Published Oops/Ganga Genre Funk rock Label Apple | Released 22 September 1975 Length 5:46 Writer(s) George Harrison | |
"His Name Is Legs (Ladies and Gentlemen)" is a song by English musician George Harrison, released in 1975 as the closing track of his album Extra Texture (Read All About It). The eponymous "Legs" is "Legs" Larry Smith, a drummer with the 1960s satirical-comedy group the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and one of a growing number of comedians with whom Harrison began associating during the 1970s. Smith appears on the recording, delivering a hard-to-decipher spoken monologue, while Harrison's lyrics similarly reflect the comedian's penchant for zany wordplay. The song serves as a precursor to Harrison's work with Monty Python members Eric Idle and Michael Palin, including his production of the troupe's 1975 single "The Lumberjack Song" and movies such as Life of Brian (1979) that he produced under the aegis of his company HandMade Films.
Contents
Harrison recorded "His Name Is Legs" at his Friar Park home studio during sessions for his 1974 album Dark Horse. The song remained unfinished until he returned to it the following year while working in Los Angeles on Extra Texture. Aside from Harrison and Smith, the musicians on the recording include Tom Scott, Billy Preston, Willie Weeks and Andy Newmark, all of whom were part of Harrison's 1974 tour band. The song's arrangement reflects Harrison's adoption of the funk genre.
As with the album's humorous artwork, the inclusion of "His Name Is Legs" on Extra Texture marked a rare example of light-heartedness among a collection of mostly downbeat songs. Several commentators view the track as an indulgence by Harrison, the apparent in-joke nature of the composition reinforced by largely unintelligible vocals on the recording.
Background
Although often noted for the serious, religious nature of his song lyrics, George Harrison was an avowed fan of British comedy, beginning with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan's radio work with the Goons during the 1950s. In his autobiography, I, Me, Mine, Harrison talks of comedy, specifically Monty Python's first TV series and the satirical Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, as having "filled that empty space for me" in the late 1960s when relationships with his fellow Beatles had fractured. Harrison suggests an alternative scenario to the Beatles' break-up in 1970: "What should have happened is that the Bonzos and the Beatles ... turned into one great Rutle band with all the Pythons and had a laugh." The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band were a favourite of the Beatles, who cast them in their 1967 TV film Magical Mystery Tour. Harrison subsequently performed with Bonzo drummer Larry Smith, along with Eric Clapton and other members of Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, at John Lennon's "Peace for Christmas" charity concert, held at London's Lyceum Ballroom in December 1969.
By 1973, comedians such as Sellers and Milligan were part of Harrison's social circle at his Friar Park estate in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. This period coincided with the end of his marriage to Pattie Boyd, who has described their home as "a madhouse" during their final year together. Harrison became reacquainted with Smith, often known as "Legs Larry", through longtime Beatles aide Terry Doran. Harrison admired Smith as "a wonderfully eccentric person", a quality that had similarly inspired him about Sir Frank Crisp, the original owner of Friar Park. Author Dale Allison suggests that Smith became a court jester figure for Harrison, who wrote the song "His Name Is Legs (Ladies and Gentlemen)" as a tribute to Smith. In I Me Mine, Harrison terms the composition "a piece of personal indulgence, like some other of my songs about things nobody else knows or cares about, except maybe two people".
Composition
Harrison wrote "His Name Is Legs" around Christmastime in 1973, on a piano at Friar Park. Author Ian Inglis describes it as a song "peppered with oblique references and in-jokes about [Smith's] idiosyncratic mannerisms and behavior". Harrison's lyrics incorporate some of Smith's favourite sayings, the first verse beginning:
Everything is dinky doo
Everything that you do
You the King of Lah di da
Pretty very out far ...
Examples of Smith's penchant for zany wordplay include the lines "Never over-sits he under-stands" and "Get lined up come Sikh come Czar" – the latter being a misappropriation of the French phrase "comme ci comme ça". In the second verse, the line "People think he's loopy loo when they look at his shoes" refers to the comedian's unusual dress sense, which included "toy cows grazing on his shoes", according to Harrison biographer Alan Clayson, while "rocking sausage roll" was Smith's phrase for rock 'n' roll.
The song title appears in the two bridge sections, the first of which states:
Everyone from Oxford town
Way down to the Rio Grande
Knows his harbour quays, his skintight hands
Are without seggs, his name is Legs.
Musically, the composition is in the funk rock style, while the device of introducing Smith to listeners recalls the show tune aspect of Harrison's collaboration with Mal Evans, "You and Me (Babe)", which closed former Beatle Ringo Starr's 1973 album Ringo. In the lyrics to "His Name Is Legs", Harrison biographer Simon Leng recognises the same "nonsense word games" favoured by Monty Python. Leng observes that the latter's composition "The Lumberjack Song" particularly resonated with Harrison during this period, as he sought to challenge the public's perception of him as a Beatle, in the same way that Michael Palin's character in the Python song challenged the stereotypes associated with an "all-action" lumberjack.
1974 basic track
Harrison taped "His Name Is Legs (Ladies and Gentlemen)" during sessions for his 1974 album Dark Horse, but it was one of a number of tracks he left unfinished. The sessions took place at his Friar Park studio, FPSHOT, in August–September that year, with Phil McDonald as recording engineer. Harrison played piano and electric guitar on the recording; the other musicians were Billy Preston (electric piano), Tom Scott (saxophones), Willie Weeks (bass) and Andy Newmark (drums). These four musicians subsequently attended Harrison's tour rehearsals in Los Angeles, where Harrison rushed to complete Dark Horse before undertaking a much-anticipated North American tour with Ravi Shankar. With Peter Sellers among his entourage, Harrison alternatively adopted comedy and his Hindu-aligned spiritual goals as a defence against expectations related to his Beatle past during the tour.
When discussing "His Name Is Legs" with BBC Radio 1 DJ Paul Gambaccini in September 1975, Harrison explained that after recording the basic track, he invited Smith to sing the first two lines of each of the bridges; Smith did these vocal parts in two takes, but improvised dialogue through the rest of the song each time. Smith sang the bridge sections in English "officer-and-gentleman tones", Clayson writes, and adopted an American accent for the monologues.
1975 overdubs
Harrison returned to the track in April 1975 when recording his album Extra Texture (Read All About It) at A&M Studios in Los Angeles. The sessions coincided with a period that author Gary Tillery describes as a "spiritual funk" for Harrison, in reaction to scathing reviews for his 1974 tour and the Dark Horse album. Harrison's despondency was alleviated by his new relationship with Olivia Arias, and a friendship begun with Monty Python star Eric Idle immediately after the Los Angeles premiere of the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Idle has spoken of them sharing "a dialogue that went on for about 48 hours" following the premiere, which led to Harrison producing a re-recording of "The Lumberjack Song" in London, in October 1975, for release as a UK single. The pair then wrote a comical sea shanty called "The Pirate Song" for a sketch in Rutland Weekend Television, Idle's TV show with Neil Innes, Smith's former bandmate.
Overdubs on the 1974 basic track for "His Name Is Legs" included tack piano, played by Canadian musician David Foster, and a new horn arrangement, played by Scott and Chuck Findley, another member of Harrison's tour band the previous year. Scott and Findley recorded their contributions at A&M Studios over 2–3 June, with each musician overdubbing two horn parts.
The released recording begins with Harrison's spoken "I'm not cheating", followed by an introductory bass riff from Weeks, which is then joined by Foster's tack piano. Commentators note the lack of clarity in the mix, which author Elliot Huntley attributes to the "three-pronged piano attack" and the low level of Harrison and Smith's vocals. At times during the sections featuring Smith's improvised dialogue, Harrison let both recorded takes run simultaneously, and he admitted to Gambaccini that he chose to mix the track in this way "so people have to strain with headphones to hear what it is".
Release and reception
"His Name Is Legs" was released in September 1975 as the final track on Extra Texture (Read All About It). Its inclusion contrasted with the melancholic musical content of Extra Texture, as did Roy Kohara's album artwork, which "tried to incorporate a 'wacky' theme", authors Chip Madinger and Mark Easter wrote in 2000. This included an inner-sleeve photo of Harrison "grin[ning] like a Monty Python choirboy", in the words of Village Voice critic Robert Christgau, while the face labels credited production to "Ohnothimagen" (Oh, not him again) and showed the Apple Records logo reduced to an apple core.
Author Robert Rodriguez has described the song as a "comedy number" and "a self-indulgent in-joke" that appears to show Harrison "doubling down on efforts to alienate his audience", after the bad press he had received over the winter of 1974–75. On release, Dave Marsh of Rolling Stone observed that the song "might be Harrison's way of countering charges of humorlessness" and opined: "Although, since neither Smith nor Harrison is very funny, it does more to confirm the charges." In the NME, Neil Spencer referred to the image of Harrison with "a chirpy smirk plastered across his dial" as "misleading", given the album's overall mood, and wrote of the closing song: "'His Names Is Legs (Ladies and Gentlemen)' is the odd track out because it's (ulp) not serious. It seems like an attempt to recapture some of the innocent light-heartedness of Beatle days."
Writing later in the 1970s in The Beatles: An Illustrated Record, Roy Carr and Tony Tyler suggested that Harrison had "desperately" employed "last-minute devices" to save Extra Texture, by featuring "'zany' ex-Bonzo Dog Band drummer 'Legs' Larry Smith on a track, and by instructing his graphic designers to 'get a little humour into the packaging'. They do; and 'Legs' duly sings; but it is all too little, too late." In 1981, NME critic Bob Woffinden noted the lack of a lyric sheet with the album and wrote: "the song is not a success, since most of the vocals are lost in the raucous mix; Larry might have had pearls of wisdom to impart, but who could tell?" More recently, Richard Ginell of AllMusic has described it as a "baffling salute" to Smith, while former Mojo editor Mat Snow dismisses it as "a throwaway among throwaways".
Also writing for AllMusic, Lindsay Planer views "His Name Is Legs" as "somewhat silly but nonetheless thoroughly entertaining", a song that "[allows] Harrison the opportunity to close the disc on a lighter note and unleash his admittedly askew and undeniably rich sense of humor". Author Chris Ingham calls the track a "manically intricate tribute" and considers it to be a redeeming feature of Extra Texture, along with "Tired of Midnight Blue". Writing for Goldmine magazine in January 2002, Dave Thompson described it as "whacked" and "a six-minute semi-jam" that should not be "overlook[ed]".
In a review of Harrison's 2014 Apple Years reissues, for the Lexington Herald-Leader, Walter Tunis views Extra Texture as "a delight", from the opening "You" through to "the playful His Name Is Legs". Less impressed, New Zealand Herald critic Graham Reid writes that this "jokey closer", which marked "a quirky end" to Harrison's eight years on Apple Records, fails to deliver on its claim that "everything is tickety-boo".
Legacy
Snow, Huntley and Inglis each discuss "His Name Is Legs" in the context of the track preceding Harrison's well-received work with Idle. Snow writes that, as unlikely as it seemed during Harrison's fallow period of 1975, "surreal English comedy would provide him with a new career." Aside from Harrison's production of "The Lumberjack Song", their collaborations began with his guest appearance on Rutland Weekend Television, which aired on BBC2 on 26 December 1975. In 1978, Harrison participated in The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash, a TV film starring Idle, Innes and Palin that satirised the Beatles' history, and he formed HandMade Films that year in order to fund the production of Monty Python's third movie, Life of Brian (1979), in which he also appeared. HandMade became Britain's most successful independent film company and went on to make other films involving one or more members of Monty Python, including Time Bandits (1981), The Missionary (1982), A Private Function (1984) and Nuns on the Run (1990).
Following his guest appearance on "His Name Is Legs", Smith became part of a coterie of local musicians known as the Henley Music Mafia, which also included Harrison, Alvin Lee, Jon Lord and Joe Brown. Smith appeared in the HandMade comedy Bullshot (1983) and also designed the cover for Harrison's 1982 album Gone Troppo.