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Credit: Alamy<\/p>\n
Fri 11 September 2026 3:00, UK <\/p>\n
In the late 1990s, Leslie West, the former singer and guitarist of the band Mountain, started a collaboration with Joe Lynn Turner, the ex-singer of Rainbow and (very briefly) Deep Purple. At the time, West was surprised to learn that Turner was even available, considering he\u2019d spent many years touring with one of the best guitar players in the world, Ritchie Blackmore<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought to myself,\u201d West told the Central New Jersey Home News in 1998, \u201ceither Ritchie\u2019s gotta be the dumbest guy on the face of the Earth, or he just didn\u2019t want to play that kind of music anymore\u201d.<\/p>\n West was correct about the second part; Blackmore had at least temporarily set aside his hard rock pursuits to start a new band with his girlfriend Candice Night, a folk-rock Ren-fair outfit called Blackmore\u2019s Night. In some ways, though, losing Joe Lynn Turner to Leslie West was a poetic, full-circle moment for him, as he was conceding his devil-horned crown and preferred vocalist to one of the musicians who\u2019d inspired him to pursue a heavier sound in the first place.<\/p>\n Way back in 1970, after roughly five years as a session guitarist and two years as a founding member of the band Deep Purple, Blackmore, at 25, felt like his career was already at a crossroads. The first three band albums, lushly produced and psychedelic in style, had all found marginal success in America, but 1969\u2019s self-titled release had underperformed its two predecessors, suggesting they were heading in the wrong direction.\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite being a London band originally built in the Cream mould<\/a>, Blackmore said that Deep Purple were increasingly motivated at the dawn of the \u201870s by their contemporaries from America: bands with a heavy but roots-based rock sound like The Allman Brothers and Leslie West\u2019s group, Mountain.<\/p>\n \u201cI really loved Leslie West\u2019s playing,\u201d Blackmore told Aledort. \u201cI remember being in a place in Germany, and [drummer] Ian [Paice] and I were out drinking together\u2026 Paice and I heard [Mountain\u2019s 1970 debut single] \u2018Mississippi Queen\u2019, and we both went white! We were thinking, \u2018Who the hell is that?!\u2019 It had such a big sound! For three guys, it was incredibly heavy.\u201d<\/p>\n Released in February of 1970, \u2018Mississippi Queen\u2019 was both the first and ultimately most successful single of Mountain\u2019s career, becoming something of a classic rock radio staple<\/a> over the next few decades. Aside from the instantly recognisable cowbell intro, the song is basically a showcase for Leslie West, whose booming central riff is complemented by a higher-pitched solo, featuring tones he liked to call \u201cpig squeals\u201d.<\/p>\n Further reading: From The Vault<\/p>\n In a roundabout way, Mountain\u2019s back-to-basics approach after several years of hippie-inspired incense and peppermints in mainstream rock might have also been the domino that pushed Deep Purple into becoming legends in their own right.<\/p>\n
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<\/a> The Far Out Classic Rock Newsletter<\/p>\n