From an aspiring classical conductor to producer of Cream albums to super-strong bassist for the high-powered Mountain was a much more logical progression than it might at first seem. As the son of a doctor in New York City, Pappalardi grew up in an educated environment, one regularly supplied with the music of the masters. "Like many doctors," he recalls, "my father loved music. He played in a string quartet with three other doctors, and every Wednesday they'd get together at our house. It was really great."

At the age of five Felix began studying music at the Diller-Quaile School of Music. From 13 to 17 he worked on viola at the High School of Music and Art in New York City, and then went on to the University of Michigan to study brass and strings, and to focus primarily on orchestral and choral conducting. Greatly in love with the music of Bach and other Baroque composers, Pappalardi threw himself totally into their music, jumping at every possible opportunity to conduct their works, becoming the director of several chamber orchestras and choirs in the process. At one time he spent five months working on a piece for orchestra and choir which he then conducted at the Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor, the same hall to which he returned ten years later as the leader of Mountain.

Though maturing as a conductor and director, he was neglecting his formal studies to such an extent that after five years he and the university, at the latter's request, went their separate ways. "I was bounced." No longer a student, Felix went into the Army Reserves the last half of 1962.

"When I got out in December," he says, "I went to every door I knew to try getting back into conducting, but there were simply no opportunities at all. I had the best letters of recommendation from all the top conductors and teachers, but there was nothing. I got kind of depressed about the whole thing. I was living back at home, and had to take jobs doing things like selling hi-fi systems and going door-to-door with encyclopedias." More and more often he found himself tossing his guitar into the car and heading for Greenwich Village, the area of New York City which has been the Mecca for countless artists and musicians for the past 150 years.

Felix recalls those days with fondness. "Finally I moved there permanently, and started hanging around with the musicians. Then I joined a band as the arranger and musical director. It was the Mugwumps - Cass Elliott, Zal Yanovsky, John Sebastian, people like that. They were the first rock band there, and nobody knew what to do with them. I was taking all kinds of jobs as musical director and, like, tutor for maybe 12-14 groups a week, you know, rehearsing, writing arrangements, stuff like that." He was working with people like Richie Havens, Buffy Saint-Marie and Tim Hardin. And when he wasn't mapping out some band's harmonies, he was working the many tiny folk clubs that dotted the Village. "It was the most exciting period of my life. I was learning constantly, and learning is the greatest kick of all."

Perhaps ultimately the biggest event of this period, though, was in 1967 when Felix was asked to produce a single on Atlantic for a group called The Vagrants, which featured a gigantic lead guitarist named Leslie West. When Cream broke up Pappalardi knew it was time to do something on his own, to make the move he had only been thinking about. He waited to produce Jack Bruce's Songs for a Tailor, then in late 1969 joined with Leslie to create Mountain, a quartet named after the guitarist's first album title.

On stage the most obvious difference between this 32-year old bassist and his contemporaries is his instrument itself. Pappalardi went to the Gibson Company to encourage them to remake the old violin-shaped solidbody, because the one he had was stolen and he simply couldn't find another. The company finally did reproduce the violin bass, calling it an EB-1, and Felix has to be its biggest booster. "I just love it," he claims, "particularly the weight. I really like having a heavy instrument in my hands. It has more powerful pickups, too. And it only has two knobs. Man, I hate instruments with knobs all over. I want it all as simple as possible, nothing between me and my playing." About the only modifications on his bass are a lowered string action and the lack of hardware. "I take everything off that I can," he explains, "so I can have as much room to get around as possible." His strings are Dan Armstrongs, "they're super heavies," which he changes as seldom as possible. "Once they get broken in, I leave them as long as I can. I've only broken three, and each time it was the 6th string."

The amp system Felix uses is the Sunn equipment that he claims was first designed for Jimi Hendrix. "It was souped up some more by our Tom Lyle," he adds, "but I really don't know what he did. Something to do with the top, I think. I'm really not into all that electronic thing. As long as I have the bark, the attack, that I like, everything's fine."

When Pappalardi was born, the middle two fingers of his left hand were fused together, demanding an operation to separate them. Though his third finger still isn't as flexible as normal, Felix doesn't even notice it. "It's been like that all my life, so it's like that's the way fingers are supposed to be. What it does is give me tremendous power in those middle fingers so I can bend strings easily." As his right thumb anchors his picking hand, his left thumb serves the same purpose for the left hand, staying in the accepted position behind the neck and never coming over to fret the strings.

As Mountain's leader, Felix sets the band's style, a style that follows what the bass and drums put down. In that way, Pappalardi's concept of the bass being the root of the band is fully in keeping with the instrument's tradition. "The bass line still functions as it did in Bach's day. It shouldn't get in the way." This connection with tradition is one of the things he feels he contributes most to the group. The man who credits Charles Mingus, Percy Heath and Ray Brown as his favorite bassists says that, "As the oldest cat in the band I can be learning something new from the other guys while laying something from the past on them." Other bass players he likes are Richard Davis, Donald 'Duck' Dunn, and Motown's Jamie Jamison ("that cat really killed me.").

Mountain is an improvisational band, even more so than the traditional jazz groups in New Orleans 50 and 60 years ago. "The first year," Felix explains, "we even called formal rehearsals, but now it all happens as it happens. We'll structure when we're going into certain keys, things like that, but that's all. We might go from one of our regular tunes into 20 minutes of soloing, you know. Maybe in an average set, 40 minutes is straight blowing. Sometimes I bait Leslie by changing the notes in a tune or substituting chords. This'll go on over, say, 10 concerts until he finally gives up and gets into the same thing. There's no talk, he's just got it and we do it. That's when it happens."

While trying to learn to sing and play simultaenously was probably the last time Pappalardi practiced his instrument. When you're either on the road or in the studio most of your life, the is very little time to spend on excersizes and the like, you practice on stage. But when he does find a little extra time, Felix prefers to work on his guitar or on the piano. In fact, most of his writing is done on the piano, though with the band it's usually just a matter of playing a new piece a few times before everyone has it down. "New tunes come from everywhere," Pappalardi feels. "Like riffs in a solo will stick in my mind, and I'll work them out into something. Even mistakes can become new songs. You know, you'll be soloing and taking the music as far out as you can, and you hope you can get back again, so you take the solo even further, looking for the road back, and all of a sudden you know what you'll do, you really weren't stranded. Now that's exciting." While Felix takes care of of most of the new music Mountain comes up with, it's his wife, Gail Collins, who writes the majority of the lyrics.

Felix Pappalardi no longer sees himself hustling Leonard Bernstein for a job as an assistant conductor. In truth, he no longer feels the need. "I'm interested in now," he says, "not in recreating Strauss or Elgar. Sure, I listen all the time to these people, but now I'm conducting in my own way. Mountain is my symphony. I'm doing the same thing the great classical conductors did in their day: I'm conducting the music of my own time."

1972, Guitar Player Publications