When Godley & Creme premièred their 1977 debut concept album Consequences to their record company at a church in Amsterdam, several of the sales team fell asleep before the halfway mark. At just shy of two hours, that baffling, indulgent folly remains one of the most impenetrable records created by people who were nominally pop stars, having bossed much of the decade as half of the inventive yet usually accessible 10cc.
The duo’s decision to bet the farm on this peculiar passion project was ridiculed as they emerged blinking from 18 months in the studio to find Britain had gone punk – and that the last thing the nation wanted was what Kevin Godley later described as “a semi-avant-garde orchestral triple album with a drunk Peter Cook and me singing with Sarah Vaughan. The result is a weird mix of sheer brilliance and utter shit. I could be wrong.”
