Born Leslie Weinstein on October 22, 1945 in New York City, guitar god Leslie West would go on to popularize a specific electric blues guitar sound with his band Mountain. He bought his first guitar with money given to him at his bar mitzvah. After some low-level success with The Vagrants, West released his debut album, Mountain, in 1969. That album established his blues-rock chops, and set the template for the sound of the band, also named Mountain, that he would also form that year with bassist Felix Pappalardi and drummer Corky Laing. Their sound, a forerunner to heavy metal, led to the single “Mississippi Queen”, a top 40 hit that became the song most closely identified with West throughout his career. The trio stayed together for just three years, though they would perform and record together intermittently for decades. He formed the trio West, Bruce, and Laing, with regular collaborator Jack Bruce, but they were together briefly. After a pair of solo albums, 1975’s The Great Fatsby and 1976’s The Leslie West Band, West’s addiction issues forced him to retreat from music for nearly a decade. After yet another brief reincarnation of Mountain in the mid ‘80s, he released the solo album Theme in 1988. During his career he collaborated with a wealth of people including such notable artists as The Who, Ian Gillan, and Joe Bonamassa, and appeared in a handful of films as an actor.
He would continue to have health issues, and even though he lost a leg due to diabetes in the 2010s, he recorded a trio of albums that decade (2011’s Usual Suspects, 2013’s Still Climbing, and 2015’s Soundcheck) that all went top5 on the U.S. Blues chart. West died on December 23, 2020, prompting public declarations of respect and tribute from a wide swath of music greats including Robbie Robertson, Dave Davies, and Joe Satriani.