Leslie West on Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix: Interview

Funny and Revealing Reflections by the Mountain Guitarist on Two Music Icons

Frank Mastropolo

Rock Forever Records

In 2016, we spoke with Leslie West, the late singer, songwriter, and guitarist of Mountain, the supergroup he formed with bassist Felix Pappalardi and drummer Corky Laing.

Bob Dylan

After I played the Woodstock festival, I was going to buy a house in Woodstock. They weren’t the same thing. Woodstock the town was about 50, 60 miles away from Bethel, NY. So I had a real estate broker taking me around, showing me houses and I had just bought a Bentley. I got my first big royalty check. So I buy a Bentley and I go into this big driveway and in the distance about a quarter of a mile up the driveway, I see this gigantic log cabin. It was more like a mansion.

And I said, OK, I wonder whose house this is. Tim Hardin, the guy who wrote “If I Were a Carpenter,” I had no idea whose house it was. And I go inside and on one of these screened-in porches I see a strip of film. You know those photo booths where you can take four pictures for a dollar? So I see a strip of John and Yoko.

I said, whoa, it’s not their house, they don’t live here. And I go in the living room and on the whole wall is the picture of Bob Dylan on Nashville Skyline. I said, holy shit, it must be Bob’s house. I got so scared and nervous, I ran out of the house, got in the car and drove away.

Columbia Records

I rented a house for four years in a row, different houses, to see how I liked it. I lived in Bearsville, Meads Mountain, and I finally bought the house on top of the mountain. It was actually where the original festival was gonna be. If the original festival was there, my house wouldn’t have been there. It would have been trampled over.

My grandmother had this big farm, 120 acres, in Esopus. And so it was a big deal when I was a kid, growing up, we’d drive into Kingston, where I got my first guitar at a pawn shop. Then we’d go up to Woodstock itself and I realized it was music and art. It brought back great memories of my childhood when I first started, when I wrote quite a few songs up there. Meads Mountain Road, I’ll never forget it.

I never got to see Dylan up there, I never ran into him by accident but I was friends with the guys in The Band. We used to play together, hang out together. I lived pretty close to Robbie Robertson and Rick Danko. I remember I bought one of these four-wheel all-terrain vehicles and we used to have races around my house.

Then I later on met him at Manny’s Music Store on 48th Street, he was buying harmonicas. But finally, we used to do “Like a Rolling Stone” when I was with my first group, the Vagrants. I was travelling in Europe with Mountain years later and I hear Neil Young doing a version of “Blowin’ in the Wind” with violins and Celtic Sands. And I said, man, I think I can do that. So I started fooling around with it and I of course recorded it. And then we tried another song, “Positively 4th Street” and “Tambourine Man.” I tried to do it the way I would do it. You know, heavy.

I didn’t appreciate how great he was when I was with the Vagrants. I didn’t really listen to his early albums. I wasn’t a fan of his voice but I sure liked his lyrics, my God.

That’s why we did the whole album of his songs, Masters of War. I was so enthralled by it, I had Ozzy Osbourne sing “Masters of War,” the song, with me. And there’s just something about him. He’s the poet of the 20th century, that’s the way I look at him.

Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix at Fillmore East, 1968. © Frank Mastropolo

We were recording at the Record Plant. And we were in Studio A. We were doing Mountain Climbing. And we just finished. And Jimi was in Studio B, doing Band of Gypsys with Buddy Miles and Billy Cox. So Felix says to me, “Why don’t you go next door and ask Jimi to come in and listen to the album?” I said, “What? I don’t know him.” He said, “Well, so what? Just go invite him in.”

And it was really funny, every night, around 6 o’clock, Jimi would order out dinner. Well, he had more hangers-on show up at this time for a free fuckin’ meal. I felt so sorry for this poor guy.

I said, “I’ll give it a shot.” I walk in there and I walked up to him, I said, “Mr. Hendrix,” I called him, I said, “I’m Leslie West, I’m a guitar player in Mountain but Felix Pappalardi’s in the next room. He just finished producing our album and he wanted me to come in and invite you in to listen.”

And sure enough, Jimi comes in. The first track he heard was “Never in My Life.” And he looks at me, he says, “Nice riff, man.” After he said that, man, you couldn’t talk to me for a year, man, I said, “Hey, get the fuck away from me, Hendrix told me he liked what I did.”

And then, a couple of months after that, I go to this club in town called Ungano’s. I went to school with this kid, Richie Ungano, his father owned the club. Steve Miller was playing there. And so it’s really late, Steve Miller finishes up, in walks Jimi. The fringe and the hat. He says, “You wanna jam, man?” I said, “Yeah. Well, wait, we have a loft.” The club was up in the 70s. The loft was on 36th Street. I knew we had amps there.

He says, “Let’s go in my limo and get some amps.” So we went down there, on 36th Street, and then the roadies were living there, in this loft where all the equipment was. Knockin’ on the door, bangin’ on the door. It was one in the morning, deserted down there at nighttime. All little factories. All of a sudden, my road manager, Mick Brigden, who now manages Joe Satriani, he says, “What do you want?” I said “Mick, open the fuckin’ door.”

And he opens the door and who’s standing there, it was me and Hendrix. Jimi had the hat on, the fringe, the whole thing. He grabs one of Felix’s basses, played it upside down, and grabbed a couple of Marshall cabinets, put them in the limo and we went back and jammed. He’s playing the bass lefty and I’m playing my white Les Paul Jr. And Steve Miller’s drummer was playing the drums, he’s since died, Tim Davis.

A paper, it wasn’t the Village Voice, it was called the East Village Other, that was the newspaper. And on the back they had a picture of me and Jimi. A guy wrote a review of our jam, he said you couldn’t hear Jimi’s guitar, Leslie was too loud. He wasn’t playing the guitar! He was playing a bass. It was something I’ll never forget.

Frank Mastropolo is the author of Fillmore East: The Venue That Changed Rock Music Forever. For more on our latest projects, visit Edgar Street Books.