Chords for Leslie West - Felix Pappalardi (3 of 8)

_ _ _ _ _ He produced the Vagrants Atlantic Record Sentiment.
He conducted Dinah Shore's
Orchestra.
Remember Dinah Shore?
He conducted a 90-piece orchestra at the
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
I knew nothing.
So with all he knew and
what I didn't know, that was a good combination in the beginning.
He
produced the Vagrants.
I see this guy come in and look like Sonny Bono.
I
didn't know, you know, but he showed me some stuff on the guitar.
I played crap
guitar, man.
I listened to some of that stuff.
But it was the beginning of, you
know, there's got to be a beginning.
I didn't sound like I do right out
of the chute, you know.
And later on, I think he was producing now Goodbye Cream.
They were broken up.
And I had this group, went in the studio.
We didn't have
enough material.
He says to me, I don't have enough time to write songs with you.
I've got to go, you know, Goodbye Cream.
I said, well, what am I gonna do?
He says,
well, maybe if you, this is Vagrants, maybe if you guys break up, if you start
something new, give me a call.
Maybe it wouldn't be the worst thing that could
happen.
So now I'm really heartbroken.
Jesus Christ, here goes [C] this.
He goes over
to England, comes back, [N] and I don't know what the hell happened.
Now he's
producing Jack Bruce's songs for Taylor.
This is Jack's first album after
Cream Breakers.
And I'm in New York putting a group together with a jazz
drummer, organ player, no bass, and me.
So I call Felix in England, or he called me
from Jack's house.
I'm playing him one of the blues songs over the phone.
He says,
man, that really sounds great.
He said, I'll be back in a couple of weeks.
We're going
to the studio, blah, blah, blah.
Going to the studio with these guys, Felix says,
something's not right.
I said, oh, here we go again.
So broke that group up.
The only
thing he kept was the organ player, you know, I kept was the organ player, Norman
Landsberg, who helped me write Long Red, and he went out to play with the Pointer
Sisters, but the drummer he didn't like.
He was a jazz drummer.
Felix's partner says,
look, Bud Prager, he says, if you don't do something with Leslie, he's gonna probably
kill himself.
So why don't you play bass?
So Felix says, I'll give it a try.
And we did
my first album, Leslie West Mountain, you know, with all those songs on it, which,
you know, I'm shocked, you know, Jay-Z's 99 Problems, that's my song.
It's Long Red,
he took and sampled with Billy Squier's The Stroke.
The same song Kanye West took,
wrote two songs, The Glory and Barry Bonds.
And Common took the same damn song, and it
sold around six, seven million altogether.
They're on my wall, but that stuff, that
one, that song was written in 1969.
You know, so Felix is now not in the group,
but he played bass on the album, produced it.
All of a sudden, he says, well, now the
album really sounds good, what are you gonna do?
I said, well, let's go on the road.
He
never really toured in the group, he was a folkie from the Venice Village, you know,
and he says, well, how do you think you'll do?
How do you think we'll do?
He's asking
me, like I had a clue.
Oh, we'll be great, man, we'll be great.
They never had, like,
a producer become a musician.
They had a lot of musicians become, I'm making this stuff
up.
And sure enough, that was it.
At the time, I thought, this guy's incredible.
Because,
don't forget, Fresh Cream was already an album, and then they, Amon Erdogan was the executive
producer, and then all of a sudden, now they have Felix doing Disraeli Gears.
If you look
at the Cream video about all this, they credit what Felix was keeping, you know, making songs,
even though Wheels of Fire was a masterpiece, you know.
They were our studio songs, you
know, and some of the best songs.
And I was really, I couldn't believe how talented Felix
was, you know, musically.
I knew nothing, you know, so he said to me, you just [F#m] play,
you know, and I'll figure out.
And he, you know, it worked.
I learned a lot of what not
to do because of him, [G] and I learned a lot what to do because of him.
So, he was like
that in the beginning, and all of a sudden, things got, you know.
It became a war?
No, it became, drugs came into it and screwed everything up, you know.
With both of you?
Yeah.
And then_ Everyone, actually.
Everybody, but this particular.
And then he didn't want to go on the road anymore, so
I was just starting out.
I flew over to England and called Jack Bruce, who he introduced me
to, you know.
And then we were playing Carnegie Hall, West Bridge and Lang, with no record.
Clive Davis came down and signed us. _ _