Leslie West: Our Epic Unpublished 1979 Interviews - Day 2

On Songwriting, Soloing, Drugs, and Playing Your Best

Leslie West (Photo by Jas Obrecht)

In June 1979 I met up with Leslie West at a house he was renting in Ben Lomand, California, with singer Steve Marriott. At the time, West, formerly of Mountain and West, Bruce & Laing, and Marriott, who’d been the front man of Small Faces and Humble Pie, were trying to put a band together. After our first interview (hear it here), West invited me to come back the next week for another conversation. Six days later, on July 26, 1979, I returned to Ben Lomand house. Leslie began our second interview by playing me a tape of a straight 12-bar blues tune he’d written a day or two earlier. Played on acoustic guitar with electric slide fills reminiscent of Mick Taylor, it began, “Well, the rent is due . . . .” As it played, Leslie began our conversation:

Leslie: I wrote that song for the IRS! [Leslie sings along to the chorus, “Well, I ain’t gonna pay, I ain’t gonna pay no more. Well, I ain’t gonna pay, I ain’t gonna pay no more. I’m gonna give it to my baby, and walk right out that door.”] An octave divider comes in on the solo. I don’t know if this guy I wrote it for wants to do it. I’m trying to figure out if I should give it to him for what he paid me to do it. [Song ends.] I just recorded it on Wednesday, and I didn’t know what it was gonna be like before I did it. I thought it was just gonna be a joke, and I’d go in there half-assed. But I don’t play half-assed. Even without trying, it came out like that. So I don’t want to just give it to him for the $500 before I find out . . . Dig this. Steve [Marriott] did one of the sessions, right? I told the guy he couldn’t use my name or nothin’. The guys said, “Well, Steve said I could use his name for one point” [of the album sales]. I said, “Do you know what fuckin’ one point is worth on your thing? About half of a subway token. If you want it, you pay the cash.” Now, Steve’s thing was ridiculous. He just conformed to whatever the guy wanted. He did as straight a blues as you possibly can. I’m trying to make a joke out of it, because that’s what it is. You know? It couldn’t be serious.

What does he want to give you for it?

Well, nothing. He said, “I realize that if we put it out, you want all the royalties.” But before I let him put it out, I want to find out if it’s worth anything. I wanted to put like fifty people singing “We ain’t gonna pay . . .” Remember like the Beatles, “Hey, Jude”?

“All You Need Is Love.”

Yeah, “All You Need Is Love.” Same thing.

Yeah. Hang on to that song. Keep your publishing, no matter what.

Yeah, it’s my song. And I swear to you, man, I wrote the song in five minutes. I went to a studio, and the guy told me to write the song and he’d give me $250 the next time I came down to rehearsal. I came in the next day and I said, “Well, shit.” So I ran and got a pad, I scratched it out, came in, and gave it to the guy, and he said, “Okay.” I was laughing afterwards. I had to tell him, “You know, I wrote this now.” Hey, I found out that at advertising companies, if somebody comes up with a slogan that’s real good that’s real quick, they don’t want it. They want it to take time. At Ford, one of those things was right off the bat, and they couldn’t use it because the person paying for all the advertising wouldn’t want to know that they came up with it the first crack around. What’s he spending millions of bucks for?

Mick Ralphs said that he writes all of his songs in under five minutes.

I’m sure. Because once you start getting a lick out, you just keep going. You’ll find the chords and finish the progression.

What do you find harder to do – the lick or the words?

I never wrote words. I just learned in the last two years to write words. I wrote a couple of songs by myself in Mountain, but I always had to have help.

Like on “Mississippi Queen” . . .

“Mississippi Queen”? I had all the music, chords, and lick. That song was already a song. Corky had that from his other group. It was one-chord, disco. It was like, “Mississippi Queen, chicka, ching, ching” [scats a rhythm guitar sound commonly used in disco songs]. And I put a lick on it, obviously. I snorted something really nasty, something that I’ll remember the rest of my life, and that’s how I wrote it.

“Mississippi Queen”?

Yeah, stoned out of my mind. Boy, we were so fucked up. I was in the bedroom, he was in the living room, and I was yelling “How about this?” We were just shouting shit back and forth. “Yeah, it’s alright! Whatever you want, man.” I swear to God. When we did the track, Felix threw it out one day. He didn’t like it. Then he put his name on it the next time because he stuck a little note in here and there. You know what he stuck in there and got credit for? That little Steve Knight piano part – that little stinky thing that fucks the record up, in my opinion. That little tiny rinky-dink [sings the piano fill]. Just that, and he took 25% of that song. Felix is a legend in his spare time. He’s a legend in his own mind. Really, he was. But I learned more from that guy than anybody else. Hey, you can print every fuckin’ thing I’m saying. I’m not putting the guy down. He was a genius to me. But he also owned the record company, publishing, management, was in the group for half of what we made, owned the production company. And, to top it off, the record company.

And I happened to be the artist that got Felix’s Windfall [record label] on Bell Records. I was the first album – Leslie West Mountain. I was the first album for Windfall Columbia – West, Bruce & Laing. And I was the first album on Phantom – The Great Fatsby – for Bud Prager. I was the first album on all of their private label deals. The RCA deal was worth $2 million to Bud Prager, just on that alone. And I was the first album on all of them subsidiary deals. And I do not want to be with a subsidiary if I’m gonna do a group. I just don’t want it anymore. I want the luxury of being with the main label, even though subsidiaries are good – we did it with Bell, and they never had a gold album before. The Box Tops’ “The Letter” – that was their first gold record [single], but it wasn’t a gold album. They never had a gold album. So we did it in spite of what restricted airplay we had – 12:00 at night to 6:00 in the morning.

But you got the gold album?

Oh, yeah. For Mountain Climbing, Woodstock II, and Nantucket Sleighride. In fact, I had three managers in Mountain – Felix, Bud Prager, who manages Foreigner, and Gary Kurfirst, who managed Peter Tosh.

That’s a lot of managers.

30%. Premier was taking their 10%. That’s 40. [The phone rings, Leslie takes the call.] Oh, boy. The guy, Lucky, is from Arkansas and Texas, but his family was related to that guy Jim Garrison, the attorney with Kennedy and Oswald and all that. He knows so much about the Kennedy assassination, man. You couldn’t believe what he knows. And that was definitely a conspiracy. Hey, come on – one bullet?

Where were you when President Kennedy was assassinated?

Rockefeller Center, right by a limousine. I was delivering jewelry. I worked in a jewelry exchange in New York. I made women’s engagement rings. I see a chauffeur by 30 Rock, and he’s crying. A Black guy. I said, “What’s the matter?” He said, “They shot the president!” I came over, and I see all these drivers are there, waiting for the execs from NBC, and everybody’s hysterical in the street. It was incredible. Where were you?

I was in sixth grade, in a Catholic school.

Kennedy – ooh, that’s God.

The principal came on the loudspeaker and said, “Boys and girls, we have something you should listen to.” And they put on the radio news report. Kids started praying and crying.

What a great guy he was, Kennedy. It’s funny – he’s the only guy I ever felt like I had a relationship with, like, why should I vote for somebody? I couldn’t vote at the time, but I wished I could have. The only time I have voted is for McGovern. My wife made me do it on absentee ballot, just because of Nixon. Yeah, she made me do that. I said, “Why is it so important?” She said, “Please, you’ve gotta vote for him.” I wasn’t following it. Then when Watergate started, I got into it, boy. I got into it so heavy, and I was so thrilled I voted McGovern. Didn’t help. I think me and you were the only ones that voted. And I played in Washington, D.C., the night Nixon won, and what a drag that was – Constitution Hall, yet. We were so depressed.

You were never very political.

Nah-uh. Fuck it. I really resented Abbie Hoffman getting up at Woodstock. I’m glad [Pete] Townshend whacked him. I resented the fact that somebody used – those people didn’t come there for any other reason but to hear them sounds, man. And to get all those people there to hear those sounds, you don’t come onstage and use it to make a speech. Because they didn’t want to hear that speech. And if you would have told them that you’re gonna hear a speech during The Who’s act, nobody would have showed up. So that’s why I resent that. I’m just sorry he didn’t hit him hard enough. I saw it. I was right there.

What happened?

Abbie Hoffman grabbed the mike and said, “I want to talk to you all.” And Townshend – fuck you! He hit him with the guitar on the head. Hoffman was gone, right into the audience, man. Almost killed him. Pete said, “Our stage. When we hit the stage, it is our stage.” And he is right. He earned the right to get control that stage.