LEGS THE GIANT, THE MIDLANDS TITAN

Legs, oth­er­wise known as The Giant, a name that imme­di­ate­ly implies a cer­tain stature, and eludes to the noto­ri­ety that he has earned amongst sound­men. This mas­ter of ampli­fi­ca­tion knew how to push the lim­its. As proof, the incred­i­ble sto­ries about him are legion. This con­ver­sa­tion takes us in the foot­steps of the Giant !

Cut­ting Edge – Can you intro­duce yourself ?

Legs The Giant – My name is Carl but they call me Legs. I was born in Jamaica in 1940. I went to Eng­land in 1960 and start­ed mak­ing ampli­fiers. I was already doing it in Jamaica.

Cut­ting Edge –Were you based in Kingston ?

Legs The Giant – Yes, I was in Kingston. 

Cut­ting Edge – How did you come to build equip­ment for sound systems ?

Legs The Giant – I learned from Fred­dy, one of the guys who made ampli­fiers for a big com­pa­ny called Duke Reid. But let me tell you how it all start­ed. I was work­ing with some­one doing fil­ing and learn­ing how to built ampli­fiers. So one day, a friend came from the coun­try and told me that he was com­ing to get an ampli­fi­er built. So I told him that anoth­er guy here was doing it.
He said to me, “ But you’re here, can you do it ? ”
“ Yeah, I can do it but I’m not expert. ” 
“ Alright, alright, go ahead ! How much do you charge ? ”, he said.
I said, “ £40 ! I want £20 to buy the parts and £20 when you pick up the ampli­fi­er. ​”
So I made the ampli­fi­er and the guy came to col­lect it. When I tried to switch it on, it blew up ! So I had to take him to the per­son I was work­ing with, so to speak, to ask for his help.
He turned to me and said to me, “ So, you are mak­ing ampli­fiers now ? I did­n’t know you could make them. ​”
I said, “ I don’t know, I’m just try­ing. ​”
So he said to me, “ Ok, you want to fix it ? ​”
I said, “ Yeah ! ​”
He said, “ How much do you charge to make the ampli­fi­er ? ​”
I said, “ £40 ! ​”
He said, “ How much did you get ? ​”
I said, “ I got £20 and I’m going to have the remain­ing £20 when he col­lects the ampli­fi­er. ​”
He said, “ I’m gonna tell you some­thing. I want £40 to fix it ! ​”
I said, “ How could you want £40 to fix it, when I charged £40 and bought the parts, this and that ? ​”
He said, “ Well, if you know you could­n’t make it, you should­n’t have tak­en the mon­ey from the man ! I want £40 to fix it ! ​”
So I said, “ In Eng­land, it’s not £40 ! And he’s giv­ing me only £20 ! ​”
He said, “ I’ll take it ! And I’ll tell you what. You’ll work for me for free until the £20 done ! ​”
I said, “ Alright ! ​”
So he fixed the ampli­fi­er. It took him two min­utes. He went to the back while me and the guy were wait­ing in the shop. And all of a sud­den, I heard music ! And when he came out, he said to me, “ It’s fixed ! ​”
I answered, “ Yeah, we could hear it ! ” And so he received the mon­ey from the guy !

Cut­ting Edge – When did you arrive in England ?

Legs The Giant – About six months lat­er, I went to Eng­land. When I was there, I lived on Shepherd’s Bush. I lived above an elec­tron­ic shop. The own­er’s name was Mason and his store was called Mason & Sons. I became friends with his son. His father, who used to sell tele­vi­sions, want­ed his son to also learn the trade to help him make repairs. So he said to him, “ You have to go to school, this is where you learn ! ​”
Then, he said to me, “ Carl, I’m gonna give you a choice ! Since you are such good friends, I think he will fol­low you to school if you go there. I’ll pay the fees if you go. ​”
I replied imme­di­ate­ly, “ Sure, I get this oppor­tu­ni­ty, I’m gonna take it ! ​”
His son was a white kid and I was a black kid. At that time in Eng­land, we did­n’t see much black peo­ple then. But he was a friend of mine and spent most of his time with me upstairs.
So, we went to school, both of us went. That is how I learned about amplifiers.

And then, I made my first ampli­fi­er. I went to Leak to buy some con­densers because I did­n’t know how to get them.
And the guy said to me, “ What are you doing ? ​”
I said, “ I’m try­ing to make an ampli­fi­er. But I need con­densers. Is it pos­si­ble to buy some ? ​”
He said, “ Yes, sure ! Can I see what you’re doing ? ​”
I said, “ Sure ! ​”
So I took the ampli­fi­er there. He looked at it and said, “ Yeah, it’s good ! ​”
So, get­ting this kind of feed­back from a pro­fes­sion­al com­pa­ny that man­u­fac­tures ampli­fiers has been very encour­ag­ing to me. I start­ed off from there. The first ampli­fi­er I made deliv­ered 100 Watts. I used to play upstairs and that was alright as it was an elec­tron­ics store. So I could make a lit­tle noise. But I start­ed mak­ing noise late at night and the police came. And they gave me a tick­et for noise dis­tur­bance. I went to court and the judge charged me two and six [Two Shillings and Six­pence] at the time for mak­ing noise. The last time I went to court, they said to me, “ Charg­ing him two and six does­n’t work. The next time the police come, I will ask them to take the equip­ment, so that will pre­vent you for mak­ing noise nui­sance. ” So I slowed down a lit­tle bit and then I moved away from there. After­wards, I was able to buy my own place and we start­ed doing par­ties. This is the ori­gin of the Blues Dances. It start­ed with birth­day par­ties, then wed­ding par­ties. That’s how it came out !

Cut­ting Edge – Did you used to attend sound sys­tem dances at the time ?

Legs The Giant – Yes !

Cut­ting Edge – Did you fol­low a par­tic­u­lar sound system ?

Legs The Giant – No, not real­ly. They used to fol­low me ! [laugh]

Cut­ting Edge – Was it in the 60’s ?

Legs The Giant – In the 60’s, yes !

Cut­ting Edge – Did you already play under the name ​‘Legs the Giant’?

Legs The Giant – Legs the Giant, yeah ! Any­body will tell you that was the heav­i­est sound. I put what I want to put in it, you know !

Cut­ting Edge – So you only had one amp play­ing full range ?

Legs The Giant – At that time, yes !

Cut­ting Edge – No two-ways or three-ways ?

Legs The Giant – No, this is some­thing that came up in the 80’s. They start­ed mak­ing two-ways, three-ways. We used to called it Top and Bot­tom.

Cut­ting Edge – Did you use a pre-amp in the 60’s ?

Legs The Giant – Yes !

Cut­ting Edge – What turntable did you had at that time ?

Legs The Giant – Gar­rard, the old white one called 4HF. It was clum­sy but it was good. Not like the new turnta­bles they are mak­ing now. Gar­rard is a Ger­man com­pa­ny. It might be build in UK but the com­pa­ny was in Ger­many. After the 4HF, I bought anoth­er mod­el in a junk shop but I can’t remem­ber the name. It was a direct-dri­ve turntable. You had a quar­ter of horse­pow­er on it. The minute you let it go, it reach­es full speed. I remem­ber that the arm was mas­sive. They said to me that this turntable came out of the BBC studios.

Cut­ting Edge – Some­one wrote on the social media that you had an impor­tant posi­tion in elec­tron­ics for an air­line com­pa­ny. This was the work­ing sta­tus of Errol Pret­tyger that I pre­vi­ous­ly inter­viewed. Is this a con­fu­sion with him or is it true ?

Legs The Giant – No, they are wrong. It’s Errol who worked for an air­line, not me. I’m an elec­tri­cian. It was the first job I did in Lon­don. I used to work for a com­pa­ny. We called the boss Rudy, he was in Germany.

Cut­ting Edge – Did you col­lab­o­rate with oth­er builders like ​‘Carl­ton The Mata­dor’? A book has recent­ly been pub­lished about the Birm­ing­ham scene and his name is men­tioned in it as one of the most influ­en­tial builders.

Legs The Giant – He is a friend of mine. His busi­ness was tele­vi­sion, he is very good on tele­vi­sion. But Carl knows noth­ing about ampli­fiers, real­ly ! I made an ampli­fi­er for him and he start­ed telling peo­ple that he built it. I don’t know what he tried to do on the ampli­fi­er but he spoiled it. When he went to play in Wolver­hamp­ton, the dance did­n’t come off due to the inter­fer­ence with the ampli­fi­er. It nev­er sound­ed good ! As I said, he is a tele­vi­sion guy, not an ampli­fi­er man.

Cut­ting Edge – Have you crossed paths with oth­er builders like Per­ci­val Miller (bet­ter known as ​‘Metro’)?

Legs The Giant – I teached Metro ! I’m the one that made Metro​’s sound ! If you find out, if you see Metro, ask him ! Just ask about Legs and see what he’s going to tell you.

Cut­ting Edge – Did you know Kei­th Good­en who found­ed Link Audio Sys­tems, a builder from Birmingham ?

Legs The Giant – If I know Kei­th ? I start­ed him ! Orig­i­nal­ly, his skill area was alarms, not ampli­fiers. I got him involved in ampli­fiers. He unfor­tu­nate­ly passed away. We used to walk from each oth­ers house to each oth­ers house. He used to work at Lucas. This com­pa­ny man­u­fac­tured car parts and main­ly bat­ter­ies. I brought Kei­th in because he could­n’t get the parts. 

Cut­ting Edge – How long were you active with your sound ?

Legs The Giant – It starts in the 60’s. I arrived in the Unit­ed States in 1983. So I would say that the sound stopped in the ear­ly 80’s.

Cut­ting Edge – Did you leave your equip­ment in Eng­land after you left for the US ?

Legs The Giant – No, I did­n’t bring any­thing. Because if nec­es­sary, I was able to rebuild here. 

Cut­ting Edge – Did you also leave your record col­lec­tion there ?

Legs The Giant – No ! [laugh] The records were actu­al­ly stolen. I would­n’t say stolen … When I came to Amer­i­ca, I left my records box with the guy that used to play the sound. We called him Al Capone, he was a Dee­jay. When I came back to Eng­land in the 2000s, I asked him if he still had the records. He said to me, “ I got rid of them ! ” He sold them ! It’s stu­pid because some were very valuable.

Cut­ting Edge – I’ve heard count­less sto­ries about your sound sys­tem. A sto­ry that comes up most often is about the dance at ​‘Win­son Green Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre’. Appar­ent­ly you had two ampli­fiers with the ​‘V1505’ valves (also know as the Rock­et Valve). When you dropped the bass, it would have blown the fus­es of the club, leav­ing the place in dark­ness. Is that real­ly how it happened ?

Legs The Giant – Yes, that’s a true sto­ry and the tiles used to come down off the top. You know the ceil­ing ? The ceil­ing tiles used to come down. That’s true ! [laugh]

Cut­ting Edge – What was the wattage of these amplifiers ?

Legs The Giant – The pow­er of the ampli­fiers was sup­posed to be 1100 Watts, and that’s straight. Not 100 Watts and 100 Watts and 100 Watts … That was straight !

Cut­ting Edge – Did you draw the cir­cuit diagram ?

Legs The Giant – No, I did not draw it myself. They did it for me where I used to work in Eng­land. It was a com­pa­ny called Delta, man­u­fac­tur­er of extrud­ed metals.

Cut­ting Edge – Have you built sim­i­lar ampli­fiers for oth­er sound systems ?

Legs The Giant – I built five of them. I got one. I built one for a guy from Lon­don called Horace. I think he went back to Jamaica and took it with him.
I did one for David who was also from Lon­don. One for Chin and one for Stan from Birm­ing­ham. These amps were some­thing else ! No one else did it ! Because this amp fright­ened by its volt­age of 3000 Volts. I mean, it’s more than what they’re using here to kill peo­ple ! [laugh]

Cut­ting Edge – I also heard about a dance in ​‘Mount Pleas­ant’, Birm­ing­ham. When you touched the nee­dle, the quad and dou­ble box­es start­ed walking ! 

Legs The Giant – They told you the truth ! Every­one ran out of the place when Ted­dy [mem­ber of the sound] touched the nee­dle ! They thought the build­ing was going to col­lapse. And the speak­er box­es walked ! Yes, they walked ! [laugh]

Cut­ting Edge – That night, I heard you burned up a dozen of speak­ers at one time.

Legs The Giant – Yeah ! The speak­ers were over­pow­ered. They did­n’t burn up. The speak­er cone itself forced against the mesh. It blew them out. The incom­ing sig­nal tells the cone to move too far forward.

Cut­ting Edge – What mod­el of speak­ers were you using at that time ?

Legs The Giant – I was using Good­mans speak­ers, strict­ly Good­mans. It was my favorites !

Cut­ting Edge – What was their pow­er ? 200 Watts ?

Legs The Giant – Yes, at that time the speak­ers were only 200 Watts. Nowa­days, they’re talk­ing about 1200 Watts speak­ers, but that’s garbage ! Back then, when we put the bass, if you only knew the num­ber of peo­ple who dropped down in the dance. If we had used speak­ers of over 1000 Watts, we would have killed someone !

Cut­ting Edge – Nowa­days, many sound sys­tems play in 4 or 5 ways ? What do you think ?

Legs The Giant – That’s garbage ! [laugh] Three ways is enough, not even four.

Cut­ting Edge – I think you built for ​‘Jun­gle Man’ from Birm­ing­ham. Is it true ?

Legs The Giant – Yes ! Jun­gle Man was a free sound. I built Jun­gle Man for noth­ing. There was a lit­tle kid named Clive who used to hang out around me. He was part of a group of about thir­ty Rasta­far­i­ans. They often had prob­lems with the police. Then one day, Clive came to ask me if I could do him a favour.
I said, “ What favor ? ​”
He said, “ Could you build a sound sys­tem for the guys ? ​”
So I said, “ Yeah, but some­body’s gonna have to come with some kind of mon­ey ! ​”
And Clive replied, “ They don’t have any mon­ey. ​”
I said, “ Sure, I don’t mind ! ​”
So, I made them two amps, two 600 Watts tube amps. They called them­selves Jun­gle Man, rough truck sound ! And they were good ! My wife used to tell me, “ Why are you going to lis­ten to these guys ? ” At the time, they were play­ing very good music. The kind of music that I like. So I used to go and see them play. But they were kids, you know !
After they found out that the sound starts to keep them in line as the police would say. They then went to the Hous­es of Par­lia­ment. The Hous­es of Par­lia­ment gave them a brand new truck and also some mon­ey. Pharaoh, who is the head of the group, came to me and tell me, “ Legs, I got mon­ey from the gov­ern­ment to make the sound. ​”
I said, “ Yeah ? ​”
He said, “ Yeah, do you want to build me a sound ? ​”
I replied, “ Yes, what do you need ? ​”
Pharaoh then start­ed telling me what he want­ed and I told him what it would cost him. And he said to me, “ No man, that’s too much ! ​”
I said, “ Pharaoh, I tell you some­thing, go some­where else man ! ​”
So they turned to anoth­er builder called Mack­ie based in Der­by. So he made them a set and I went to lis­ten to it. I did­n’t say noth­ing. Because I am not going to run down anoth­er man’s job. If they are sat­is­fied with it, who am I to say some­thing ?
They did­n’t last, they just went after. They start com­plain­ing that I was the one that turned them off actu­al­ly. Because some oth­er kids came to me and I built them the same sound sys­tem that I would have made to Jun­gle Man if I had worked for them. And the oth­er kids took over ! Actu­al­ly, took them down. That is the sto­ry !
When I built Jun­gle Man​’s first sound, I live in a neigh­bor­hood where the res­i­dents were pre­dom­i­nant­ly white. The mem­bers of Jun­gle Man used to vis­it me at home when they come back from play­ing at night around two or three o’clock in the morn­ing. They showed up with their noisy diesel truck, “ Broom, Broom, Broom ! ” [Legs mim­ics the sound of the truck]
And one of my neigh­bors start­ed to com­plain, “ Why do these peo­ple come to you at such late hours and make a hell of a noise with their truck ? I can not sleep ! ” So I talked to them and I said, “ Pharaoh, you can’t keep com­ing here ! ” He said, “ I’m bring­ing your mon­ey, man ! ” Because after play­ing, they would pass by my house on the way home and drop-off some mon­ey. They told me they want­ed to show me their grat­i­tude for what I had done for them. So I told to Pharaoh, “ If mon­ey is the rea­son for your vis­it, don’t both­er with it, I pre­fer to pre­serve the peace of my neigh­bor­hood ! ​”
That’s how we kind of drift away. But I am the one who allowed them to emerge on the scene. They nev­er used to do noth­ing besides make trouble.

I remem­ber one night when Jun­gle Man was play­ing with a sound sys­tem from Coven­try. One of Jun­gle Man​’s ampli­fiers went down and they brought it to me to fix it. I checked and repaired the ampli­fi­er and the per­son who came to pick it up said to me, “ Legs, I ain’t leav­ing you ! ​”
I said, “ What do you mean ? ​”
He replied, “ Since the ampli­fi­er has bro­ken down, I want you to come to the dance venue to make sure it will work. ​”
So I said, “ Alright ! ​”
When I got there, the sound sys­tem from Coven­try strung up, then start­ed play­ing and diss­ing the Dee­jay for Jun­gle Man whom I nick­named Phee. His name was not Phee but he spoke all the time about Phee which was actu­al­ly his daugh­ter’s name. And when I walk in, I heard the guy was call­ing him all kind of names and things like that. So I passed by and I said to him, “ Play the music man, stop the mouth thing, you know ! ​”
He exclaimed, “ They are play­ing 600 Watts and I’m play­ing 600 Watts. So I can what they want to say ! ​”
I said, “ Yeah, they are going to kill you ! ​”
Jun­gle Man had installed four speak­er box­es behind him as he was on the stage. These were Quad box­es each loaded with four 18″ loud­speak­ers.
When I walked into the venue and saw the speak­er box­es lay­out, I knew Jun­gle Man was going to kill this guy.
Because the bass that came out of them was heavy ! Each box had a name. There was Haile Selassie, Mar­cus Gar­vey, … They were mon­strous box­es, hence the fact that they gave them these names.
The sound­man from Coven­try said they are play­ing 600 Watts but he did­n’t know that they came with an addi­tion­al 600 Watts ampli­fi­er. Espe­cial­ly since it was intend­ed to ampli­fy the speak­ers that were behind him. Hav­ing seen the speak­er lay­out and know­ing the set­up very well, I knew exact­ly what was going to hap­pen. Jun­gle Man then set up the ampli­fiers and start­ed play­ing. I walked over to the guy from Coven­try and stood by his side because I knew they were going to kill him. And I heard Jun­gle Man say, “ Test one, Bassline ! ” And when they dropped the bass, he almost fell. I grabbed him and pulled it out of the wake. I said, “ Don’t go over there because if you go back, they will kill you ! They set you up ! ​”
Before I left the par­ty, the guy from Coven­try came to me and said, “ Thank you very much ! My friends also warned me. ” His pals knew Jun­gle Man was going to stop him. After that, they did­n’t let him play a sin­gle record for the night.

Cut­ting Edge – Did you also use this tactic ?

Legs The Giant – Yes, I used to do that. I’m the one that start­ed it off. How you mak­ing a lot of noise, I don’t say noth­ing until I come on. After I play four or five records, I say, “ You play ! ” But you can’t, because you don’t have the sound to match what I just fin­ished play­ing. You can’t match it. No way ! Nei­ther the qual­i­ty nor the force, so just don’t play for the night. I played in Man­ches­ter and used that tac­tic with Quak­er City. It was a very good sound ! And Quak­er found this fun­ny and so did I. [laugh]

Cut­ting Edge – Did you clash with a lot of sound systems ?

Legs The Giant – Yes, I played with Duke Reid and Cox­sone from Brix­ton. I also com­pet­ed along­side a sound from Man­ches­ter called Lord Cass. You can ask him, I let him run leave the sound, actu­al­ly run leave it. When I got there and start­ed set­ting up the speak­ers, Cass was strut­ting around with his “ Lord this ” and “ Lord that ”. I remained impas­sive. I’m Legs The Giant and I was going to prove it to him. I had the nec­es­sary reserve of pow­er to silence him. I was­n’t going to play like this all night, but I was going to let him know. Cass came to me and said, “ I will nev­er play the same dance for you any­more ! ” [laugh]

Cut­ting Edge – Did you use Dub­plates as weapons ?

Legs The Giant – Yes ! [laugh] This is pre­cise­ly what allowed me to kill Lord Cass. I have a cousin of mine who is an excel­lent singer. His name is Owen Gray and he was record­ing spe­cials with my name.
I also used pre-releas­es. I remem­ber one night play­ing with Duke Vin from Lon­don. I got a song straight from Jamaica that no one had at the time. I knew the pro­duc­er and a friend sent it to me. It was an instru­men­tal called East­ern Stan­dard Time. Vin was play­ing some great records that night. But when I put on this track, the dance was done ! I am par­tic­u­lar­ly fond of instrumentals.

Cut­ting Edge – Was there a Dee­Jay accom­pa­ny­ing you with the sound system ?

Legs The Giant – Yes ! Sad­ly he passed away. We used to call him Ted­dy. I did­n’t real­ly go into the sound. It was­n’t the sound I went into. I built the sound sys­tem and gave it to Ted­dy.

Cut­ting Edge – You have nev­er oper­at­ed the sound ?

Legs The Giant – No ! I made the sound sys­tem and put it out there for “ who make that ? ” And they say, “ Legs, tomor­row morn­ing I’m gonna see some­body ! ” You know ! [laugh]
That’s how I used to actu­al­ly make a lit­tle mon­ey off build­ing the sound. Most of the builders don’t real­ly mess with the actu­al sound.

Cut­ting Edge – Did you have a part­ner­ship with Bujum from Duke Alloy ? He seemed to ben­e­fit from your lat­est equip­ment developments. 

Legs The Giant – I was close to him. Some would say mali­cious­ly that I had a romance with his sis­ter and that was why Bujum​’s sound was so good. But that’s a lie ! He’s a friend and he’s always been there when I ask for help. What­ev­er I had to do in the house, I would just tell him. I said, “ Bujum, I’m gonna do so and so ! ” He answered me every time, “ Yeah man ! ” and he was there. It was not like some peo­ple that you nev­er see again because they are per­pet­u­al­ly held back by fam­i­ly com­mit­ments. The sound sys­tem that I built for him, I made it whole­heart­ed­ly. And Bujum always did these things in a self­less way like a real friend.

Cut­ting Edge – It seems that Carl (from Quak­er) used to sab­o­tage the box­es of Duke Alloy. Peo­ple push­ing a small nail in Alloy’s speak­er wire at the back of the box­es to short cir­cuit the cable.

Legs The Giant – Yeah ! The com­pe­ti­tion was tough and a lot of sly tricks used to go on back in the day. Pen­ny Lane ! [laugh]
I dis­cov­ered this for long time and I worked it out. A sim­ple nail in the wire could silence your sound. To rem­e­dy this sit­u­a­tion, instead of wiring all the speak­ers in series, I wired them in series / par­al­lel. So if you pin the wire, you bypassed only one speak­er and it does not affect the rest. So the rival could­n’t stop you ! They were tak­en aback when they saw that their ruse no longer worked ! [laugh]

Cut­ting Edge – I heard that you can hold live mains.

Legs The Giant – Yes, I hold live mains. But you know, for that you need a cer­tain type of shoe. If you wear leather bot­tom shoes, you will be killed ! You must have insu­lat­ing shoes with this kind of sponge sole. I used to test the elec­tric on the side besides hold­ing the wires.

Cut­ting Edge – True or false ? Dur­ing a dance with Sir Jes­sus and Mas­si­gan at Win­son Green, a sound­man says he was hid­ing on one side of the club because you used a stick to switch on your amp uncased with water drip­ping from the ceiling.

Legs The Giant – Me ? It’s a lie ! This is absolute­ly not true ! This was how­ev­er the case with anoth­er builder from Birm­ing­ham who is now deceased. To switch on his ampli­fiers, it was nec­es­sary to use a broom­stick.

There was a sound sys­tem I made in Eng­land in 1962. The own­er was named Tom. They also used to have a sound sys­tem in Jamaica called Tom The Great Sebas­t­ian. It was one of the ear­li­est sound sys­tem and he played main­ly for wed­dings. Jes­sus used to play for Tom, until I put them in their place.
One day, Tom was forced to go to Jamaica. He was sup­posed to play at a dance and he asked me to replace him. So I said, “ Sure, I don’t mind ! ”
So we went there to play, we strung up and and every­one was hav­ing a good time. And sud­den­ly Jes­sus came in ! And I heard, “ Boom, Boom, Boom ! ” He was mov­ing in the equip­ment. So I told him, “ Jes­sus, Tom asked me to play for him. If I had known you were com­ing, I could have played some­where else. What are you doing ? ”
He exclaimed, “ Tom just returned from Jamaica with a whole heap of new records, man ! ​”
I said, “ Alright, come in ! ​”
But Tom knew he was going to kill him­self because he knows the sound sys­tem I’ve got. Even though I was build­ing for oth­ers, my own sound sys­tem was above the rest. So they start­ed play­ing and I saw that the guy who played the sound for me was get­ting upset. So I said, “ Lloyd, what are you upset about ? ​”
He answered, “ Jes­sus should­n’t have been here ! ​”
I just said, “ It’s alright, there is no prob­lem with that. When it’s your time to play, we’re going to turn him off. That’s easy ! ​”
After Jes­sus came on, I said to Lloyd, “ Your time now ! ” And I went into the record box to pick up one record. I gave it to Lloyd who shout­ed, “ No, no, no, don’t play that ! ” I then insist­ed, “ Play that record, man ! ​”
When he put the record, the whole dance­hall went berserk ! The record was You’re Won­der­ing Now by Andy & Joey.

Tom who had just returned from Jamaica had nev­er heard of it ! He had brought back a box full of records but he did not know this one. When he was in Jamaica, a friend of mine sent me a car­ton of records. We used to learn trade at the same place in Jamaica and he knew I had a sound, and he used to send me some records. His name was Soris. At the time in Eng­land, the only way to get records was to have them sent from Jamaica. Soris knew exact­ly what I already had and what I need­ed. He sent me a box, I mean a box like that [Legs made a hand ges­ture indi­cat­ing large size], of records. It’s one of his records that allowed me to kill Tom. After that dance, Tom came to me and apol­o­gized. He said, “ I nev­er knew Jes­sus was going to do that. But I knew you were gonna fix his busi­ness. ​”
I answered, “ I did­n’t fix his busi­ness, I fixed your busi­ness too ! ” [laugh]
But those days were fun. We weren’t argu­ing or swear­ing at each oth­er. The sound sys­tem was some­thing different.

Cut­ting Edge – What do you think of the cur­rent sound sys­tems scene ?

Legs The Giant – Cur­rent sound sys­tems no longer look like sound sys­tems but are rather PA [Pub­lic Address] sys­tem. I try to explain it to a lot of peo­ple but they don’t under­stand. Peo­ple tell me it’s easy now to go to a store and get ampli­fiers. I tell them, “ Go ahead ! ” They often come back to me to repair their recent pur­chase. Because peo­ple can­not get what we design, a thought­ful equip­ment ded­i­cat­ed to this kind of music and to the sound system.

Here is a com­pre­hen­sive list of sound sys­tems who used equip­ment built by Legs The Giant :

• Count Fire (Birm­ing­ham),
• Dread­nought (Birm­ing­ham),
• Duke Alloy (Birm­ing­ham),
• Duke Neville (Birm­ing­ham),
• Gaffa David (Lon­don),
• Jun­gle Man (Birm­ing­ham),
• Lord David (Lon­don),
• Quak­er City (Birm­ing­ham),
• Rosko The Musi­cal Rock­et (Birm­ing­ham),
• V‑Rocket (Not­ting­ham),
  
  And many more …

Spe­cial thanks to Tony ​‘Eng­lish’ Welch and Ran­gan Momen