West, Bruce & Laing
Why Dontcha

THE REVIEW

What was the renowned Scottish bassist Jack Bruce doing in 1972 with the chubby New York guitarist Leslie West and the Canadian drummer Corky Laing? Simple: the producer of Cream, Bruce's famous 60s band with Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker, was an Italian-American named Felix Pappalardi. After the disbandment of Cream, Felix quickly got to work by returning home, discovering a hefty young man from Long Island with a very heavy and distorted guitar strumming yet a melodic attitude worthy of the much-acclaimed Clapton (even better, to my taste...). Together, they formed a proto-hard rock quartet called Mountain, in which Pappalardi was also the bassist while Laing was hired to play the drums... In short, the three knew each other well, and since Mountain was adrift at that time and Cream had ceased to exist for over three years while Bruce's solo career was going so-so, the idea of this trio was born.

However, it didn't lead to anything special: during those years, hard rock bands of unprecedented talent such as Zeppelin, Purple, Sabbath, Grand Funk were in full swing and highly inspired... the WB&L trio didn't even tickle them, failing to match, not just the glory of Cream, but even the modest and solid fame achieved by Mountain. As a result, the project had a relatively short life: spanning two studio albums and a live epitaph.

This is the debut work, the best and most sold at the time. West's harsh and gritty voice and Bruce's more stentorian and refined voice alternate behind the microphone, and there is a democratic division of duties from the compositional side as well. Thus, songs with very different structures follow one another, and it's easy to distinguish the heavy and primitive rock'n'roll of the great Leslie from the more broad-scope tracks, sometimes slightly jazzy, other times enriched with keyboards, cellos, and more, which the bassist has always loved to propose. However, there isn't an absolutely consistent piece, a peak of inspiration that could carry the entire work and make it memorable over time. In other words, for people who did great things just a few years earlier, this release is considered disappointing.

However, the honor of arms is due to these two veterans, former drug-addicted pioneers of rock blues still capable of taking the stage and reviving their works and myth, even if the repeated excesses of drugs and alcohol have long taken a toll on both (Bruce lives thanks to a transplanted liver, West had a leg amputated due to diabetes), and a difficult old age is looming for them. This is not the ideal album to remember them when they were young and strong; better to gather other earlier works, but it also functions decently as a relic of an unrepeatable era for rock.