Classic line-up:
Lead Vocals/Guitars: Leslie West
Lead Vocals/Bass: Felix Pappalardi
Keyboards: Steve Knight
Drums: Corky Laing
OK, here's the thing. To the uninitiated, looking at the cover and track listing of a Mountain album might give one the idea that they were looking at some sort of folk-rock side project that David Crosby brain-farted up during a bad acid trip. There's a lot of swirly pschydelic shit with flowers and rainbows and hairs from Odin's beard all over the front panels. A lot of the songs have titles that have a very laid back, almost country-bluegrass quality to them; "Never In My Life,” "Nantucket Sleighride,," "Theme For An Imaginary Western." But then you play the record and all of the songs get shifted into the context of the only name/phrase/word you need to know about when discussing this band: "MOUNTAIN!"
The whole sound of the band IS their name; it's as fucking gargantuan as the Alps crammed next to the Himylayas, stuffed inside the Pyrenees and dumped on top of the Rockies. It's so goddamned loud, punchy and wailing, that you want to BE a Mountain Man; a huge, hairy guy who brushes his teeth with a pine tree after eating lightning and crapping thunder. Now, as you might have guessed, I love this band for its bludgeoning riffs and all that, but there's lots of band out there that have bludgeoning riffs. Mountain had several tricks up their collective Nehru jacket sleeves that set them apart from the rest.
First, there's Leslie's guitar tone, which for all the images of this band as one who liquifys pigeons that fly in front of their speakers, is quite pure, sweet and most importantly, warm.
Second, there's Steve Knight's keyboards which glue most of the songs together so well that you almost don't realize that he's even playing at all. Simplicity is key here.
Third (and my favorite): the cowbell. Anytime a riff is in danger of collapsing under its own weight, Corky's bouncy bovine locator grabs it by the scruff of it's neck and punts it back into the Realm Of That Which Kicks Ass. Case in point: "Mississipi Queen" which is probably on my top five or ten greatest songs of all time list. Too much cowbell is never enough.
Oh yeah, they also played so goddamned loud that their bass player became legally deaf by 1974. And then his wife shot him dead nine years later.
Ugly band members? Pretty much batting 1.000 here. Leslie West is/was the main focal point of this band and he really had no other choice than to be just that due to the fact that he weighed in at anywhere between 250–350 pounds during the height of the band's popularity in the early '70s. (Legend has it that when Mountain went up to Yasgur's Farm from NYC for the big show, they had to take two helicopters—one for Leslie and one for the rest of the band.) Add a 'fro and and fringed buckskin vest that claimed the lives of many, many whitetails and you've definitely got one of the most, er, um, "distinctive" looking rock musicians of the era. Felix Pappalardi was even once described by Leslie as looking like an organ grinder, and I have to say that's a pretty accurate description. One look at his huge schnozz and ape-hanger handlebar mustache and you'd be forgiven for wondering where kept his monkey on stage and if he was going to bust out an accordion solo during "Nantucket Sleighride."
How Mountain offended rock critics: Usually, the length of their songs puckered critic's collective assholes, and as I'm not a fan of "jam" bands I'd be inclined to agree, except that Mountain never really trailed off to far from the song structure during their live shows; it was more like they were taking a second or two to breathe before they came thundering back into the main riff or another one just as cool. That, and critics would say they sounded like a shittier version of Cream, which is fine in my book, because Cream probably had nowhere to go but into the toilet had they not broken up in '68.
--(Greg P.)
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