biopart5

THE GRAHAM GOULDMAN BIOGRAPHY
chapter five

But for Graham Gouldman-the-composer things kept going very well in 1966. His fifth top ten-hitsingle and one of his everlasting standards was Bus Stop, specially written for the Hollies as a follow up to Look through any window. I remember reading in a Manchester newspaper in 1966 that he said he wrote Bus Stop whilst
The first lines of the song were delivered by his father Hymie, Graham Gouldman himself built up the melody and chorus. There's also another history about the song, saying that Gouldman wrote it whilst riding on the No. 95 bus, from East Didsbury, through Manchester city centre, to Sedgeley Park, Cheetham Hill, Prestwich, and on to Whitefield near Bury.
In the silence of the men’s room at the Stoke Town Hall, where the Hollies were performing one evening, Gouldman played the song to leadsinger Graham Nash. He fell in love with it at once and asked Gouldman to send a tape of it. On the demo of the song Gouldman just played guitar and bass and added about four vocals and some backing tambourine. The version the Hollies recorded on May 18th 1966 - featuring an opening that was worked out on stage with help from Klaus Voorman when he was sitting in with the band - made it to the fifth place in the British and the US chart, with again two million copies sold worldwide altogether.
The connection with Lisberg granted Gouldman another interesting venue: writing for Herman’s Hermits, the succesful Manchester band with leadsinger Peter Noone. As if it didn’t cost him any trouble or sweat Gouldman penned down four hitsingles for the group that year. Among them were Listen People (number 3 in the US), the beautiful but less succesful East West and Oh she’s done it again.

The song Herman’s Hermits would especially be remembered for was No Milk Today, written again by Graham Gouldman after a suggestion of his father, who had noticed a milk bottle in front of the closed door of a friend who was not at home. Of course the Hermits were very much content with Gouldman’s goodies. Noone expressed his gratitude by calling Gouldman a phenomenal songwriter. ‘We turned down Carole King songs and Neil Diamond songs, but we never, ever, turned down a Graham Gouldman song.’
In the periphery of the Hermits-succes Wayne Fontana – who just had left the Mindbenders - almost made it to the top ten with another Gouldman-song from 1966, Pamela Pamela, a song that had its roots in a musical idea from Godley & Creme. With Peter Cowap and Friday Browne Gouldman formed the occasional group High Society the same year. As a band they recorded and put out the song People pass by in november that year, with assistance of forthcoming Led Zeppelin-bassplayer John Paul Jones, drummer Clem Cattini and Phil Dennys. It didn’t do very much. Vague plans to form a new group with Graham Gouldman, ex-Yardbird Paul Samwell-Smith and lead guitarist Hilton Valentine of the Animals didn't get any realiztion either.
But what the heck: the young Gouldman by the end of 1966 had created record sales of more than ten million al over the world. In a period of one and a half year of writing and composing, turning every word and note into gold, Gouldman had established his name like a comet. And he assured himself of a good pension too, regarding the royalties that still are coming in from all those sixties standards.