

It was here that Gouldman wrote the lines of his first millionseller: For Your Love. It was intended to be the first Mockingbirds single. The group recorded the song together with That’s how it’s gonna stay, also written by Gouldman. Strangely enough Columbia, their record company, preferred that last song above For your love, which song was offered by Lisberg to music publisher Ronnie Beck, who tried to pass it on to the Yardbirds.It was their impresario Giorgio Gomelsky who convinced the group of the strength of the song. The Yardbirds recorded it, with Denny Piercy on bongos, Ron Prentice on upright bass and Brian Auger responsible for the strong harpsichord intro that was originally played on acoustic guitar. In Gouldman’s opinion that intro was what made For Your Love special.

Two million world citizens shared his opinion: they bought the record, making it a US top 10 hit in 1965 and bringing it to the third stage of the British hitparade. The only one who did not see the value of For Your Love was Eric Clapton. The famous guitar player, who would betray his blues roots himself two decennia afterwards, thought the recording of the popsong to be a cruel goodbye to the Yardbirds blues background. And he didn’t like the band experiments with new music and new sounds. So Clapton left and the band asked excellent guitarist and studio musician Jimmy Page to replace him. But Page preferred to be a studio musician. Instead he recommended another guitarist: Jeff Beck, who was in a band called the Tridents.

The distinguished guitar playing by Beck on For Your Love was part of the inspiration for the second Gouldman-song that would become a huge Yardbirds-hitsingle: Heart Full Of Soul. With a second place in the British chart and a number nine ranking in the USA, based on the same sales record, it prolongued the global succes of For Your Love. Originally it was arranged by Paul Samwell-Smith for sitar and tabla, but several attempts to record a good balance of the instruments failed. But then Jeff Beck stepped up with the effective suggestion to let him try to make the guitar sound like a sitar. When the third Gouldman-written Yardbirds-single, Evil Hearted You, achieved the third position in the British chart, the modest composer from Manchester definitely attracted the attention of other bands and musicians for his writing skills.

Meanwhile The Mockingbirds didn’t have much succes with their single That’s how it’s gonna stay. But being the houseband of the new BBC pop television show Top of the pops, that was recorded in a converted Wesleyan chapel in Manchester at that time, they were not short on employment.