Legend
The debut, made within weeks of signing to Virgin and sold in Ray Smith's woven sock of paint.
Henry Cow, 1973
- Released
- 1973
- Recorded
- 12 to 17 May and 10 to 14 June 1973
- Studio
- The Manor, Oxfordshire
- Label
- Virgin
- Producer
- Henry Cow
- Length
- 43:33
Recorded at The Manor in two sessions in May and June 1973 and mixed in July, with Tom Newman engineering and Mike Oldfield handling the first part of Nirvana for Mice. Cutler and Maggie Thomas both recall that it went onto the multitrack Virgin had used for Magma. The original LP was titled The Henry Cow Legend, though Ray Smith, who made the cover from strips of acrylic paint squeezed from a pastry bag, asked that the name stay off the front; later CDs called it Legend and Leg End.
Hodgkinson remixed it in 1990 for a 1991 CD, with Frith co-remixing Nirvana for Mice and Teenbeat, adding Nirvana Reprise and Bellycan, and putting Cooper's bassoon in place of Leigh's saxophone on Amygdala. A 1998 CD restored the original mix, transferred from a Japanese vinyl copy because the master tape was lost, and Bob Drake remastered it for the 2019 Redux box. Robert Christgau found the band more flexible than King Crimson and more rigorously conceived than Soft Machine.
Track listing
- Nirvana for Mice4:53
- Amygdala6:47
- Teenbeat Introduction4:32
- Teenbeat6:57
- Extract from "With the Yellow Half-Moon and Blue Star"3:37
- Teenbeat Reprise5:07
- The Tenth Chaffinch6:06
- Nine Funerals of the Citizen King5:34
Personnel
- Geoff Leigh saxophones, flute, clarinet, recorder, voice
- Tim Hodgkinson Farfisa organ, piano, alto saxophone, clarinet, bells, voice
- Fred Frith guitars, violin, viola, piano, voice
- John Greaves bass, piano, whistle, voice
- Chris Cutler drums, toys, piano, whistle, voice
- Jeremy Baines pixiphone on "With the Yellow Half-Moon and Blue Star"
- Sarah Greaves, Maggie Thomas, Cathy Williams chorus on Teenbeat
- Tom Newman engineer
- Mike Oldfield engineer, first part of Nirvana for Mice
More from Henry Cow
Unrest (1974), In Praise of Learning (1975)
Sources
- Legend (Henry Cow album), Wikipedia
- Leg End, Bandcamp
- Chris Cutler and Maggie Thomas interview, The Non-Writer (2024)
- Fred Frith interview, It's Psychedelic Baby (2012-01-06)