The mountain has fallen.
Leslie West, who kicked towering jams (with a towering hairdresser) out in basic classic rockers Mountain, has died 75, his publicist confirmed to The Post.
West suffered a cardiac arrest at his home near Daytona, Florida on Monday and was hospitalized and never regained consciousness, Rolling Stone reported.
On Tuesday, his brother, Larry West Weinstein, wrote on Facebook that West’s heart stopped and he had been put on a ventilator, according to the LA Times.
He survived his wife Jenni Maurer, whom he married on stage at a concert in 2009 to commemorate Woodstock’s 40th birthday.
West laid authoritative guitar riffs and chest yowls in Mountain, a thundering power trio rounded off by Felix Pappalardi on bass and Corky Laing on drums. The band’s contribution to the canon was the archetypal “Mississippi Queen,” a growling blues-rock number with a pounding cowbell that went to No. 21 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The Burly New York original vest cut an impressive figure on stage with his eccentric clothes and a Gibson that seemed small in his hands. While the group shared his name with his first solo album, he joked that the trio was called Mountain “because I was so fat” and later named the solo album “The Great Fatsby.”
One critic even called him a “300 pounds dressed in blue velvet, suede and snakeskin” in a concert review, according to Rolling Stone.
The group played a set at the era-defining Woodstock festival, where West “had the most amps of anyone there,” he reminded of Rolling Stone in 1989. Mountain disbanded in 1972, but West continued to play with Laing and submit to Cream bassist. Jack Bruce to Pappalardi. He re-formed Mountain in 1974 and continued to play with various variations of the band for the next decade after a halted solo career (based on the aforementioned “Fatsby”).
Like many rockers of his era, West struggled with drugs; his choice was heroin. His weight was also an issue, and in the 1980s he was diagnosed with diabetes and lost the lower half of his right leg due to the disease. Along the way, he added “actor” to his resume, appearing in 1973’s “Family Honor” and 1986’s “The Money Pit,” and also became close friends with Howard Stern, where he repeated appearances on the show.
His music also created a surprisingly different action from the hip-hop community via the tune “Long Red”, which was sampled by De La Soul, The Game, ASAP Rocky, Kanye West and Jay-Z (for fellow New Yorker’s most rocking song, “99 problems”).
“There was something about the song that appealed to rappers,” West told Blues Blast magazine in 2015. “I have six different platinum albums on my wall from all these different guys trying on my stuff.”
West was honored by his musical descendants. Twisted Sisters Dee Snider tweeted that West was “one of the founding fathers of heavy metal” and Rolling Stone noted that the recently deceased guitar hero Eddie Van Halen hailed West as one of his early influences in 2011 and called the big man’s guitar tone “incredible. ” And no less a rock authority than Dave Grohl recently covered “Mississippi Queen” for his virtual “Hanukkah Sessions” series.
West, who never really stopped his production and released albums through the 2000s with his latest in 2015, remained a fast-paced humor who was great with a quote in his later years. He told Page Six in 2007 that his new label was called “Big Rack Records” “because my fiance has a nice, big rack.”
“There are no drugs for me,” he added, comparing 2007 to its heyday. “Most of the things that happened back then, I do not remember.”