Chart entered : 15 December 1973
Chart peak : 2
Number of hits : 16
Reality TV has exposed him as an obnoxious prick with a wildly over inflated ego but when he started out Leo was a genuinely new talent for the seventies. He was born Gerard Sayer in Sussex in 1948. He was a Catholic who sang in the school choir before going on to art college. He dropped out of the course after two years and flitted between manual and graphics work. In 1969 he formed a band called Patches with some mates. In 1970 they answered an ad for a talent contest run by David Courtney who'd been Adam Faith's drummer and was looking to set up a talent agency. He liked them and began a writing partnership with Leo.
In perhaps conscious imitation of Elton and Taupin, Courtney would work on the music in one room while Gerry wrestled lyrics from his voluminous notebooks of poetry in another. After failing to interest George Martin in their demoes Courtney took the tapes to Adam Faith who immediately wanted in as manager and got Patches a deal with Warner Brothers.
The group's only single was "Living In America" in August 1972 , unusually written by Courtney alone and produced by him and Adam . An account of meeting an optimistic street prophet it's an impressive piano rocker somewhere between Elton and Supertramp spat out in the constricted yowl that would characterise a lot of his early work, as if he had to work himself into a frenzy to sing. The single failed but they did get to meet The Who who were recording next door.
Shortly afterwards Gerry dissolved the band, keeping just guitarist Max Chetwynd and was re-christened "Leo" by Courtney in reference to his head of curls. They started work on his first LP "Silver Bird". Some of the recording took place at Roger Daltrey's home studio and realising they had a considerable stockpile of songs he asked if he could have some of them for his own solo album, "Daltrey" . This ended up being released ahead of Leo's debut and spawned a major hit single in Giving It All Away.
For Leo's own first solo single they selected the album's final track "Why Is Everybody Going Home ?" a very strange choice. It aims at being a big dramatic Hunky Dory- style piano ballad but turns into a whiney dirge. Leo's copious amounts of self-pity in his lyrics would soon serve him well but not here.
By the time of this single Leo had a startling new image inspired by the photos of a Belgian mime artist taken by Daltrey's cousin, Graham Hughes. He was now disguised as a Pierrot clown and as such went on tour as support to Roxy Music.
Lena's take here Leo is OK but doesn't quite capture what an extraordinary record it is, the banjo'ed intro harking back to George Formby , that deranged scat/yodel break midsong where you begin to fear for his sanity and the wretched tone of the final verse. I didn't appreciate it fully at the time because my Mum liked it but now I think it's tremendous.
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