Arzachel

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Arzachel

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Before Egg, Dave Stewart, Mont Campbell and Clive Brooks played a half a zillion low-paid gigs as a 4-piece with guitarist Steve Hillage. When Steve, seeking a brighter future, quit to go to university, the trio changed their name from Uriel to Egg and soldiered on against their all of their accountant's advice.

Several months later, after Egg had already landed a contract with fledgling Decca Records, they unexpectedly got an opportunity to record the original quartet. In one long afternoon in the studio, with no prepared material and under assumed names for legal reasons, Arzachel was born... and died the same night, like a mayfly. Nevertheless, with musicians of this calibre and familiarity with each other, they managed to pull off a minor classic in the late '60s/early psychedelia genre.

Unfortunately the record stiffed. It wasn't until decades later that anybody deciphered the true personnel (and the guilty confessed to their youthful indiscretions). So this pre-Khan lost Canterbury classic, which had been trading hands among cognoscenti for absurd prices, finally saw re-release with all of the confessions and recriminations printed inside a tiny CD booklet in a text size which guaranteed the musicians couldn't read it without their glasses.