Mountain

A Long Island hard rock band formed in 1969 by Leslie West and Felix Pappalardi, who played Woodstock and whose "Mississippi Queen" (1970) is built on a three-chord riff and a cowbell.

Formation and Woodstock

Leslie West, born Leslie Abel Weinstein in Forest Hills, Queens, on October 22, 1945, had been in The Vagrants, and in early 1969 formed Leslie West Mountain with Norman Landsberg and Ken Janick. Felix Pappalardi, who had produced The Vagrants and Cream's Disraeli Gears (1967) and co-wrote "Strange Brew", played bass on West's solo album Mountain (1969), and then joined the band; West has said the group nearly failed before Pappalardi agreed to play. Steve Knight came in on keyboards. They played Woodstock on August 16, 1969, on the second day, from 9 to 10 pm, with N. D. Smart on drums, only their third concert as a working band. They were paid $5,000 and were not in the film or on the first album.

Corky Laing, born Laurence Gordon Laing in Montreal in 1948, replaced Smart after leaving Energy. Climbing! came out on March 7, 1970 on Windfall, produced by Pappalardi at the Record Plant in New York; it reached 17 on the Billboard 200 and went gold on August 28, 1970. Nantucket Sleighride (January 1971) reached 16, and Flowers of Evil (November 1971) had one studio side and one live side recorded at the Fillmore East. The band disbanded in February 1972 after a UK tour, with Mountain Live: The Road Goes Ever On out in April. West and Laing then formed West, Bruce and Laing with Jack Bruce.

Reunions

West and Pappalardi reformed Mountain in August 1973 with Allan Schwartzberg and Bob Mann, touring Japan, and made the double live Twin Peaks (February 1974) and Avalanche (July 1974); their last show of that period was at the Felt Forum in New York on December 31, 1974. Pappalardi died on April 17, 1983, aged 43. West and Laing reunited in 1981, and Go for Your Life (March 1985), dedicated to Pappalardi, led to the Knebworth show on June 22, 1985. A 1992 to 1998 reunion made Man's World (1996), and Mystic Fire (2002) followed, with Masters of War (2007), twelve Bob Dylan songs with Ozzy Osbourne as guest.

Gail Collins Pappalardi designed many of the album covers and wrote many of the lyrics. West and Laing wrote a memoir, Nantucket Sleighride and Other Mountain On-the-Road Stories (2003). Corky Laing's Mountain has toured since 2015. Leslie West died in December 2020, aged 75; sources give December 22 or 23. He ranked 245 on Rolling Stone's 2023 list of guitarists, and the Long Island Music Hall of Fame inducted Mountain in 2006. Rolling Stone called them a louder version of Cream, and Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhoads and Johnny Ramone are among those who have cited them. The 24-second drum intro of "Long Red", from the Woodstock set on The Road Goes Ever On, has been sampled over 700 times, from Eric B. and Rakim's "Eric B. Is President" (1986) to J Dilla's "Stepson of the Clapper" (2006).