By Martin Popoff

In the consensus of many, that is indeed the utterance, that Mountain, through its seminal Climbing! And Nantucket Sleighride albums in '70 and '71 respectively, became America's first heavy metal band. Now those records, in addition to the band's Best Of Mountain (each went gold in America) are being reissued with bonus tracks. As well, the band is touring (the Toronto date is TONIGHT - March 25 at Club 279), in conjunction with a new DVD called Mystic Fire, also the name of the band's latest studio album.

"Well, you know, the funny thing is," begins guitarist, vocalist and warhorse Leslie West, "I'm a blues player but I didn't really have roots in the blues. My roots were The Who, Hendrix, Cream. And it's funny, I start filming this TV show for VH1 Classic that they called Metal Mania, that I'm hosting. And I got it because most of the groups cited Mountain as the first American heavy metal group, even though we weren't. I didn't know it was called heavy metal then. I mean, it's nice that Ritchie Blackmore, Alice Cooper, Sammy Hagar has really great things to say about us. At the time, I just liked plugging the guitar in and feeling my balls vibrate. It's different from playing soft music. And I'm into the dynamics of playing loud then getting soft, like an orchestra. But there's nothing like... not that it hurts your ears but it's like, it fills you up."

With respect to the Sony/Legacy reissues, Leslie comments that "the way they remixed them really sounds good. Plus we gave them a couple of new cuts for each one of the new albums. And I'm really excited about it because Sony is really excited about it. Besides that, I think they are releasing Delaney and Bonnie with Eric Clapton - Super Sessions and a Stephen Stills album. It was the sales department that had this meeting and they were looking for stuff that was big sellers, because that's the name of the record business now. And they asked me if I wanted to get involved in it. And you know, it's great to reissue them because we could turn on a lot of fans who might not be aware of them or have forgotten them."

In closing, we offer this little bit of advice: if Mountain ever asks you to audition for the band, don't bother. You won't win the gig.

"Recently we played in Hollywood at the House Of Blues," explains Leslie. "I had a contest and in the afternoon I invited all these guitar players down, like American Idol. I said 'All right, you come down and audition and then I'll pick someone to play with us at night.' So at the show after the first songs I said 'All right, I'm going to pick the winner now.' And the winner is, let me see, Ed... Van Halen. And I brought him out and the place went nuts; it was great."