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There have been times when I did, but not this time. We were recording at The Record Plant in NYC and we had just finished Mountain Climbing! I thought, "well this sounds pretty good," and I was proud of it.
To go back first, before I finish telling what I was proud of, back when my mom took me for guitar lessons in Hempstead, NY, and I ripped the two fat strings off the guitar. The teacher said to my mom, "What is he doing? He has to learn to play a six-string guitar." I had been playing a ukulele. It had four strings so I did not know what to do with these two strings; I was a lazy f*cking guy even in those days. The teacher told my mom to take me home! She was mortified. So, we left and I thought I could now continue to play the uke and be a young "Arthur Godfrey." Uh, I was 8 years old!
She then said, "I am going to enter you in a contest on the radio and you will sing 'Jailhouse Rock.'" She must have been on narcotics to think I could win, but I figured what the hell. I did not have to go to school and that was enough for me. Wrong, the show was on Saturday, and there was no school. My mom said, "You will definitely win this if you practice." Well mom was always right, right? Wrong. I lost to a freakin' 7-year-old tap dancer in a cute dress and all you could hear on the radio was this little girl clicking away! I said, "Mom should I have worn a cute dress? I thought you said I would win?" She said it must have been fixed. Oh well, more practice.
So I kept playing and playing and my brother Larry and I started a band call The Vagrants. We were sucky in the beginning but kept getting better. Then came time to record. We could not get it good enough until we met Felix Pappalardi. We were on Atco records and they sent him to listen to us and he was going to produce a few singles. It was great - he knew his shit and we did not. So we learned a great deal. At least I thought I did.
Nothing really happened with us and him until one day I hear an album called Disraeli Gears by a group called Cream. I turn it over and see it was produced by Felix Pappalardi. Was I shocked! I said to my brother, "How come we don't sound like
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Cream?" He said, "because we suck that's why." So we went to the Village Theater, which became the Fillmore East. When the curtain opened, my jaw dropped and I now know what my brother was talking about. I really started to practice. And practice.
Anyway, getting back to the Mountain Climbing! album, Felix had just finished mixing it and Jimi Hendrix was in the other studio with the Band Of Gypsies recording. Felix told me to go in there and ask Hendrix if he would like to hear our album. Felix must have known him and I was scared beyond belief. But being from Queens, NY, I went in and asked Mr. Hendrix if he would come in and see Felix. He said "sure" and in he came. Felix started playing Climbing!, which led off with "Never In My Life" and Jimi really, really flipped out. He told me he loved the riff I came up with because it sounded like a horn line. Well I was now in all my glory. Now I had something that would not embarrass me. I got to play with Jimi at a club in NYC one night real late after Steve Miller finished doing his set and we jammed for an hour. He played the bass. Holy shit! Now I felt I was on my way! My mother would finally be proud.
Leslie West November, 2002
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L
eslie West and I met at Tiana Beach Club in Westhampton, Long Island, in the summer of 1963. The Vagrants (his band) were fired {God knows why. Something about not wearing uniform clothes on stage) and Bartholomew + 3 (my band) was hired. We wore those very precious Robin Hood outfits so at least we looked like a band. Leslie would sit with me and describe in detail how he planned on getting out of the draft. I was totally enchanted, being Canadian. I knew nothing about a draft. I had always thought it was a delightful stream of fresh air or an unwanted breeze.
I noticed Leslie was really impressed that Bartholomew +3 had a single out. It was called "When I Fall In Love" on the best label in the world, Atlantic Records. The icing on the cake was that it was produced by Felix Pappalardi. Felix would later go on to produce a couple of Vagrants singles for Atco, a brother label to Atlantic. I managed to get a hold of those singles and wore them out during the long Montreal winters. The song titles got me dreaming, "A Sunny Summer Rain" and "Beside " The Sea."
Since down deep in my soul I am really a beach bum, I used to try and book my band near the Atlantic shores, anywhere south of the border.
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Fast-forward to spring of 1969, my new band, Energy, is being produced by Gail Collins because Felix was busy with two obscure trios, Cream and my old draft buddy, Leslie West. The name of the album was Mountain.
Fast-forward again to summer of '69 and Energy got fired from our Nantucket Island summer gig and we withdrew to the Windfall Management loft in New York for some last-minute bookings Qn First Avenue on the East Side.
Since Energy was managed by Windfall (Felix's company) and we were produced by Gail Collins (Felix's wife), we were all crossing paths on 81st Street where we had regular pilgrimages to try and cajole a few bucks out of Bud Prager, Felix's partner.
At this same time, it was more than the Summer of Love. This was the summer of Leslie West/Mountain - can you imagine?
Felix decided to make a band with Leslie and they had played a few dates in L.A. and then Woodstock with Norman Smart, who at the time was just not working out for Leslie or Felix. I happened to sniff this out while backstage at Ungaro's (NY) where Leslie West/Mountain had just performed.
I knew something was up when Felix asked me to go to Manny's and help pick out a new drumset for Norman. I gotta tell you, I was on the job like white on rice - first thing next morning. After a whirlwind drum-run at Manny's Music Store, I hightailed it up to Felix's penthouse and on the way to the den in the back of the apartment, I found Leslie with a big-shit-eater grin on his face. That was it! I knew it when Leslie said, "Felix is waiting for you in the den." The rush kicked in and didn't stop for years to come.
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I loved Leslie's guitar work (from the Vagrants), but I really, really loved Leslie's voice. Then there was Felix. He was the conductor. He was the tyrant. He was amazing in those days. I've never seen focus like that in my life. He would reside at the helm and rehearse the band ten hours a day, for weeks at a time - full throttle. He wanted the very best band in the world and Leslie and myself were right there with him in his dreams.
We started Mountain Climbing!, the band's first record album in the fall of 1969, between rehearsals and gigs. Coming from a fairly woosie-sounding band (Energy), I had to build myself up like an athlete to play at the intensity and that volume. However, it was Leslie who recognized my potential writing ability and we began to play and write without Felix and Steve. Mountain performed "For Yasgur's Farm" (originally titled "Who Am I"), which was supposed to be on the first Energy album. However, Felix took it for his own and changed the name to "For Yasgur's Farm." If you listen carefully to the words, you will no doubt see there was a universal message induced by my very first LSD trip in Montreal.
I was personally very proud of that lyric because it gave me some credibility with Leslie to go on and write the lyrics to "Mississippi Queen" and co-write "Never In My Life."
"MISSISSIPPI QUEEN"
While Energy (my band in 1969) was in the middle of playing a set at a beach house on Nantucket Island, the lights went out on the entire island as a result of the entire island pushing their air conditioners to the max during a very intense heat wave that night.
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During the blackout, I found myself playing by myself watching my best friend Roy Bailey (RIP) seduce this drop-dead gorgeous girlfriend from ihe South. She was wearing a see-through beige tlowered skintight dress. I was not only turned on by her seductive movements on the dance floor, but also swallowed a few extra soul pills. I just broke out in this rap-style drum riff with the cowbell leading the dance tempo, followed by the big nuclear warhead back-beat. And I was screaming at the top of my lungs, "Mississippi Queen. Do ya know what I mean?"
I was simply trying to get her attention in the dark. However, it was too late. Roy had moved in. . .into her dress. . .
Since a friend had been recording our set, I found myself working in the lyric (after we were fired from Nantucket 30 Acres Club) in the Windfall Management loft. The other two guys in Energy didn't think it was worth helping me write and finish the lyric so I pushed on, finished it and put it away. I felt committed to the lyrics because it was percussion and every word kept dancing, even though it was just drums and a voice "rapping."
Fast-forward to Les's apartment on Park Avenue, Leslie tells me Felix wants us to come up with another rocker for Climbing! and Leslie himself has this Southern blues lick and needs some lyrics.
I immediately pulled out "The Queen" and Leslie put it right behind the lick. We both broke down laughing at how easy that came together writing-wise. It turned out to be a different story in the studio where Felix made us play it over and over again (14-15 times). Finally exhausted in an effort to keep a steady tempo, I counted it
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in the cowbell. Felix loved the cowbell and left it on its own to start the song.
"NEVER IN MY LIFE"
After ten hours a day of rugged balls-to-the-wall rehearsal, Felix would pack up and head off back to his penthouse and Leslie and I would hang. In our spare time (only a few minutes a day), Les and I would jam. He came up with the 16-bar snakey-time lick, a huge downbeat followed by open chords. I immediately thought to myself, "Okay, how can I make that thing rock and tumble like a train on a track (without rushing it)." Leslie hates to rush anything. So I countered the back-beat with a Latin cowbell and played the feel from the back-end instead of the typical forward four-four. Since I still had my old kit from the Energy clays. I was working with Latin dance equipment.
We hammered away between lick and chorus with a blues resolve and we had a cookin' track. Leslie belted out "Never In My Life" on the big, open chord downbeat and screamed out "Corky, finish up the lyrics and make it romantic... I'm in love."
"Never In My Life" was one of the best tracks on Mountain Climbing! and I still believe we rushed it. We played and recorded it too fast. On stage, we slow it down and it's got more balls.
Corky Laing November, 2002
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What are you going to listen to next?
For a complete listing of titles available from Legacy Recordings, please visit us at: legacyrecordings.com columbiarecords.com sonymusic.com
Other titles available by Mountain
Nantucket Sleighride
Twin Peaks
Flowers Of Evil
Over The Top
The Best Of Mountain
Super Hits
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Chief Engineer: Bob d'Orleans
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Asst. Engineer: Llylhanne Douma
Cover Artist & Photographer: Gail Collins
Art Director: Beverly Weinstein
Musical Director & Producer: Felix Pappalardi for Windfall Music Enterprises, Inc.
Executive Producer: Bud Prager
Equipment & Then Some: Mick Bridgen & Sheldon Rosen
Recorded at the Record Plant, New York
Reissue Produced by Bob Irwin
Mastered by Vic Anesini at Sony Music Studios, New York, NY
Legacy A&R: Steve Berkowitz
Project Direction: John Jackson A&R Coordination: Darren Salmieri
Art Direction: Howard Fritzson
Design: Smay Vision
Photography: pages 2, 5 & booklet back cover: Gail Collins (from original LP); pages 6-7 inset
photos (excluding bottom right photo): Chuck Pulin/Starfile; inner tray card: Leslie West/Starfile;
spine sheet: Jim Cummins/Starfile; all other photos (pages 6 & 7) courtesy of the band
Packaging Manager: Abe Velez
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11-800-255-7514. New Je
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© 1970, 2003 Sony Music I Sony Music Entertainment Inc
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. Off. Marca Registrada. / WARNING: All Rights Rei > a violation of applicable laws.
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