Mountain Leslie Weinstein West

Remembering him his his birthday

October 22, 1945 – December 23, 2020

Mountain, “Theme for an Imaginary Western”

Forest Hills High School

What do the four original members of the Ramones (Johnny, Dee Dee, Tommy and Joey), Burt Bacharach, Dick Stockton, Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Bob Keeshan, aka Captain Kangaroo, Jerry Springer and Peter “Spiderman” Parker all have in common with Leslie West?

Except Peter Parker, aka Spiderman, they all actually attended Forest Hills High School in Queens, NYC.

Mountain Leslie Weinstein West

Leslie Weinstein

Leslie Weinstein became Leslie West after his parents divorced, but talent and luck (always a bit of luck), made Leslie West a household name among rock fans in the late 60s.

While Greenwich Village was pumping out folk musician after folk musician into the 1960’s cultural revolution, West though nearby geographically was light years artistically on “distant” Long Island, NY.

Leslie West was in the Vagrants and the band had minor success. Felix Pappalardi produced some of their recordings.  And a side note from Woodstock fan extraordinaire Sharon Watts: …” a teenaged Bert Sommer hung out with the Vagrants and wrote quite a few of their songs, including And When It’s Over, and one performed by Mountain at Woodstock: Beside the Sea. Bert also came up with the name Mountain. He called West “a mountain of a man”, and it stuck.”

Pappalardi produced and played on West’s first album, called Mountain (1969). It was from that album’s name that, in 1969, they formed the band Mountain.

Pappalardi had also produced Cream and some compared Mountain’s sound to theirs.  Steve Knight (keyboards) and N.D. Smart (drums) were the other two original members.

Mountain Leslie Weinstein West

Woodstock Music and Art Fair

The band appeared at Woodstock on Saturday night. Their well-received set was neither on the movie soundtrack nor the first movie, but the strength of their sound made West and the band favorites especially among the FM crowd.

Following Woodstock, the band released its first album,  Climbing! (February 1970). Nantucket Sleighride followed in January 1971, and Flowers of Evil in November 1971.

In 1972 Pappalardi left the band to do more productions and West, Jack Bruce and Corky Laing (had replaced Smart on drums) formed West, Bruce, and Lang.

Over the decades, versions of Mountain have formed and re-formed, always with West at the center.

Mountain Leslie Weinstein West

Leslie West

Substance abuse and diabetes plagued West, but did not him away from music very long. He lost the bottom half of his right leg to diabetes in 2011.

He told Billboard afterwards, ““I cried a couple fuckin’ times. I look down — ‘Where is it?!’ You still feel the nerves and stuff like that. I had to make a decision — lose my leg or lose my life. What are you gonna do?  But I’ll tell you, it’s a good thing it wasn’t one of my arms. Then I’d be really fucked.” [insert gallows humor comment here]

On August 15, 2009 he married Jenni Maurer on stage after Mountain’s performance at the Woodstock 40th anniversary concert at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, located on the site of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair.  Levon Helm was one of the ushers.

In 2015, Rolling Stone magazine rated West as 65/100 among the greatest guitar players. The blurb said in part that, “ On songs like the 1970 hit “Mississippi Queen,” West played roughened blues lines with deceiving facility and an R&B flair, through a black forest of stressed-amp distortion. “

West died on December 23, 2020. The cause of death was cardiac arrest. (Rolling Stone magazine article)

In it’s obituary,  Copper Magazine wrote:

Leslie West, like Albert King, just knew how to play one note with feeling. It sounds so simple.

It isn’t.

Mountain Leslie Weinstein West

Ten Years After Ric Lee

Born October 20, 1945

Ten Years After Ric Lee

The New Sounds Old

The Woodstock Music and Art Fair made some things famous that had been there in front of us but we weren’t listening.

It was Sunday night about 9 when a sweating exhausted-looking Alvin Lee introduced Ten Year After’s last song of the set: “This is a thing called “I’m Going Home” by…[pause]…helicopter.”

I’m sure the band had already played the song many times that summer. It’s a great example of a song that one might mistake for a cover of and old blues song that Rick Lee shifted into high gear. It isn’t. Lee wrote it and Lee (guitar), Chick Churchill (keyboard), Leo Lyons (bass) and Ric Lee (drums) played it.

Ten Years After Ric Lee

Ric Lee

So who is this guy Ric Lee besides the drummer for Ten Years After? I gathered most of this from the Ten Years After site.

Ric’s first band was as the drummer with the Falcons and from there here joined Ricky Storm and the Stormcats (as opposed to Rory Storm and the Hurricanes .

While a Stormcat, Ric studied drumming with Dave Quickmire who was a drummer with the Jaybirds. The Jaybirds’ guitarist was Alvin Lee. The bassist Leo Lyons.

When Quickmire got married he left the Jaybirds and recommended Lee to replace him. Chick Churchill joined the band first as their road manager and later as their keyboardist.

The Jaybirds backed The Ivy League, a vocal group. The Jaybirds later went solo again and briefly became the Bluesyard before becoming Ten Years After in 1966  in honor of Elvis Presley’s 10 year arrival anniversary.

Ten Years After Ric Lee

Ten Years After

We know Ten Years After. They were on the road constantly (check out their 1969 tour archive) and were regularly invited to the many 1969 festivals. Before Woodstock there was the Bath Festival of Blues (June 28), the Newport Jazz Festival (July 4), the Laurel Pop Festival (July 12), the Seattle Pop Festival (July 25), and after Woodstock the Texas International Pop Festival (September 1).

Of course it was their appearance on both the soundtrack and in the Woodstock movie that permanently put them on the map.

Ten Years After Ric Lee

Woodstock Memories

From a 2016 Forbes magazine interview:

Arriving

We were in a chopper with a medic. He told us once we got there not to drink anything that’s not out of a sealed can and not to eat anything unless it’s been cooked. There was an outbreak of hepatitis [no medical records indicate any such outbreak] that could turn into an epidemic if we were not careful. When we landed, there were no drinks, of course, that weren’t opened. I watched the beginning of [Joe] Cocker’s set, which was fantastic, and not long after came the storm. It was a mini-cyclone I think, with very strong winds. The whole stage was live, but they wouldn’t let anybody use it. That festival these days would not get past health and safety. If you look at the film, you’ll see the covering for the stage was really pathetic. The whole thing got soaked. They were also scared that the big speaker towers people were climbing and sitting on were inadequate. The speakers were very heavy. We were incredibly lucky none came down.

Playing after the storm

The band followed Country Joe and the Fish at about 8:15 Sunday night. Well, it was still very damp. I remember we had to start Good Morning Little School Girl four times because the guitars wouldn’t stay in tune. Alvin just would not play out of tune and try to sing to it. That was nerve-wracking because 400,000 or 500,000 people – no one seems to know the exact number — were sitting there wanting us to play. In those days, there were no electronic tuners, so everything was by ear. Leo [Lyons] was tone-deaf, so Alvin had to tune his bass! Once we finally got going, the crowd loved it. What can I say? [for their full set, see Woodstock day 3]

Ten Years After Ric Lee

Side interests

While still in Ten Years After, Ric studied at Berklee School of Music in Boston, with Alan Dawson, then drummer with the Dave Brubeck Quartet. Ric also began teaching young enthusiasts privately when at home between touring commitments.

Ten Years After Ric Lee

After Ten Years After

After Ten Years After stopped touring in 1976, Ric ran his own Music Publishing, Management and Record Production company. He continued to study, now tuned percussion at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama under Gilbert Webster, percussionist with the BBC Radio Orchestra.

In 1980 for 18 months, Ric joined Stan Webb in Chicken Shack. Chicken Shack toured the UK and Europe many times in this short period and made an album for RCA Records “Roadies’ Concerto”.

Ten Years After re-formed again in 1983 for the Marquee Club’s 25th Anniversary. During this short “rebirth”, Ric managed the group as well as being its drummer.

Between 1984 and 1986, Ric managed several up and coming young acts and continued publishing catalog.

Ten Years After Ric Lee

Ten Years again

Ten Years After re-formed yet again in 1988 and recorded a new album “About Time” in Memphis, Tennessee and spent the next four years touring Europe and the US.  In between tours Ric continued to study drum techniques, this time  Latin percussion with Trevor Tompkins, Professor of Percussion at the Guildhall and the Royal College of Music.

In 1994, Ric formed The Breakers with an old friend, Ian Ellis and together they wrote and produced MILAN, released in July 1995.

In the middle nineties Lee produced a series of ambient albums, the most successful of which was Spirit of Africa.

Ric worked again with Ten Years After between 1995 and 1999. In 2001 he recorded an album in Nashville.

Ten Years After continues its intermittent existence and Lee is also part of Natural Born Swingers. Here is a link to a review in Elmore magazine from September 2017.

And in 2021, Ric Lee, published his autobiography, From Headstocks To Woodstock.

“It was something I’d always wanted to do and I actually started it more than 10 years ago, but kept stopping and starting for various reasons, Then a chance conversation with a friend in Los Angeles persuaded me to get it finished.”

Comprised of 448 pages, the book is available for purchase directly via Lee’s website.

Many happy returns Ric!

Ten Years After Ric Lee