Felix Pappalardi, discussing music and critics:
"There's good music and there's bad music. I intend to spend a lot of time in the former category. I believe that what's going to happen will be initiated by individual musicians rather than cults."

"That's the thing about contemporary music. People have the audacity to lay down to everybody else in the country and the world who is important and who isn't important. And it might be well for these people to know, if they had any education, any musical education, I mean, and I'm a stickler about that, 'cause I don't believe that they do, is that Johann Sebastian Bach was rated eleventh of composers in Europe in 1735. He died in 1750 and emerges today, of course, as the greatest of the era. So I believe that criticism and critics, they've always been the same. They're full of shit. If they weren't they'd be out playin' and they wouldn't have time to criticize anybody".

on Country music:
"Somebody asked me a year ago if country music was going to be a big thing. I always thought it was a big thing".

on John Sebastian:
"Sebastion is a groove. A phenomenal harmonica player. He and Charlie McCoy are still my favorite harmonica players".

on Mountain and his bass playing roots:
"My basic education was in classical music. My first instrument was a piano. My second was a viola. I play a little guitar. I didn't actually start playing bass, which I'm playing now, until I actually started playing with Tim Hardin in the Village, where I started playing electric bass with him. And trumpet at the University of Michigan, where I went to study conducting and music literature. So these other things - like going down to the Village after I got out of the army and being exposed to folk music, becoming close friends with Mississippi John Hurt and playing with him, and playing with people like Tom Paxton, Joan Baez, so many people in the folk field - widened an already pretty broad musical education. I don't feel I've arrived at any complete thought yet. I'm still looking. And Mountain is a reflection of that thought process.

I met Leslie (West) about a month after I had completed "Disraeli Gears" with Cream. I was frankly knocked out with Leslie's approach to his guitar and equally knocked out by his approach to me, which was, I would say, unlike most of the people I've met: not very loud and not very, what I consider, sane. Leslie does have respect for me, but that's not the whole thing. The thing is I can be with Leslie over an extended period of time and not want to beat him up. I like him. He's my friend.

"We plan to evolve a tremendous amount from where we are now. Leslie's a terrific acoustic guitar player, and we did a lot of things on his album with acoustic instruments.

*The function of the organ in our band is not what Booker T's is in Booker T and the M.G.'s. He plays texture. You're not totally all the time aware of the fact that he's doing that, but if the organ stopped, you'd miss it. It's very subtle. It's not the kind of thing that sticks out. But like in rehearsal a lot of times he'll stop, and it's just a hole that you could drive a truck through.

"We're going to work on a couple of things where we sing together. It's one of the things that I think we have that's very unique. Leslie's got a very edgy voice and mine is silken.

"I just hope we can please a lot of people".

*(Webmasters note: Here Felix is referring to multi-talented original band member, Steve Knight, who provided wonderful keyboard colorations using the organ, piano and mellotron. Perhaps one of his most outstanding improvisational contributions was on the 17+ minute live version of "Nantucket Sleighride" found on the "Mountain Live - The Road Goes Ever On" album.)