Leslie West, whose band Mountain helped lay the groundwork for heavy metal with fuzzy, hard-riffing songs like the cowbell-enhanced "Mississippi Queen," has died. He was 75.
His death was confirmed Wednesday by his publicist. On Tuesday, his brother Larry wrote on Facebook that West's heart had stopped and that he'd been put on a ventilator.
A physically imposing presence with a self-effacing sense of humor -- "The Great Fatsby," he called one solo album -- the singer, guitarist and songwriter was among those who bridged the gap between the bluesy hard rock of the late 1960s and the flashier, more theatrical sound of '70s metal acts such as Judas Priest.
West's music was sludgy and rough-edged, with growly vocals and squealing guitar solos. But his songs had sharp pop hooks that played well on the radio; "Mississippi Queen" went to No. 21 on Billboard's Hot 100. And his lyrical outlook was sunnier than Black Sabbath's signature doom and gloom -- a vestige of the hippie idealism enshrined at the Woodstock festival, where Mountain famously played one of its earliest gigs in front of a crowd numbering in the hundreds of thousands.
Mountain's music also found a surprising afterlife as source material for dozens of hip-hop acts, including Jay-Z and Kanye West, who've sampled the drum beat from the band's live-at-Woodstock recording of its song "Long Red."
Leslie Weinstein was born Oct. 22, 1945, in New York and grew up in Forest Hills, Queens. Inspired to play guitar after seeing Elvis Presley perform, he bought his first instrument with money from his bar mitzvah and began emulating licks by blues greats such as B.B. King and Albert King, as he told Guitar World in 1987.
Mountain's first LP, the gold-selling "Climbing!," came out in 1970 and was followed quickly by "Nantucket Sleighride" and "Flowers of Evil," both released in 1971. The band broke up the next year, which led West and drummer Corky Laing to form a short-lived trio with Cream's Jack Bruce; West, Bruce and Laing signed to Columbia Records and made two studio albums and a live LP.
In 1973, West reunited with bassist Felix Pappalardi in a new lineup of Mountain, though it didn't last long. West returned to his solo career -- including for 1975's "The Great Fatsby," which featured a cameo by Mick Jagger -- and later reconvened Mountain again (minus Pappalardi, who died in 1983) in various forms on the road and in the studio.
In 2011, he had a leg amputated from complications of diabetes, but just months later released a solo album, "Unusual Suspects," with appearances by Slash and ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons. His most recent album, "Soundcheck," came out in 2015.