Leslie West
Unusual Suspects

“Leslie West is a great guy, a real madman with two wide-open eyes like a freaking maniac. When I introduced him to (my guitarist) Wurzel at a Convention... they vanished into the men's restroom, both of them in the same stall—which wasn’t easy, considering Leslie’s build. Some coke fell onto one of West’s shoes and he said: I don’t want you to think badly of me, Wurzel, but I’m afraid you’ll have to bend down over me now! So Wurzel had to go down and snort the coke directly off his boot!

Leslie West had no patience with that Convention (of record executives). I can’t stay here, Lemmy, he told me, These are all just damned peasants!”

“I know!, I replied. I’m trying to get out of here myself!”

“Well, I’m leaving, he said. It saddens me, Lemmy, to leave you here alone, but I have to go! He headed for his car and left. I couldn’t blame him. Nobody had ever done fuck-all for him, none of his record labels. Here’s a guy who should be number one and instead he’s been ignored for years by the hit machine…”.

These words left by the insightful Lemmy of Motorhead in his book “White Line Fever” are, to my mind, the best testament to this great man—the name says it all—of red, white and blue rock-blues.

Guitar-wise, he had the gift of “singing” with his instrument, meaning he was able to put together solos and counterpoints that wove melodies with a beginning, a development, and an ending. It wasn’t just a fruit salad of licks piled one after the other on the blues pentatonic scale. And then there was his touch: he clearly used very hard and small picks, so his big fingers were involved as well, giving a crazy attack to his picking and filling the sound with aggressive and fertile harmonics. Driven by a heavily distorted tone that easily triggered feedback and unwanted noises, he still managed to control everything with utmost precision and cleanliness.

His voice was also a trademark: gutsy, angry, and hoarse as much as—if not more than—other peers like Johnny Winter, George Thorogood, Steve Marriott, Tom Keifer, Brian Johnson. A singing style that was imperfect but totally “in character”, a truly uncompromising rock’n’roll singing voice.

To write these things I am listening again to one of his many solo albums, released in 2011 as the penultimate of his career, four years before his death. It’s the usual record you would expect from West if you know him—an excellent work with his typical seismic rock tracks interspersed with some sweet strumming on the acoustic guitar, which he always brought along as an alternative to that massive, mighty, unforgettable electric attack of his.

Many of his colleagues and admirers step in to give him a hand—West was loved and admired by everyone in the guitar world. There are cameos by Joe Bonamassa, Steve Lukather, Billy Gibbons, Slash, Zakk Wylde, Del Bronham from the Stray. Among the tracks in the setlist there’s a Beatles cover (Lennon’s side, of course: “I Feel Fine”), and another one by the ancient master and blues pioneer Willie Dixon.

A little curiosity: on bass guitar here we find the valiant Fabrizio Grossi, a musician from Milan who escaped to the United States in time and made it, becoming part of the “in crowd” of U.S.A.-made rock blues. I presume he was introduced to West by their common friend Gibbons.