Felix Pappalardi (December 30, 1939 – April 17, 1983) was an American music producer, songwriter, vocalist, and bass guitarist. As a producer, Pappalardi is perhaps best known for his work with British psychedelic blues-rock power trio Cream, beginning with their second album, Disraeli Gears. Pappalardi has been referred to in various interviews with the members of Cream as “the fourth member of the band”. He and his wife, Gail, wrote the Cream hit “Strange Brew” with Eric Clapton. As a musician, Pappalardi is widely recognized as a bassist, vocalist, and founding member of the American hard rock band/heavy metal forerunner Mountain. (More from Wikipedia)
Disraeli Gears marked the arrival of the man who became essentially a fourth bandmember in Cream, Felix Pappalardi. He was the record producer on this album and the next two, and Pappalardi plays many different instruments (often uncredited), particularly on Wheels of Fire. With his wife Gail Collins Pappalardi, Felix Pappalardi also wrote two songs on this album, “Strange Brew” and “World of Pain”.
Felix Pappalardi, who produced Cream’s second through fourth albums and became almost a fourth member of the band, is actually from New York. A classically trained musician, Pappalardi had previously worked with a Long Island garage rock band called the Vagrants and had them signed to Atco Records. Their third single in 1967, “Respect” became a hit on the East Coast, until Aretha Franklin released her version of the song, and that was the end of that.
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.
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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)
