Peter Wadsworth

“The owners of the building (which, of course, is now office space) are carrying out some repairs to the roof and front of the building and then giving it another lick of paint. They are very aware of the building's history and importance, hence their decision to resurrect the Strawberry name a few years ago.”

“Thanks Sarah, you've every right to feel proud - the Gizmo is a great story, an unusual meeting of art and science and your dad played a big part in it :-)”

“I'm afraid this is just a low-res scan of a paper copy of the patent. The t-shirt idea sounds good to me though :-)”

“For the full article (plus many others), go to www.strawberrynorth.co.uk and check out the 'Articles' link”

“Also, McCartney uses a gizmo on 'I'm Carrying' off the 'London Town' album.

The Listen Now track by Roxy Music's Phil Manzanera has Lol Creme performing with the Gizmo. At the time, Manzanera said ""I was up in Manchester last week learning how to play the Gizmo and I really do think it's going to have a big influence on what I will be playing over the next few years, because you can do so many things with it - you just play chords and it sounds like whole string sections. It will be on the market next June, and it will have a great influence on a lot of guitarists over the next five years, it opens up so many new areas in music."

Unfortunately, he was wrong!!!!!”

“Indeed, Peter Tattersall (studio co-founder and manager at the time) tells the nice story that Richard Carpenter spoke to him and asked if he could visit Strawberry and then added 'and can I bring my sister too?' as though she were some hanger-on!!!!!

One of the first Gizmo records is 10cc's 'Gismo My Way' a b-side to 'Wall Street Shuffle'. Plenty of others too on the 1974 10cc album 'Sheet Music'.”

“I think the only lyric is 'Funky City' as this is more of an instrumental with the occasional 'Funky City' thrown in. And to be honest, I don't think Summerbee, Bell, Lee et al were singing either!!”

“see www.mdmarchive.co.uk/artefact/4314/10...”

“Indeed, as Eric Stewart said on the 1995 Radio 2 documentary on 10cc, "we started experimenting to see how many drum tracks we could get on one tape....after about 8 we realised there was a chant going on in the background, it was Lol abut 12 feet away from the drums just singing 'I'm A Neanderthal Man' to keep Kev in time on the kit. We forgot about it but we used to bang this up on the speakers to show how loud the speakers could go. Dick Leahy from Philips came in and said 'It sounds like a hit record, can we release it?”

“Joy Division were named on the original draft but those deciding on the final wording had other ideas!”