Leg End is Henry Cow’s first studio album. The album has sometimes been referred to as Legend and The Henry Cow Legend, but Leg End seems to have become the official name, at least for Henry Cow members, so that’s what I’ll use in this article.
Henry Cow was formed in 1969 by two Cambridge University students, guitarist/violinist Fred Frith and keyboardist/percussionist Tim Hodgkinson. In the early years, the band’s line-up, which was still heavily blues-orientated, was a tightly knit one but after many twists and turns, bassist John Greaves and drummer Chris Cutler joined the band to form the core quartet. In 1972 the band expanded into a quintet with the addition of Geoff Leigh on wind instruments. The line-up for the first album was finally complete.
Chris Cutler has told us that the band practised very rigorously for a few years, 5-6 days a week from 9am to 8pm. Above all, Henry Cow was always about challenging and developing themselves. The band made a point of writing harder songs than they could play. And then learning to play them! The band also constantly challenged themselves at concerts, not only by varying their set list at every gig, by radically rearranging songs they had composed and by devoting a significant part of every gig to free improvisation. No wonder then that by the time Henry Cow finally got around to making his first album in 1973, the band had honed itself into a virtuoso group playing together on an almost telepathic level.
Leg End was recorded in three weeks at The Manor studio on the new Virgin label, recorded by Tom Newman. Newman is of course best known for Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells which was recorded around the same time at The Manor. In fact, Oldfield, who was staying at The Manor at the time, even engineered one of the Leg End tracks.
Leg End is very complex, mostly instrumental music full of surprising tempo and time signature changes. Leg End’s music may sound like a lot of madness to the unaccustomed ear (I remember thinking something like that myself sometime in the 90s, even though I was very interested in the strange music I was hearing), but it’s actually quite tightly composed for the most part. Often even on musical scores, which is quite rare in the rock – and even prog – world.
At this stage, Henry Cow’s music still had some influences from Frank Zappa and early Soft Machine music and to some extent this can almost be counted as belonging to the Canterbury scene stylistically. The songs written before Leg End (these were later released on HC box set) sometimes even sound surprisingly much like Caravan. Despite these influences, however, Leg End’s style is already very much its own and it is very difficult to compare it directly with any other album.
Leg End immediately takes the listener’s attention with their stunning opening track ”Nirvana For Mice”. Composed by guitarist Frith, partly inspired by John Cage, and utilising chance methods, the song is seductively paced in 21/8 time signature and has more twists and turns than the famous corkscrew. For all its complexity, the somewhat jigsaw-like piece also contains some great melodies to counterbalance the complex form. There’s no lack of verve at any point, but Geoff Leigh’s serpentine and tortured saxophone solo, at the very latest, ensures that no one will make the mistake of putting this song on as background music. ”Nirvana For Mice” is the perfect combination of intricate melodicism and dissonance.
Jakko Jakszyk, now a guitarist in King Crimson, recorded a version of ”Nirvana For Mike” for his 2006 solo album The Bruised Romantic Glee. He played the finished version of the song to his future employer Robert Fripp, who shouted ”This is too complicated for me!”. And complicated music shouldn’t really be a foreign concept to Mr Fripp. This little anecdote says quite a lot about the complexity of Henry Cow’s music.
The album continues with the 7 minute ”Amygdala” which is composed entirely for notation by Hodgkinson (except for Cutler’s drums) and gives some indication of the future direction of Henry Cow, which became more and more chamber music-like. The song, which starts off in a subdued manner, gradually adds more and more twists and turns, becoming more and more complex and intricate. The song seems to be constantly changing. ”The music of ’Amygdala’ is always in motion and there is very little repetition typical of rock music. The rhythms and tempo are constantly alive and drummer Chris Cutler’s distinctive agile and very light-handed drumming is a delight both here and on the other tracks on the album. Cutler plays a lot, but with such a light touch that the playing doesn’t get choked up at any point.
Leigh’s saxophone in ”Amygdala” was replaced by Lindsay Cooper’s (who later joined the band) oboe on the first CD edition of the 1991 album because Hodgkinson thought Leigh’s performance was too jazzy. I personally preferred the original version which was eventually released on CD with the 1998 ”original mix” version. Cutler has said that the band had to rehearse playing ”Amygdala” for as long as seven months.
After ”Nirvana For Mice” and ”Amygdala”, the third highlight of the album is ”Teenbeat”, composed by Frith and Greaves, where the fast and rhythmically very challenging middle section is particularly impressive. Greaves’ bass playing on the track is stunning.
Even at this stage of their career, Henry Cow were not a band for long ”heroic” solos, but rather for collective playing, but on Leg End you can hear a bit more solo parts than on later albums. And Frith deserves a special mention in this department for his song ”Teenbeat Reprise”. Frith’s guitar soloing on this song is absolutely fantastic. Sharply incisive and virtuosic. The fuzz-edged sound is at once coldly analytical and densely multi-dimensional.
Leg End also features some of the free-form improvisations that the band became known for in the years to come and took much further. Not that there’s anything wrong with Leg End’s improvisations ”Teenbeat Introduction” and ”The Tenth Chaffinc” either.
Leg End ends surprisingly with a song sung after all the instrumental music. Of course, Hodkinson’s ”Nine Funerals Of Citizen King” is not a conventional song in Henry Cow’s case. First of all, it is sung in a three-part canon, somewhat reminiscent of Gentle Giant’s similar vocal experiments. The trio of Frith, Greaves and Hodkinson cope surprisingly well with their challenging vocal parts, even though they have not exactly become known for their vocals in the years to come (with the exception of Greaves). Henry Cow’s communist ideology only took a more central role in the band’s activities over the next few years, but Hodkinson’s lyrics in ”Citizen King” about citizens scrambling to buy and sell in the wheels of capitalism amidst crumbling cities already give a foretaste of things to come.
Down beneath the spectacle of free
No one ever let you see
The Citizen King
Ruling the fantastic architecture of all the burning cities
Where we buy and sell
La la la la la la la la la la la la
Leg End is crowned by artist Ray Smith’s ingenious painting of the sock, which looks like it’s been woven from a piece of iron wire, and the album’s fine, very ”dry” soundscape.” Very little reverberation and effects, a kind of transparent sound, fits perfectly with the album’s complex music where a huge amount is happening all the time. Every detail stands out perfectly. Although I think this contributes to the information overload effect of the first few listens. As the music becomes more familiar you can appreciate the solution more.
Leg End is an intoxicating and stunningly effective combination of extremely complex music and playful abandon. Leg End is the most sophisticated rock music of its era and Henry Cow’s style became increasingly challenging and academic as it progressed, but with this debut the music is still relatively accessible. Leg End is a fine start to Henry Cow’s near perfect run of five studio albums.
Best songs: ’Nirvana For Mice’, ’Amygdala’, ’Teenbeat’, ’Teenbeat Reprise’, ’Nine Funerals Of The Citizen King’
Rating: *****
Author: JANNE YLIRUUSI
Tracks:
Side A
1. ”Nirvana for Mice” (Frith) 4:53
2. ”Amygdala” (Hodgkinson) 6:47
3. ”Teenbeat Introduction” (Henry Cow) 4:32
4. ”Teenbeat” (Frith, Greaves) 6:57
Side B
5. ”Extract from ’With the Yellow Half-Moon and Blue Star'” (Frith) 3:37
6. ”Teenbeat Reprise” (Frith) 5:07
7. ”The Tenth Chaffinch” (Henry Cow) 6:06
8. ”Nine Funerals of the Citizen King” (Hodgkinson) 5:34
Musicians:
Geoff Leigh: saxophones, flute, clarinet, recorder, vocals Tim Hodgkinson: organ, piano, alto saxophone, clarinet, bells, vocals Fred Frith; guitars, violin, viola, piano, vocals John Greaves: bass, piano, whistle, vocals Chris Cutler: drums, toys, piano, whistle, vocals
Producer: Henry Cow
Label: Virgin
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