weren’t just a loud hard rock band; there were
so many subtle textures in the music. To be
able to go from “Never In My Life,” to
“Nantucket Sleighride,” was extraordinary.
The juxtaposition between you and Felix
Pappalardi was amazing. It must be a good
feeling to look back on the Mountain catalog
and hear what legendary music that band
made.
LW: “Nantucket Sleighride?” I hated that
song when we first recorded it (laughs). It
was so complicated with the chords and I had
to put a big heavy riff in the middle of it. I was
used to playing three and four chord blues
at one or two sessions, I would get redundant,
I would just be repeating myself. This way,
when I approached each song, it was fresh.
IE: Do you just go in the studio with song
ideas and let the session build the song, or are
you a musician that has everything worked
out before going to make the record?
LW: It’s a little of both. I never work the whole
idea out in my head. At home, I will only play
an acoustic guitar, but when I go in the studio
or on the road, I play electric, - my special
girl- I call her. I know if I played that guitar all
the time, I wouldn’t come up with as good an
12•2015
progressions; you did not have to do much
thinking with that. Now, it is one of my
favorite songs to play in the show. It is much
more than a musical piece. Some of the sections in there are very orchestral; they are
epic. Felix was very talented. I am not sure he
knew what he was doing. He was very talented as a musician and arranger. He had done
arrangements for orchestras, so we were a
good combination. With me, it was like “
What the fuck am I doing??” and with him, it
was like: “We will just play and it will get figured out…” That is how that song came to
be.
IE: Getting back to the new CD, Soundcheck,
did having the break of several weeks
between songs make them better, or was it
just an easier way for you to make the
record?
LW: Both. I learned a long time ago if I go in
the studio and do all the solos on all the songs
idea. So, I usually work out a pretty good idea
of the song, and the format on an acoustic and
then develop it from there on an electric.
One of the songs on the album, “Left By
The Roadside To Die,” was first worked out
on an acoustic, but then my keyboard player
played it on a synth, and it gave me the idea
have a synth on the song. It came as a result of
when I lost my leg a couple of years ago. I
was feeling like that. Just leave me by the
roadside and leave. After I started writing the
song I realized it would be a pretty good
song, so I developed it further.
IE: So, would you say that “Left By The
Roadside To Die,” was your lament of desperation and depression? Was it autobiographical?
LW: I don’t know about that. Just the title,
maybe. My wife, Jenni, wrote some really great
words for that song. I am usually pretty good
at coming up with titles, but not so much with
Mountain circa 1970, West (center,top)
words. I was waking up in the morning and
looking at my iPAD, and she would send me
all these lyrics. And I was wondering what
this was all about, and I realized she was writing them to see if there was anything she
could come up with that I could use. It was an
interesting way of writing songs. In the past, I
only cared about playing the guitar, but now,
I have a whole new appreciation of the lyrics.
IE: Your first album out of The Vagrants was
simply called Leslie West Mountain, and it
was the beginning of the collaboration with
Felix that eventually became the band,
Mountain. In retrospect, it has to be viewed
as one of your best works ever. It had so
many powerful songs on it.
LW: Oh yeah. It had great songs and everything, but the sound of it was not too good. It
was a pretty crappy recording because we
had to cut it in a studio that was really used to
record radio commercials. I still do a lot of
those songs in the show. I play “Dreams of
Milk & Honey,” and “Long Red.” “Long Red”
is one of the most sampled songs in rock. Jay
Z sampled it on his hit, “99 Problems,” and
Kanye West has sampled it. If you go to the
website, WhosSampled.com if you put in
Mountain or Le