John Henry

From This Might Be A Wiki

John Henry Studio album by They Might Be Giants
First released	September 13, 1994	Tracks	20	Previous album	Apollo 18
Label	Elektra/Asylum	Length	57:06	Next album	Factory Showroom

John Henry was They Might Be Giants' fifth studio album, which was released on Elektra.

[edit] Purchase

1 Purchase
2 Description
3 Track Listing
- 3.1 Australian limited Live NYC bonus EP
4 Trivia/Info
5 Image Gallery

Seller	Format	Price	Purchase!
Amazon	CD	~~$9.98~~ $9.98!
Amazon	MP3	$9.97
iTunes	AAC	$9.99
TMBG Merchandise Store	CD	$14.00

[edit] Description

[edit] Background

Backcover Artwork and information

CD caseholder artwork

Bottomside of the foldout booklet

topside of the foldout booklet

CD artwork of a skull

Feeling that John and John had taken the band as far as it could go with reel-to-reel tape recordings and drum machines, Susan Drew of the band's label Elektra persuaded them to recruit a live band for their stage shows. For their first live band, Brian Doherty joined them on drums, Kurt Hoffman on keyboard and Tony Maimone and Graham Maby on bass.

John Henry would be the band's first studio album recorded with this new backing band, and as a result, the sound was quite different from previous albums. Many of the tracks were more guitar-heavy, and the band also utilized live horns on several tracks, creating a harder-rocking feel and allowing them to better mold the moods of the songs.

Some longtime fans of the band became upset by the changes and even went so far as to stage boycotts of the band's live shows.

[edit] John Henry Demos

Like Factory Showroom, a bootlegged demo tape of eight tracks from the album's studio sessions got leaked. These demos existed in cassette quality until TMBG released Podcast 27A in 2007, which included high-fidelity versions of seven of the tracks.

[edit] Sales And Singles

Sales and performance of the album were somewhat of a paradox. Whereas John Henry peaked at #64 on the Billboard 200, and remains the band's highest placement on that chart ever, it only spent four weeks on the chart (the lowest at the time, since the Pink Album, which didn't chart at all).

Snail Shell had a successful run on the Billboard Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart, peaking at #19, and spending 8 weeks overall on the chart. In addition, AKA Driver was released as a promotional single, but didn't manage to chart.

[edit] Track Listing

[edit] Australian limited Live NYC bonus EP

[edit] Trivia/Info

From tmbg.com:

"John Henry is a legendary black railroad worker from the middle of the nineteenth century. He figures in a number of American folk songs, including one simply called "John Henry." The story describes a competition between John Henry, the strongest human, and a new machine built to smash rocks. They compete to break through a mountain. The machine breaks down in the tunnel, while John Henry comes out the other side, only to die from exhaustion. Since this was the first album where we worked with a live band instead of a drum machine it seemed an apt title."

Also from tmbg.com:

"What does the skull mean on "Back To Skull" and "John Henry"?

We generally prefer not to decide what things like that mean. The skull was chosen as an element on the cover art partly to offset the adorable cuteness of the kids. The effect of the whole thing seemed right, for reasons hard to put into words."

From the tmbg.com FAQ: "Who are the children in the "John Henry" photographs?

Half are friends' kids, and the other half are professional model kids we cast for the shoot.

Artwork and layout by graphic designer Mike Mills.
They Might Be Giants created a HyperCard stack to promote John Henry in 1994, complete with (mainly) midi-generated versions of all 20 tracks. You can see (and hear) a perfect reproduction of the original stack in Flash at BryceLand, here.