Leslie West (born Leslie Weinstein, October 22, 1945) is an American rock guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter. He is best known as a founding member of the hard rock band Mountain. (More from Wikipedia)
In early 1969, guitarist Leslie West of the Vagrants started a band called Leslie West Mountain (with "mountain" being a reference to his then-large size); other bandmembers were Norman Landsberg (keyboards, bass) and Ken Janick (drums). Felix Pappalardi expressed interest in producing the band's work.
The album is called Mountain and was released in July 1969, just five months after Goodbye; Felix Pappalardi produced the album and also performed bass guitar with Leslie West, Norman Landsberg, and drummer N. D. Smart, formerly with the highly regarded Boston garage band the Remains (who are featured on the Nuggets album). The album is often confused as being by the band Mountain; but officially, it is the first solo album by Leslie West.
After Mountain, the solo album by Leslie West was released, the group then went on the road using the band name Mountain, bringing along Steve Knight on keyboards after Norman Landsberg and Ken Janick left to start the band Hammer. Their fourth concert as a working band was at the 1969 Woodstock festival; though they were not included on the first album or the concert film, their performances of "Blood of the Sun" (from the Leslie West solo album, Mountain) and "Theme for an Imaginary Western" (written by Jack Bruce and Pete Brown) were included on the double album Woodstock 2 that came out in 1971.
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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)
