West Bruce and Laing

The power trio supergroup West, Bruce & Laing formed in 1972 after the break-up of the blues-based, proto-heavy metal band Mountain. Leslie West, the group’s singer and guitarist, and Corky Laing, Mountain’s drummer, joined forces with former Cream bassist Jack Bruce, a teaming that made sense as Mountain owed a serious debt to Cream for their sound, and former Mountain bassist Felix Pappalardi had produced Cream’s album Disraeli Gears. West, Bruce & Laing’s 1972 debut, Why Dontcha, contained a slab of heavy blues-soaked tracks with firey solos from West. The jam-heavy approach was repeated for 1973’s Whatever Turns You On, which contained songs such as “Shifting Sands” and “November Song”. The trio splintered shortly thereafter, just before the release of 1974’s Live ‘N’ Kickin’, a live album that showcased the group’s excessive music approach by spreading only four songs out over its 37-minute running time.

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