Corky Laing (born Laurence Gordon Laing; January 26, 1948) is a Canadian rock drummer, best known as a longtime member of pioneering American hard rock band Mountain. (More from Wikipedia)
Shortly after Woodstock, Canadian Corky Laing replaced N. D. Smart on drums, and this line-up of Mountain produced one of my favorite hard rock albums of all time, Climbing!. The album featured the hit song “Mississippi Queen” and also “Theme for an Imaginary Western”, but the whole album cooks. Felix Pappalardi’s wife Gail Collins Pappalardi co-wrote six songs on the album and also contributed artwork for the cover on their first three albums. The album also includes a reflection on Woodstock, called “For Yasgur’s Farm” (Max Yasgur owned the farm where the festival took place).
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Jack Bruce has rarely performed with a band since Cream; but after Mountain broke up in 1969 when Felix Pappalardi left the group, he hooked up with two of the members of the group, Leslie West and Corky Laing and formed a power trio called West, Bruce and Laing. The group released two studio albums, Why Dontcha and Whatever Turns You On; no hits emerged from the albums, and by the time their live album, Live ’n’ Kickin’ came out in 1974, the group had already broken up.
Leslie West and Felix Pappalardi organized a new line-up of Mountain in mid-1973; and, as before, the band had a frenetic existence, releasing in a six-month period the double live album Twin Peaks and a studio album called Avalanche that featured Corky Laing on drums. After playing a final gig at the Forum in L.A. in December 1974, Mountain broke up again.
(May 2014)
