{"id":593585,"date":"2026-04-19T12:11:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T12:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/593585\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T12:11:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T12:11:12","slug":"nantucket-sleighride-by-mountain-the-story-behind-the-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/593585\/","title":{"rendered":"Nantucket Sleighride by Mountain: the story behind the song"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Mountain<\/a> went into the Record Plant studios in autumn 1970 to put the finishing touches to their second album, there were already mutterings within the camp that bass player\/producer Felix Pappalardi<\/a> and his then-girlfriend (and future wife) Gail Collins were exerting a stranglehold on the band\u2019s output.<\/p>\n

The band\u2019s appearance at the Woodstock festival in 1969 had been only their fourth gig together. Their debut album, 1970\u2019s Mountain Climbing!, had been a pretty democratic affair, with drummer Corky Laing<\/a> providing the initial idea for its hit single, Mississippi Queen, with cowbell intro and David Rea\u2019s lyric.<\/p>\n

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The follow-up, Nantucket Sleighride, was much darker, with Tired Angels (a morbid, Lord Of The Rings-influenced tribute to Jimi Hendrix), the claustrophobic, curse-like My Lady and The Great Train Robbery, which depicted the infamous villains behind the 1963 heist as outlaw heroes.<\/p>\n

Article continues below <\/p>\n

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Those tracks paled into insignificance next to the title track \u2013 full title Nantucket Sleighride (To Owen Coffin) \u2013 a fictional account of a true episode involving 19th-century whaling ship The Essex, which left Nantucket on an ill-starred hunt that ended in cannibalism.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Classic Rock in 2013, late Mountain guitarist and singer Leslie West<\/a> recalled the song with mixed feelings: \u201cFelix came up with the idea, and Gail wrote the lyrics. Owen Coffin was the youngest guy in the long boat they sent to harpoon the sperm whale. They got dragged out to sea and were close to starvation, so they drew straws, and the kid got the short one. They ate him.<\/p>\n

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\"Mountain&rsquo;s\n<\/p>\n

Mountain\u2019s Felix Pappalardi (left) and Leslie West in the late 1970s (Image credit: Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe term \u2018a Nantucket Sleighride\u2019 refers to the whale diving deep with harpoons in its back, then flying to the surface and pulling the long boats out at speed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Collins\u2019s lyrics glossed over the grislier details but her subtext was ingenious.<\/p>\n

I was young and impatient, and it was hard to learn the thing. It was more than your average classic rock blues song.<\/p>\n

Leslie West<\/p>\n

\u201cThe opening lines, \u2018Goodbye, little Robin-Marie, don\u2019t try following me \/ Don\u2019t cry little Robin-Marie, \u2019cos you know I\u2019m coming home soon,\u2019 were about herself and addressed the fact that Felix was cheating with a girl called Robin-Marie,\u201d recalled West.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had a weird dynamic, him and Gail, and I didn\u2019t think much of it to begin with when things were great. Felix is talented, his wife writes the words, she does the artwork, she takes the photos of the group, designs the stage outfits, yada yada, and it\u2019s all easy enough. Then it became too much. It was like when Yoko came along to The Beatles and Paul said, \u2018Oh no.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Leslie wasn\u2019t taken with the track. \u201cI hated it at first because it was so fucking hard to play,\u201d he remembered. \u201cThere were intricate chords, not your usual four-trick pony, heavy riffs, a pretty section where Felix used a tiny keyboard like an accordion, and a recorder part for what shoulda been a flute in the middle eight.<\/p>\n

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\"Mountain&rsquo;s\n<\/p>\n

Mountain\u2019s Leslie West (Image credit: Gems\/Redferns)<\/p>\n

\u201cI was young and impatient at the time, and it was hard to learn the thing. It was more than your average classic rock blues song. Now I love playing it and I finish all my shows with it. Felix sang it originally. Sometimes I think of him. I never think of Gail.\u201d<\/p>\n

West found it hard to relate to Nantucket Sleighride for other reasons. \u201cI didn\u2019t even know where Nantucket was! Felix and Gail were living there at the time, and he was writing a lot of stuff about Massachusetts, but I had no knowledge of the place or its history. So even while we were recording I was in the dark, especially in the studio where all the heavy sessions had to flow into each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under Pappalardi\u2019s notoriously exacting instruction, the big man finally nailed it \u201cwhen I came up with the riff in the middle. Then I was happier.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nantucket Sleighride (To Owen Coffin) – YouTube
\n\"Nantucket<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

West first heard the finished album in January 1971. \u201cI was living in London at The Inn On The Park on Hyde Park and picked up a copy. I was so fucking pissed off! Gail\u2019s name was all over the cover. Felix and her called all the shots. I was just the lead guitarist and sometimes the lead singer, but she was listed in so many different places it was ridiculous.<\/p>\n

There were terrible problems with heroin in Mountain. Heroin ruined the band for sure. <\/p>\n

Leslie West<\/p>\n

\u201cEven on the cover art she drew herself \u2013 just like on the first album she painted herself standing in front of a mountain. I hadn\u2019t realised it before, but then it hit me and left a very bad taste in my mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nantucket Sleighride became a focal point of Mountain\u2019s live set. \u201cIt was very popular; the big number, we closed the shows with it. It was a nightly jam, really. I wanted us to be like a heavy rock orchestra band, so I made my guitar sound like a violin, a viola and a cello.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sleighride became Mountain\u2019s best-known song in Britain thanks to ITV\u2019s current affairs programme, Weekend World, which used it as theme music, specifically a tub-thumping section that gives way to an organ motif played by the late Steve Knight.<\/p>\n

Leslie West Nantucket Sleighride – YouTube
\n\"Leslie<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

In the end Nantucket Sleighride would hold bitter-sweet memories for West, after Gail shot and killed Felix in 1983.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were terrible problems with heroin in Mountain,\u201d said the guitarist, who himself died in 2020. \u201cIn the beginning they were a great husband and wife team, but when the dope started she got the hook in him and it was out of control. It went from really good to, \u2018What the fuck is going on?!\u2019 Heroin ruined the band for sure, and throwing Gail into the mix made it even worse.<\/p>\n

\u201cHopefully the fans didn\u2019t know about all that bullshit. But when you go behind the music and understand the power of the flowers of evil you see how awful it became. It took me years to recover from that period and it took a toll. I paid a heavy price.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally published in Classic Rock issue 190 (October 2013)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Mountain went into the Record Plant studios in autumn 1970 to put the finishing touches to their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":{"0":"post-593585","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}