Leslie West, the towering guitarist who created the tough-rock milestone “Mississippi Queen” with his band Mountain, died Wednesday early morning. West’s brother, Larry West Weinstein, confirmed the musician’s demise to Rolling Stone. He was 75. The trigger of death was cardiac arrest. On Monday, West was rushed to a medical center right after suffering cardiac arrest at his home in close proximity to Daytona, Florida, where by he in no way regained consciousness.
Produced in 1970 on Mountain’s debut album, Climbing!, “Mississippi Queen” was two and a 50 percent minutes of boisterous bliss crafted all over West’s burly yowl and guitar blasts and drummer Corky Laing’s entirely unironic cowbell. One particular of individuals never ever-say-die songs of the basic-rock era, “Mississippi Queen” has been highlighted in innumerable soundtracks, Tv set shows (The Individuals, The Simpsons) and in Guitar Hero III. In an interview with Guitar Player earlier this calendar year, West stated the tune “has just anything you want to make it a winner. You have acquired the cowbell, the riff is pretty damn good, and it sounds extraordinary. It feels like it wants to bounce out of your automobile radio. To me, it seems like a big, thick milkshake. It is prosperous and chocolatey. Who doesn’t appreciate that?”
A present-day of Eric Clapton, Jimmy Web site, and Jimi Hendrix, West was highly regarded for his flexible playing (from fingerpicking to metallic electric power chords) and was revered by a new generation of guitar players who adopted. In 2011, Eddie Van Halen explained to Rolling Stone that West and Deep Purple’s Ritchie Blackmore were being amongst his major influences: “Leslie West has this remarkable tone in Mountain,” Van Halen claimed.
Born Leslie Weinstein on Oct 22nd, 1945, West grew up in the New York area — Manhattan, Very long Island, and Forest Hills, Queens — and was a founding member of the Vagrants, a blue-eyed soul garage band of the mid-Sixties. The group (which also bundled his brother Larry on bass) scored two insignificant hits — “I Cannot Make a Friend” and a address of Otis Redding’s “Respect” (launched just ahead of Aretha Franklin’s titanic edition) — in advance of West still left the band. A turning point, he at the time explained, was looking at Product at the Village Theatre (later on the Fillmore East) in 1967. “My brother claimed to me, ‘Let’s get some acid prior to we go,’ ” West explained to Blues Rock Evaluate in 2015. “So we took LSD and all of a unexpected the curtain opens up and I hear them playing ‘Sunshine of Your Love’ and I see Eric Clapton and his buckskin jacket. I mentioned, ‘Oh my God, we definitely suck.’ Immediately after that, I started off actually working towards and practicing.”
With the aid of Product producer and bass player Felix Pappalardi, who fulfilled West when he was developing the Vagrants, West created a solo album, Mountain. Mountain also became the name of the band the two adult men shaped — “because I was so unwanted fat!” West later on joked.
West was regarded for electrical-shock white blues riffing, but could also engage in additional fluid melodic strains (as heard in Mountain’s “Nantucket Sleighride” and his solo in their “Theme for an Imaginary Western”). “The issue that most amazed me when I started was how, with Clapton, you could id his seem like a signature,” West told the L.A. Situations in 1990. “I desired to have a audio you could determine like that. I was under no circumstances a speed player. I tried using to capitalize on my vibrato. I hope I’m regarded as a melodic guitar participant, not a person up there likely ‘weinie, weinie,’ all night time extensive.”
When Product disbanded in 1968, a new technology of even more muscular guitar-based bands were being completely ready to pick up where by they left off. Mountain loomed particularly big, and not basically because of to West’s cumbersome dimension and head of frizzy hair. Examining an early Mountain exhibit, a single critic explained him as a “300-pounder dressed in blue velvet, suede, and snakeskin.”
The original incarnation of Mountain scored a high-profile appearance at the Woodstock pageant — on the next day, concerning Canned Warmth and the Grateful Lifeless. “I think I had the most amplifiers of any individual there,” West advised Rolling Stone in 1989. “It was paralyzing because that phase, that placing, was some kind of purely natural amphitheater. The audio was so loud and stunning that I got scared. But after I started out actively playing, I just saved going mainly because I was frightened to halt.” West also contributed some unreleased elements to the Who’s Who’s Next.
Even though Mountain garnered a massive following, the team broke up in 1972. Using his Product roots to a new degree, West shaped a Product-design and style electric power trio with Mountain drummer Corky Laing and Cream’s Jack Bruce. The team launched 3 albums and bought out New York’s Carnegie Hall, but in 1974, West reformed Mountain for two far more records.
The following 12 months, West formally went on his individual with his album The Excellent Fatsby, a musically diversified album that showcased softer sides of his style and also, in its title, poked enjoyable at his body weight difficulties. The album highlighted “High Roller,” co-published by West with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards Jagger also performed guitar on the track. The album unsuccessful to elevate West into a star solo act, and about the following couple many years, he would alternate amongst solo albums and touring and recording with distinct versions of Mountain.
West’s wellbeing experienced been an difficulty for numerous yrs. In the mid-Seventies, he moved to Milwaukee to kick a heroin behavior. In a 1990 job interview, he stated it had been 10 several years considering the fact that he had “stopped fooling with narcotics.” In the mid-Eighties, he was identified with diabetic issues — his reduce suitable leg was amputated because of to problems from the illness — and promptly dropped 85 pounds, dropping to 200. But his pounds fluctuated more than the many years.
In the decades that followed, West ongoing doing work: He was a frequent on Howard Stern’s radio clearly show, recorded solo information, and took a handful of stabs at acting, such as in 1986’s The Cash Pit. Mountain continued on and off with various lineups, and the band released an album of Bob Dylan handles, Masters of War, in 2007 Ozzy Osbourne sang direct on the title remake. Attesting to West’s stature, his 2011 album, The Strange Suspects, bundled contributions from Slash, Billy Gibbons, and Zakk Wylde, and West’s previous album, Soundcheck, highlighted Peter Frampton.
Other than “Mississippi Queen,” “Long Purple,” a slice of psychedelic blues from Mountain, continues to be just one of West’s lasting legacies. The song has been sampled by a lot of rap functions, like De La Soul, the Recreation, ASAP Rocky, and, most notably, Kanye West in “The Glory” and Jay-Z in “99 Challenges.” ”There was anything about that music that appealed to rappers,” the guitarist explained to Blues Blast magazine in 2015. “I’ve acquired 6 unique platinum albums on my wall from all these distinct guys sampling my things. When I wrote that tune in 1969, there was no hip-hop. It just so transpires that tune has a hip-hop defeat.” West’s legacy extends perfectly over and above hip-hop, while numerous bands have covered his materials, most recently Dave Grohl and Greg Kurstin remaking “Mississippi Queen” before this month for their “Hanukkah Sessions.”
West, who experienced moved to Florida last thirty day period, is survived by his spouse Jenni Maurer the few married onstage at a Woodstock 40th anniversary concert in 2009. Of his individual mixture of blues and metal, West told The Early morning Connect with in 2000, “It’s like remaining a chef. You could use the same ingredients as every person else, but it’s how you set them together. You end up with your personal style.”
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