Mountain - Mountain Live: The Road Goes Ever On (1972)

"Mountain Live: The Road Goes Ever On" is the fourth album by hard rock band Mountain. Released following the band's first breakup in 1972, Windfall Records would compile the album using old live material. Mountain would later reform in 1974. The title comes from J. R. R. Tolkien's novel The Hobbit.

If you want a full album's worth of Mountain in concert, this is the one to have. It showcases the best of what it was that made Mountain as strong a concert attraction as a studio one in the original quartet's brief but memorable existence. "Long Red" (a track from Leslie West's solo exercise, "Mountain," of early 1969) leads off genially, but then the band gets down to serious business. West's "Waiting To Take You Away" pries open a hole for what would become in due course the power ballad and rounds it off with some pretty, spiky guitar playing. "Crossroader," as derivative a blues as can be found, gets a roaring take thanks to West's howling slide guitar and Felix Pappalardi's rumbling bass. The real treat, though, is an extended performance of "Nantucket Sleighride" which surges, ebbs, and pulls firmly into port with some of the band's loveliest and most ethereal playing. This was the last of four albums from the original working quartet; the ultimate verdict has to be that, though they made some lovely music and at their best fired a rare lyricism into what became heavy metal music, Mountain never quite lived up to their promise in the end. They did go on, of course, in a slightly new configuration a couple of years after the original band broke up, but it was far from the same.

Track listing

1.  "Long Red"  (West/Pappalardi/Ventura/Landsberg)  - 5:44

2.  "Waiting to Take You Away"  (West)  - 4:40

3.  "Crossroader" (Pappalardi/Collins)  - 6:22

4.  "Nantucket Sleighride" (Pappalardi/Collins)  - 17:33

Released:  April 1972

Recorded at:  Woodstock Festival, Bethel, New York, August 16, 1969 (Tracks 1-2)

Genre:  Hard rock

Length:  34:28

Label:  Island Records

Producer:  Felix Pappalardi

Personnel

Leslie West - guitar, vocals

Felix Pappalardi - bass, vocals

Corky Laing - drums

Steve Knight - organ