Another blast from the musical past, this one starring the incredible Leslie West singing and playing lead guitar on his own original classic, which revolves around probably the tastiest rock guitar riff of all time.
I will forever be haunted by two (2) terrible regrets from my NYC years: 1) Never checking out Leslie West at any of the frequent small-club gigs he played in NYC aprés his illustrious career fronting Mountain, and 2) Likewise never troubling my sorry butt to go out and pay due and proper homage to pioneering guitar icon Les Paul at his own weekly NYC appearances at the Iridium, to which premises proud Les Paul owners from all over the world would tote their axes and form up in surprisingly orderly out-the-door-and-down-the-block queues to have Les personally sign the back of the body, the top, the pickguard, the back of the neck, the headstock, basically any surface roomy enough for him to write his name—no-charge autograph sessions on which Paul graciously spent long, wearing hours after wrapping up his set, making nary a murmur of complaint the whole while.
For further info and bare-knuckles analysis on how profoundly the Leo Fender/Les Paul competition reshaped our world, do yourself a HUGE favor and check out this tome: “The Birth of Loud: Leo Fender, Les Paul, and the Guitar-Pioneering Rivalry That Shaped Rock ‘n’ Roll.” I’ve had the ePub version on my phone ever since it first became available on Amazon Kindle, and have read it e-cover to e-cover way more than just once. If a well-written chronicle of the little-known, behind the scenes story of the guitars, the amplifiers, the brilliant men who created them, and how the fortuitously-timed confluence of those three factors transformed a musical genre derided in its infancy as just another teenybopper fad which would have no lasting significance into a cultural juggernaut whose powerful, pervasive influence gives every indication of being permanent is of even passing interest to you, you won’t go wrong by giving “The Birth of Loud” a read your own self, I assure you.
I offer no excuses for my unforgivable lassitude re: those aforementioned two regrets. Another fascinating chapter from the Mountain man’s eventful biography:
The story of Leslie West’s jam session with Jimi Hendrix
The guitarist Leslie West was a fundamental part of Mountain‘s sound, one of the most influential bands from the late 60s and early 70s. With famous songs like “Mississippi Queen” and “Never In My Life” they were the American response to the incredible Hard Rock movement that was happening in the United Kingdom.During his career the guitar player had the chance to meet many incredible musicians, including Jimi Hendrix, who died in 1970 at the age of 27.
West recalled this incredible experience in an interview with Classic Rock, after releasing his final album “Soundcheck” in 2015. “Jimi came into this nightclub in New York at, like, one in the morning. I happened to be there to see Steve Miller, who had finished and left. I’d already met Jimi in the studio at the Record Plant – we were doing Climbing! and he was doing Band Of Gypsys – so we knew each other. He came over to me and said, ‘Wanna jam, man?’ Just like that. We didn’t have any equipment there, but we had a loft about 13 blocks away, in a real deserted part of Manhattan, 36th Street, 11th Avenue.”
“So Jimi said, ‘Well, let’s get in my limo.’ My road manager lived in the loft, so we woke him up at two in the morning. He came down and opened the door and who’s standing there but Jimi Hendrix. He nearly had a heart attack. We went upstairs and we jammed, Jimi was playing bass and I was playing guitar. We just seemed to hit it off. But I think Jimi could have played with anybody. He just loved playing, and he was so cool as a guy. That’s my favourite memory of him.”
West covered a few Hendrix tracks during his career, including “Red House”. Mountain was formed in Long Island, New York back in 1969 by Leslie West, Felix Pappalardi, Steve Knight and N. D. Smart.
The article includes a video embed of said “Red House” cover—always one of my absolute favorite Hendrix tunes, which if I remember right may have been a cover its own self, an old blues chestnut copped by Hendrix and reimagined as only James Marshall Hendrix could bring off. Although this post says I’m all wet on that one.
Update! Oh, what the heck was I thinking, not going ahead and including this one also after mentioning it in such glowing terms?
This is the version I grew up listening to, off the album I had when I was but a wee bairn. There are lots of excellent live versions out there too, but I still like this rendition most. For one thing, having played and replayed the song myself so danged many times, on record and guitar both, hearing Jimi stray from the exact notes I’m accustomed to hearing him play during the opening solo is the aural equivalent of a Sykes-Fairbairn knife through the eardrum at this point.
Which, at least in all the Yew Toob vids of live “Red House” performances I’ve seen to date, the man never played that bit the same way twice; it’s different each and every time.
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I don’t think Jimi played anything the same way twice.
Leslie West was more a Cream/Clapton afficionado and why not. The aforementioned Pappalardi who was in Mountain also produced Cream.