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Leslie West, the imposing guitarist who created the hard rock milestone “Mississippi Queen” with his band Mountain, died Wednesday morning. West’s brother Larry West Weinstein confirmed the musician’s death to Rolling stone. He was 75 years old. The cause of death was cardiac arrest. West was rushed to hospital on Monday after suffering cardiac arrest at his home near Daytona, where he never regained consciousness.
Released in 1970 on Mountain’s debut album, Climbing!, “Mississippi Queen” was two and a half minutes of loud bliss built around West’s beefy howl and drummer Corky Laing’s completely unironic guitar and cowbell blasts. “Mississippi Queen,” one of those never-say-die songs from the classic rock era, has been featured in countless soundtracks and TV shows (Americans, The simpsons) and in Guitar Hero III. In an interview with Guitarist earlier this year, West said the song “has everything you need to make it a winner. You have the doorbell, the riff is really good and it sounds amazing. It looks like he wants to jump out of your car stereo. To me it looks like a big thick milkshake. It’s rich and chocolatey. Who doesn’t like it?
A contemporary of Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix, West was respected for his versatile playing (from fingerpicking to metallic power chords) and was revered by a new generation of guitarists who followed. In 2011, Eddie Van Halen declared Rolling stone that West’s Ritchie Blackmore and Deep Purple were among his biggest influences: “Leslie West has this amazing tone in the mountains,” Van Halen said.
Born Leslie Weinstein on October 22, 1945, West grew up in the New York area – Manhattan, Long Island, and Forest Hills, Queens – and was a founding member of the Vagrants, a blue-eyed garage soul group of the mid-sixties. The band (which also included his brother Larry on bass) scored two minor hits, “I Can’t Make a Friend” and a cover of Otis Redding’s “Respect” (released just before Aretha Franklin’s titanic version. ), before West leaves the group. A turning point, he once said, was seeing Cream at the Village Theater (later the Fillmore East) in 1967. “My brother said to me, ‘Let’s have some acid before we go.’ West told Blues Rock Review in 2015. “So we took LSD and all of a sudden the curtain opens and I hear them playing ‘Sunshine of Your Love’ and I see Eric Clapton and his skin jacket. suede. I said, ‘Oh my God, we’re really bad.’ After that, I really started to practice and practice.
With the help of Cream producer and bassist Felix Pappalardi, who met West while he was producing The Vagrants, West released a solo album, Mountain. Mountain also became the name of the group the two men formed – “because I was so fat!” West later joked.
West was known for his electric shock white blues riffs, but could also play smoother melodic lines (as heard in Mountain’s “Nantucket Sleighride” and his solo in “Theme from an Imaginary Western”). “What impressed me the most when I started was how, with Clapton, you could identify his sound as a signature,” West told LA Times in 1990. “I wanted to have a sound that could be identified like that. I have never been a speed player. I tried to capitalize on my vibrato. Hope I’m considered a melodic guitarist, not someone up there who goes “weinie, weinie” all night. “
When Cream disbanded in 1968, a new generation of even more muscular guitar groups were ready to pick up where they left off. The mountain was particularly tall, and not just because of West’s bulky stature and frizzy hair. Reviewing one of the first mountain shows, one reviewer described him as a “300 pounds clad in blue velvet, suede, and snakeskin.”
The original incarnation of Mountain made a high profile appearance at the Woodstock Festival – Day Two, between Canned Heat and the Grateful Dead. “I think I had the most amplifiers of anyone out there,” West said. Rolling stone in 1989. “It was paralyzing because this scene, this setting, was a kind of natural amphitheater. The sound was so loud and shocking that I got scared. But once I started playing I kept going because I was afraid to stop. West has also contributed unreleased parts to Who’s Who’s next.
Although Mountain attracted a large following, the band broke up in 1972. Taking their Cream roots to a new level, West formed a Cream-style power trio with mountain drummer Corky Laing and Jack Bruce of Cream. The group released three albums and sold Carnegie Hall in New York City, but in 1974 West reformed Mountain for two more records.
The following year, West officially left alone with his album. The Great Fatsby, a musically varied album that featured softer sides to its style and also, in its title, made fun of its weight issues. The album featured “High Roller,” co-written by West with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards; Jagger also played guitar on the track. The album failed to elevate West into a star solo act, and over the next several decades he would alternate between solo albums and tours and recordings with different versions of Mountain.
West’s health had been a problem for many years. In the mid-1970s, he moved to Milwaukee to get rid of a heroin habit. In an interview in 1990, he said it had been 10 years since he had “stopped fooling with drugs”. In the mid-eighties, he was diagnosed with diabetes – his lower right leg was amputated due to complications from the disease – and quickly lost 85 pounds, dropping to 200. But his weight fluctuated over the years. years.
In the years that followed, West continued to work: he was a regular on Howard Stern’s radio show, recorded solo records, and took a few stab wounds, including in 1986. The Money Pit. Mountain continued with different alignments and the band released a Bob Dylan cover album, Masters of war, in 2007; Ozzy Osbourne sang the lead role in the remake of the title. Evidencing West’s stature, his 2011 album Unusual suspects included contributions from Slash, Billy Gibbons and Zakk Wylde, and West’s latest album, Sound check, introduced Peter Frampton.
Other than “Mississippi Queen”, “Long Red”, a slice of psychedelic blues from her album Mountain, remains one of West’s lasting legacies. The song has been sampled by numerous rap groups including De La Soul, the Game, ASAP Rocky and most notably Kanye West in “The Glory” and Jay-Z in “99 Problems”. “There was something about that song that rappers liked,” the guitarist told Blues Blast magazine in 2015. “I have six different platinum albums on my wall of all these different guys sampling my stuff. When I wrote this song in 1969, there was no hip-hop. This song just happens to have a hip-hop beat. West’s legacy extends far beyond hip-hop, however; many bands have covered his material, most recently Dave Grohl and Greg Kurstin remaking “Mississippi Queen” earlier this month for their “Hanukkah Sessions”.
West, who had moved to Florida last month, is survived by his wife Jenni Maurer; the couple married onstage at a Woodstock 40th anniversary concert in 2009. Of his own mix of blues and metal, West told The Morning Call in 2000, “It’s like being a conductor. You can use the same ingredients as everyone else, but that’s how you put them together. You end up with your own style. “
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