He was the co-founder, guitarist and co-lead vocalist of the rock band Mountain. West was named the 245th greatest guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone in 2023, which is a total crock of shit. He’s in my top ten alltime. This is why Rolling Stone is reviled in the music business. As if there are 245 guitar 🎸 players that can be mentioned in the same breath as Leslie West.
West was born in New York City on October 22, 1945, to Jewish parents. He grew up in Hackensack, New Jersey, and in East Meadow, Forest Hills, and Lawrence, New York. After his parents divorced, he changed his surname to West. His musical career began with the Vagrants, an R&B/blue-eyed soul-rock band influenced by the likes of the Rascals that was one of the few teenage garage rock acts to come out of the New York metropolitan area itself (as opposed to the Bohemian Greenwich Village scene of artists, poets, and affiliates of the Beat Generation, which produced bands like the Fugs and the Velvet Underground).
The Vagrants had two minor hits in the Eastern United States: 1966’s “I Can’t Make a Friend” and a cover of Otis Redding’s “Respect” the following year. Some of the Vagrants’ recordings were produced by Felix Pappalardi, who was also working with Cream on their album Disraeli Gears. In 1969, West and Pappalardi formed the pioneering hard rock act Mountain, which was also the title of West’s debut solo album.
Rolling Stone identified the band as a “louder version of Cream”. With Steve Knight on keyboards and original drummer N. D. Smart, the band appeared on the second day of the Woodstock Festival on Saturday, August 16, 1969, starting an 11-song set at 9 pm.
The band’s original incarnation saw West and Pappalardi sharing vocal duties and playing guitar and bass, respectively. New drummer Corky Laing joined the band shortly after Woodstock. They had success with “Mississippi Queen”, which reached No. 21 on the Billboard charts and No. 4 in Canada. It was followed by “Theme For an Imaginary Western”, written by Cream bassist Jack Bruce. Mountain is one of the bands considered to be forerunners of heavy metal.
After Pappalardi left Mountain to concentrate on production projects, West and Laing produced two studio albums and a live release with Jack Bruce under the name West, Bruce and Laing. West, along with keyboard player Al Kooper of Blood, Sweat & Tears, recorded with the Who during the March 1971 Who’s Next New York sessions.
Tracks from the sessions included a cover of Marvin Gaye’s “Baby Don’t You Do It,” and early versions of “Love Ain’t For Keepin'” and the Who’s signature track “Won’t Get Fooled Again”. Though the tracks were not originally included on the album (recording restarted in England a few months later without West or Kooper), they appear as bonus tracks on the 1995 and 2003 reissues of Who’s Next and on the 1998 reissue of Odds & Sods.
