gncxx said:
One of the track titles mentions goblins, but Don could have simply been a Tolkien buff, there was a lot of that about at the time. Is that even him posing scarily on the cover? You would have thought he'd be recognised by someone even with his face painted silver. And who played on it? Did he do all the instruments himself or were Leather the band?
So many questions, which makes it so interesting, of course.
Actually, a thread's appeared on the BBC 6 Music site discussing this very topic, which makes for very interesting reading.
I won't copy and paste the whole thread, but you can read it here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mb6music/NF146 ... ad=8312336
In a nutshell though, the points are as follows:
Ever since people have been speculating about this, the prime candidate has been a guy called Robert John Godfrey, who played with Barcley James Harvest briefly and formed another prog outfit called The Enid, which is still going. The evidence is all circumstancial but the following points are usually cited:
1) The photo on the cover looks very like him, even taking face paint and manic expression into account (Just google some old pics. It's certainly more than a passing resemblance!)
2) It sounds like him. He released a solo album a couple of years later and some of the playing on it sounds pretty similar (Handily, someone's put it on Youtube. I've given it a listen, and yes, I see what they mean.)
3) Although he's never claimed to have been involved, in 40 years of speculation linking him to the record, he's never ever denied it either. Draw you own conclusions!
Furthermore, one of the posters on the thread met him and specifically asked him the question. He didn't answer but apparently gave him "a wry smile."
Make of all that what you will.
There have also been lots of other claims e.g. the woman was called Leather, it was music written for occult rituals etc. None of which seem to have any "facts" or even any evidence to back them up. All sounds like urban myth to me, but who knows.
Apart from the "sister" mentioned up the thread, there's a Myspace page in DBL's name, seemingly promoting a 2007 re-release which doesn't actually exist (I think we can write that off as unconnected.) Plus some guy also claims to be him on Facebook (although I don't think anyone's buying that either.)
All in all, there would seem to be two possibilities here. Either:
(a) The 'sister' is genuine, and this was just a one-off recording by a maverick musical outsider (and that David Tibet is telling the truth too!) or
(b) It's Robert John Godfrey under a pseudonym, and that he's keeping it a secret for fun or out of embarrassment (and that David Tibet's in on the joke!)
Take your pick. Do you think that CD will ever see the light of day?