Label: Legacy Records (US), CK 86420
Style: Hard Rock, Rhythm and Blues
Country: Long Island, New York, U.S.
Time: 42:24
Format: Flac Tracks 16/44,1 kHz
Size: 266 Mb
Leslie West's epiphany came the night when Cream played the Fillmore East. “We took some LSD," he says, "and the curtain opened and Eric was wearing all his buckskin: they looked great, man. They opened with Sunshine Of Your Love and I looked at my brother and said, ‘My God, we really need to practise.’ I was stunned by how great they sounded, man. The show didn’t end till 4am. It made me a lifelong Cream fan. I was like a groupie for Cream.”
Small world. West’s first band was The Vagrants, an R&B footnote that brought him into the orbit of Felix Pappalardi, producer of Eric Clapton and co’s 1967 masterpiece Disraeli Gears. “Could The Vagrants have been stars?” he wonders. “No. We had a great show, strobe lights, all that stuff. But we were a local group, and we just couldn’t record. Felix came in and tried to record us. He did two singles with us that didn’t really do anything.”
Pappalardi entered the frame again in the late 60s. “Somehow, I got in touch with him. I’d started this group Mountain. Went in the studio. Felix had two weeks before he had to go and produce Cream’s Goodbye, or maybe Jack Bruce’s Songs For A Tailor. But we didn’t have any original songs. I said, ‘Y’know, if we can’t do this album, I guess we may break up.’ And Felix said, ‘That might not be the worst thing in the world. If you put something together, give me a call.’ Well, I called him in three days, came back, went in the studio, and we did my first album, Mountain [1969].”
With Pappalardi joining as bassist and co-writer, Mountain planted their flag deep in the 70s blues-rock scene with classics such as Mississippi Queen and Nantucket Sleighride. A rueful West can only speculate how high they might have flown had Pappalardi’s wife not disrupted the partnership (and shot her husband dead in 1983).
“She stuck her two cents in, got in the middle of Felix and I, caused a lot of crap,” he recalls. “All of a sudden, we were going to shows in separate cars. Drugs entered into it. I guess we got as much good out of it as we could. I love the Nantucket Sleighride album [1971], but after that, we started to go downhill.”
(loudersound.com/reviews/mountain-nantucket-sleighride-album-of-the-week-club-review)
01. Don't Look Around (03:47)
02. Taunta (Sammy's Tune) (01:00)
03. Nantucket Sleighride (To Owen Coffin) (05:55)
04. You Can't Get Away! (03:28)
05. Tired Angels (To J.M.H.) (04:42)
06. The Animal Trainer And The Toad (03:29)
07. My Lady (04:35)
08. Travellin' In The Dark (To E.M.P.) (04:26)
09. The Great Train Robbery (05:50)
10. Travellin' In The Dark (To E.M.P.) (05:09)
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