Legay: No-one

Who were the coolest band in Leicester in the late Sixties?

The consensus, I think, would be Family, but they had a rival in the shape of Legay, who later renamed themselves Gypsy.

I came across Legay in old newspapers because, like Jethro Tull, they played the Frolickin Kneecap in Market Harborough.

But Bryan Hemmings goes back a long way with the band:

Legay, later to become Gypsy, had that almost undefinable quality that most times makes the crucial difference. In a parallel universe, somewhere, things probably turned out a lot better for them. And I’m probably a successful novelist. In this universe none of us were quite so lucky. Sometimes, there are moments I feel it’s all my fault.

To my mind, they could have been one of the biggest bands in Britain. Looks, style and music, like David Bowie, they had virtually everything. All they lacked was that final, tiny bit of musical polish, and a really good producer.

Guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and founder of the band, Robin Pizer, was in my class at Syston Parochial Juniors. Apart from a small interlude, when I was committed to a school in Leicester, we attended the same schools for most of the rest of our school lives. 

Though we were never what you could call best of friends we communicated at times. We were probably also at the Infants’ school in Syston's High Street by Walker’s woodyard together.

Robin once got shamed in front of morning assembly with Billy Walker, who used to sit at the desk in front of mine. They were caught after throwing stones at a lamp outside St Peter and St Paul Church and breaking it. He was Jack the Lad personified. 

He told me his uncle was teaching him to play guitar when he was about ten. Was I jealous. Robin once dissected a stickleback in front of my eyes with a pen knife under the bridge at Syston brook, when we were nippers. He definitely made an impression, I was horrified.

We were in the same year Longslade Comprehensive School. Most of the rest of Gypsy went there too. The band was called Legay after their first drummer, Legay Rogers. Unfortunately, Legay died young. 

For a virtually unknown band outside Leicestershire, Legay had huge female following. Girls loved them. Even their roadies were sexy.

No-one, the track above, apparently reveals Legay in a more psychedelic mood than was usual for them. But it's easy to imagine it being a hit in 1969.

Robin Pizer is still around in Leicester and recorded a song about Richard III when the old boy was found in the city.

He wrote another about the Princes in the Tower, but that's a topic that merits a post of its own.