Nantucket Sleighride
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Album Summary
Nantucket Sleighride came roaring out of Windfall Records in 1971, the second studio offering from Mountain — that magnificent thunder quartet out of New York that had already shaken the foundation with their debut. Produced by the band themselves alongside the legendary Phil Ramone, this record was Mountain at full voltage, capturing Leslie West's massive guitar tone and Felix Pappalardi's commanding bass and production vision in all their heavy blues-rock glory. Corky Laing was locked in tight behind the kit, and Steve Knight's organ work wove through the grooves like a dark, churning current beneath the storm. The album was named for the old whaling term describing the terrifying moment when a harpooned whale drags the boat at full speed across the sea — and brother, that energy is exactly what Mountain put on wax.
Reception
- The album reached #16 on the Billboard 200, cementing Mountain's place among the upper tier of hard rock's commercial heavyweights in the early seventies.
- The title track 'Nantucket Sleighride (For Owen Coffin)' became a cornerstone of rock radio programming, a slow-burning epic that disc jockeys and listeners alike treated as sacred real estate on the airwaves.
- Rock critics of the era recognized the album as a powerful showcase of the band's instrumental depth and their rare ability to blend raw heaviness with genuine musical sophistication.
Significance
- Nantucket Sleighride stands as one of the defining documents of the early seventies hard rock and heavy blues-rock movement, a direct link in the chain between the blues-soaked late sixties and the proto-metal thunder that was coming down the road.
- The album's sprawling, riff-heavy architecture and willingness to let songs breathe and expand helped establish a template for the kind of heavy, organ-driven rock that would influence both progressive rock and the early heavy metal scene for years to come.
- As a statement of artistic ambition from a band operating at their commercial and creative peak, Nantucket Sleighride represents a moment where hard rock proved it could carry weight, emotion, and genuine musical vision all at the same time.
Samples
- Nantucket Sleighride (For Owen Coffin) — the brooding main riff of this epic track has been sampled and interpolated across multiple recordings, and its hypnotic, slow-rolling heaviness has made it one of the more recognizable touchstones from the Mountain catalog in sampling culture.
Tracklist
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A1 Don't Look Around 137
3:42
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A2 Taunta (Sammy's Tune) —
1:00
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A3 Nantucket Sleighride (For Owen Coffin) —
5:49
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A4 You Can't Get Away 123
3:23
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A5 Tired Angels (For J.M.H.) —
4:39
-
B1 The Animal Trainer And The Toad 117
3:24
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B2 My Lady 142
4:31
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B3 Travelin' In The Dark (For E.M.P.) —
4:21
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B4 The Great Train Robbery 127
5:43
Artist Details
Mountain was a thunderous hard rock outfit that rose up out of New York in the late 1960s, anchored by the mammoth guitar work of Leslie West and the production genius of Felix Pappalardi, who had already left his fingerprints on Cream's finest records. These cats were heavy before heavy had a name, laying down a thick, blues-drenched sound that put them right alongside Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath as founding fathers of hard rock and proto-metal, with their classic "Mississippi Queen" burning up the charts in 1970 and their legendary Woodstock performance cementing their place in rock history. Mountain never quite got the mainstream glory they deserved, but every guitarist who ever cranked an amp up to ten owes something to Leslie West's enormous, soulful tone.
