(GP)When you first learn leads, did you work off of chords?
(GP)リードギターを学び出した時、コードは既に修得していたのでしょうか?
(LW)Always off chords. Because all my rhythms, they’re line chords. I don’t just play chords, and I don’t just play lines. I play lines into chords or off chords. And they always do resolve into a lead if you take them far enough.
(GP)What were your favorite chords to work around?
(GP)好みのコードはありましたか?
(LW)I don’t know the names of all the chords. [Picks up guitar and plays a partial A chord.] I call this The Who A – it’s a modal chord, neither major or minor. So you can play like this [plays a country lick in A] – that’s legit – or a minor [plays a bluesy riff, then quotes the descending flatpicked pattern in Cream’s “Badge”]. I like to play in E. I never learned to use these fingers, either [points to his left-hand middle and little fingers]. I only use these two [indicates index and ring fingers, then plays a solo]. Now, I can use these other fingers like this [uses all four fingers to play chords and do a scale-like line], but I don’t play jazz, though. I hate jazz. [Launches into Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five.”] I like following the basic, simple chords.
(GP)Like that piece “Guitar Solo” on a couple of the albums.
(GP)2枚のアルバム(Flowers of EvilとTwin Peaks)に納められた「Guitar Solo」のようなやつです。
(LW)Oh, by myself? Kill some time onstage. You know, it’s funny. That thing, I think, got me my record deal. We were playing out in Long Island with Blood, Sweat & Tears.
(LW)Yeah. No – this was Mountain, but it was an organ player and a drummer that I had dug up. And this was the first gig of Mountain. Friday we played with Jeff Beck – my manager was the promoter, so he threw us on the show. I played with Jeff Beck on a Friday, and we sucked. No bass player – foot pedals on the organ, like jazz-rock. That’s why I hate jazz – I’m telling you right now. Bad memories. And I thought, “Oh, shit. Thank God Felix isn’t coming tonight.” So what I did was, there was this group that he was managing, and I got my manager to put them on the show and paid them a lot of money. So I knew that Felix would think, “Wow, I gotta come and see my own group if they’re making that kind of bread.” And he came all the way out to Long Island. I got him to see us because we were going on after his group, and they couldn’t touch the equipment, so I knew he had to wait. And he saw me get two standing ovations that night, and nobody knew who I was. So he told me to get rid of the drummer and organist, and that’s how I did my very first album. He came in and said, “Well, I’ll get a drummer and I’ll play bass,” and that was that.
(GP)How long after this was the Leslie West Mountain album cut?
(GP)それからどれくらい経って「Leslie West Mountain」のアルバムを録音したのですか?
(LW)Two weeks. I had all the songs. I’d been working on them. It was just me and Felix and Norman Smart. I had a guy I was writing with, John Ventura – he wrote the lyrics and I wrote the music. “Long Red” was one of them.
(LW)No. I didn’t know how. I really didn’t. That was the beginning of it all. You know, Eric said in an interview that he hasn’t really advanced on lead much, and he said he did that because he got into songwriting. He stopped playing lead as opposed to sitting down and trying to write. And I can respect that, because he’s come up with some nice tunes.
(LW)Mm hmm. West, Bruce & Laing, over in England when we were putting that group together. The rehearsal tapes that we did, which nobody ever really got to hear, were great. It was the first nights we had gotten together, and everybody was feeling great. It was coming together. We had done each other’s songs. We had done “Theme from an Imaginary Western,” all of Jack’s stuff. He did some of mine. Hearing him sing “Mississippi Queen” is incredible! And those were the original tapes. Yeah, I really thought I really gave on that. That’s what I was trying to do.
(LW)うーむ、West, Bruce & Laingかな、、イギリスに行ってグループとして初めて音を出した時のことだ。その時のリハーサルのテープ、誰一人耳にしていないやつ、は凄かった。それは俺たちが一緒になった最初の夜で、皆が最高と感じていた。正に一つになったって感じだった。お互いの曲を演奏し合ったんだ。Theme from an Imaginary Westernを演り、Jackの曲を全て演った。彼も俺の曲を何曲か演った。彼がMississippi Queenを歌ったのを聴いたときは、凄かったぜ! 全て録音していたんだ。俺は俺自身が本当に乗ってるって思った。それが正にやりたかったことだった。
(GP)How long before that had Jack left Cream?
(GP)JackがCreamを去るどのくらい前だったのですか? (ボケた質問・・・)
(LW)Well, the last group he was with was the Jack Bruce Band with Larry Coryell and Mitch Mitchell, for that solo album of his. But he hadn’t done anything. This was the first rock and roll band since Cream.
(LW)彼がその前にやっていたのは、Larry Coryell と Mitch Mitchellがメンバーの「Jack Bruce Band」で、彼のソロアルバムの為のバンドだった。でも(その時点では)まだ何も出来ていなかった。Cream以降で初のロックバンドだったがね。
(GP)What did you feel, playing with him?
(GP)彼とプレイして、そんな気持ちでしたか?
(LW)I was feeling on top of the world.
(LW)世界の頂点に立った、って気持ちだった。
(GP)Did you hit it off right away?
(GP)直ぐに意気投合しましたか?
(LW)Mm hmm. I met him at the Fillmore, when Mountain played with Jack. What happened was Stigwood didn’t tell Jack he wasn’t headlining. Mountain was headlining. And Felix took very great pride in the fact that our name was over Jack Bruce’s name. Jack had to come to the Fillmore and see on the marquee that he wasn’t headlining, and he was real mad. He’d never met me, but he saw Felix’s name over his, and he said, “Whoa!” So Jack came in and did his set, and he did “Sunshine of Your Love” and wouldn’t come back for the encore. And the place was going bananas. I never saw anybody go over like that in my life. First time I’d seen him since Cream. I said, “Shit. How are we gonna go on now?” And he said he [imitates Bruce’s Scottish accent] “didn’t have any more fuckin’ tunes. We haven’t rehearsed enough.” I said, “Whoa! I like that guy!” Between shows, Felix wouldn’t talk to him. But I was talking to him. Jack asked me to show Coryell how I get the sound, because he was playing a little amp that wasn’t big enough for the Fillmore. So I let him use all my Sunns. And he went out to Sunn and he bought the same Sunn amps. I was solid with Jack, and we hit it off right away. Yeah, it was great.
(LW)うーむ。Jackに(初めて)会ったのはフィルモアだった、MountainがJackと共演した時のことだ。何が起こったかって言うと、(Robert)Stigwood(Jackのマネージメント、Robert Stigwood Organizationの社長)がJackに「トリ」じゃないってことを言わなかったんだ。Mountainが「トリ」だった。で、FelixはJack Bruceの名前の上に俺達の名前(=Mountain)があることを物凄く誇りに感じていた。Jackはフィルモアに来て、マーキーで自分が「トリ」でない事を見なければならなかった、そして怒り狂ったんだ。彼は俺に会ったことは一度もなかったが、Felixの名前が自分の名前より上にあるのを見て(マーキーにはMountain – Leslie West & Felix Pappalardiと書かれていた筈)、彼は言った、「ええーーーーっ」。それで、Jackは彼のセットをこなし、「Sunshine of Your Love」を最後に演ってアンコールには応えなかった。「まさか」って感じだった。あんなに荒れた人を見たのは人生で初めてだった。Cream以降で初めて彼を見たって言うのに、あんなだった。で、俺は「なんてこった。俺達は今からどうすりゃいいんだ?」って言ったんだ。で、彼は(Jackのスコットランド訛りを真似ながら)「もうこれ以上なにもやらない。リハーサルが足りなかったんだ」って言った。俺は「ええっ、あんなに凄い連中でも(そうなんだ)!」って言った。ショーの合間では、Felixは彼に話しかけようとしなかった。だけど、俺は彼に話しかけたんだ。Jackは俺がどうやってあんな音を出しているかを(Larry)Coryellに教えてやって欲しい、って頼んだんだ、なぜなら、彼は小さなアンプを使っており、フィルモアでは全く不十分だったから。で、俺はLarryに自分のSunnを使ってもらった。その後、彼はSunnを訪れ、俺と同じセットを購入したんだ。俺はJackと強固な仲で、凄く上手く行ってたんだ。そう、素晴らしかった。
(GP)Did he play with you that night?
(GP)その夜は、Jack と一緒に演ったのですか?
(LW)Did we jam? No. I didn’t play with Jack until we went to England. We went over to his house for his birthday, and me and him went upstairs to play in the studio up there. He was playing piano and I was playing guitar. I said, “Hey. One day we gotta play together.” So when I went to England with Corky after Mountain broke up, I knew who I was gonna call, but I wasn’t sure. I knew if I called Jack, I wouldn’t have to call anybody else, because there’s the group – me and Corky and Jack. And I called Joe Cocker and I called somebody else, did that whole thing – we would have had to get this guy, that guy. So I said I’ll call Jack, and he said yes. He didn’t even care who the drummer was. I told him I had one. He had some dates left to do with Jon Heisman and Chris Spedding, John Marshall. And he canceled them. We started the group. The fondest thing I have to remember about all this is putting that together.
(LW)Never. Except Felix. One day he told me that when Cream were playing in a club in England, the set was over about 4:00 in the morning. People started leaving. All of a sudden they started turning back to come in. It turned out that Jack had dove into the drumset, strangling Ginger. They had a fight, a real bad fight.
(LW)Ginger was hitting him with sticks in the head during the show. Who knows? Nobody knows. But they created such a great crowd of people coming back to see what the commotion was. Yeah, he told me that. Oh, and one time Felix had a fight with Ginger. There was an article where Felix said that Jack was the most talented writer in the band, and Ginger thought he was. [Laughs.] And he got mad at Felix for saying it! He fucking came at Felix at the studio, man, in an alley, waiting. He said [in British accent], “C’mon, man. We’re gonna go it.” They started wresting and shit, and Ginger pulled a knife on him. Really, that’s what Felix said – I swear. Felix said he took him and got him down. I tend to doubt that. I saw Mr. Baker, and he is a bad-looking and tough motherfucker! Oh, boy. That’s all I use to do is ask Jack stories about Eric, and I asked Felix stories about Jack. And they seemed to both tell me stories about Ginger.
(LW)He got along better with Ginger than Jack. Jack was sort of a schooled musician, and Eric wasn’t. But Eric could play anything any schooled musician could. And Jack wrote “Theme from an Imaginary Western” before Cream was together, and Eric didn’t want to do it because he said it was too complicated. And that was my favorite song for doing a solo of all time. So I sort of wonder about Eric in that light, because why would he not want to do that song, unless he just resented Jack too much. You know how Cream got signed to Atlantic Records?
(LW)彼は、JackよりGingerと上手く行ってたようだ。Jackは学のあるミュージシャンで、Ericはそうではなかった。しかし、Ericは学のあるミュージシャンができることを何でもやってのけた。で、JackがCream以前に書いたTheme from an Imaginary Westernについて、Ericは複雑すぎるっていう理由で演りたがたなかった。結果、その曲は、俺がソロを弾くのに最もお気に入りな曲になった。なので、EricがJackに相当憤慨していない限り、彼があの曲をやりたがらない理由が見つからないんだ。ところで、CreamはどうしてAtlantic Recordと契約したか知ってるか?
(GP)No.
(GP)いいえ。
(LW)They were part of the Bee Gees deal. Stigwood had the Bee Gees, and the only way they would give the Bee Gees to Atlantic was if they took this other group that he had, Cream. A throw-in! Isn’t that something? What to do with the group? They were supposedly the crème de la crème of English studio musicians. I’d never seen anybody playing rock and roll with double bass drums, except for [Keith] Moon. Yeah, that was a turning point in my life, seeing them.