40 Years Later, A Look Back at the Mountain

Forty years ago, Woodstock changed the face of modern music.

A few months later, one of the bands that broke into America’s consciousness during the weekend of August 15-18, 1969 brought their fresh sound to New Canaan High School.

“I think people thought that the world was going to change after Woodstock, but the music changed more than anything else,” said Leslie West, guitarist and singer for Mountain, a high intensity rock-blues band that was often called the American Cream.

Featuring West alongside former Cream producer and session bassist Felix Pappalardi, Mountain played one of their first shows at Woodstock.

But for Mountain, Woodstock was only part of the success. 1969 was their time to make a name for themselves as a power rock band, with a sound that hinted at what would become the metal genre. They were touring all over, and one of their stops was New Canaan High School.

According to newspaper articles from the time, the concert was organized by the Teen Council in New Canaan. Any profits were earmarked for building a teen center.

One story in the New Canaan Advertiser, headlined “Mountain Comes to the Teens” from December 11, 1969, praised the local teens for their initiative in arranging the benefit. The paper also lauded the band with a kind of amiable squareness, “Though it’s only a foursome, it’s a very hip foursome... and, man, the kids really dig!”

The concert took place on a Tuesday night, December 23. A report from the Dec. 30 Advertiser read, “The place was jammed with swingin’ teens and quite a few adults, too, one of whom summed it all up in a word: ‘Fantastic!’”

Someone—West doesn't think it was a musician—brought a tape recorder to the show. In 2005, the record label Trademark of Quality got a hold of the bootleg, paired it with a selection of tracks from Mountain’s Woodstock appearance, and released the resulting album as part of their Official Bootleg Series. The audio quality is, to be kind, poor, but the music is still exciting.

West’s bluesy guitar takes ecstatic extended solos, and the band plays tunes including “Blood of the Sun,” “Theme for an Imaginary Western,” and “Long Red,” alongside the blues classic “Stormy Monday.”

The band’s biggest hit, “Mississippi Queen,” didn’t make an appearance at Woodstock, and wasn’t recorded at the New Canaan show, though West remembers writing it with drummer Corky Miller around that time. But that tune brought Mountain renewed attention when it was recently included in several video games.

“Because of the game Rock Band and Guitar Hero, all of a sudden, eight- and nine-year-olds know a song we wrote back in 1969,” West says. “So I guess that year was good for us, and good for everybody.”

Special thanks to the New Canaan Historical Society for their help with this piece.