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 w...