Among the most inventive and influential bands in the history of popular music, 10cc are one of the very few acts to have achieved commercial, critical and creative success in equal measure.

Testament to 10cc’s ongoing appeal, the band can count a generation straddling array of fellow artists, everyone from Chrissie Hynde to The Feeling’s Dan Gillespie and Axl Rose to Sophie Ellis Bextor, among their many millions of fans. And now a new generation is discovering 10cc for the very first time.

2012 marked the 40th anniversary of the release of 10cc’s first single Donna, which reached No.2 in the UK charts and kick-started a remarkable career that has seen the band sell in excess of 30 million albums around the world.

Gouldman puts the 10cc’s longevity down to the quality and individuality of the band’s songs. “They don’t seem to date; they are original, we never followed any trend we simple wrote for our own pleasure. The fact that the songs are being played as often on the radio today as they ever were shows how true that is,” he says.

The missing link between The Beatles and the Gorillaz,10cc ruled the pop world at a time – the 1970s – when the charts were dominated by some of the most creative and colourful artistes in pop history.

Unlike David Bowie, Queen, Elton John or Rod Stewart – all of whom they stood shoulder-to-shoulder with for a decade – 10cc worked not on image or celebrity-status, but on the art of making highly sophisticated rock masterworks into simple-sounding pop hits.

As Gouldman says, “Our main influences were The Beatles and the Beach Boys. Then there was all the other stuff …

“For me it was people like Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Jimmy Webb, Eddie Cochran, Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers. Eric [Stewart] was more rock ‘n’ roll, the blues and R&B; while Kevin [Godley] and Lol [Creme] were sort of Jacques Brel, more artistic and avant-garde.

“It’s what happened when we put all those things together that made 10cc.” The result was some of the greatest pop records of the 20th century.

From their breakthrough hit Donna in 1972 to their final No 1 – Dreadlock Holiday – in 1978, via such landmark releases as I’m Not In Love, their worldwide smash in 1975, 10cc stood for the kind of heightened pop sensibility achieved only by the very greatest music practitioners. As Rolling Stone put it in 1975, ‘There is more going on in one 10cc song than on the last ten Yes albums.’