Posted on 06/21/2011 3:59:28 PM PDT by JimC214
Rock guitarist Leslie West, who rose to fame in the '70s power trio Mountain, has had his lower right leg amputated in a life-saving operation related to his diabetes, his wife said on Monday.
West, 65, underwent the emergency surgery after being admitted to a hospital in Biloxi, Mississippi, on Saturday when his leg started to swell and his foot went septic.
"The doctors tried for two days to save it to no avail. The decision to amputate was one that was necessary to save his life as the infection was spreading throughout his body," his wife, Jenni West, said in an email.
"The nursing staff and doctors have taken excellent care of him and should be called angels for their efforts and tenderness they showed us in this time of crisis."
West is expected to recover but faces extensive rehabilitation, a spokesman said.
Mountain is probably best known for its debut 1970 single "Mississippi Queen," a staple of classic rock radio. West has long struggled with his weight and type 2 diabetes. He named one of his solo albums "The Great Fatsby."
His next album, "The Unusual Suspects," featuring such guitarists as Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, Slash of Guns N' Roses and Joe Bonamassa, does not yet have a release date.
"Leslie will, no doubt, bounce back with his unusually bionic blitz of guitarosciousness," Gibbons said in an email. "Leslie will always be playing and standing on higher ground."
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Does he live in MS?
Nice guitar there. Looks like a derivative of the Fender Jaguar, which kind of saddens me, since I despise Fender guitars but I love their amplifiers. (Especially the Twin Reverb I’m using now . . .)
(Name me one non-sinister Explorer . . . ;) )
Why Dontcha? Wasn’t that one ? I think I had this album.
Well, Jethro Tull played standing on one leg, Leslie can too!
(And he plays real rock on a gittah, not an imitation on a flute! Rock on FLUTE?!
Fancy running into you here, you old coot ; )
Hey Babe - long time, huh? :>)
Years! Where you been hiding?
Look for an old live Mountain album - “The Road Goes Ever On” - some really good guitar work.
Nantucket Sleighride got some airplay.
Sorry to hear this. West definitely rocked and i hope he keeps on rockin’.
Thanks — that’s a mid ‘90s Ibanez Talman, a model that hit the market in the early grunge period as kind of a reaction to the pointy headstock style that had dominated for the previous decade. It originally had a humbucker and two lipsticks but I redid it with P90s (Lindy Fralins) and a tele 3-way switch. Crazy as it sounds, it’s probably my best playing guitar, and that’s with stiff competition from the LP and a nice 60s reissue strat. Main amp nowadays is a silverface Bassman through a 2x12 cab with Celestion greenbacks. It’s nice to have decent gear after a couple decades scraping by with whatever I could scrounge together.
Your LP appears to be a Historic reissue of some kind and the finish is just beautiful. That’s an Iced Tea burst, isn’t it?
I'll bet that guitar will be collectible some day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlWEcI6TwMU
Many years in Alaska, returned to my stomping grounds in ‘06.
(Southern reaches of Puget Sound) How about you?
Whoa — very cool. Was it originally a sunburst or was it refinished at some point? For some reason I’m thinking those were only available in black or white in ‘68. And is that a stock pickup with the cover removed or is it a Dimarzio or something?
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