What is the true story behind Mountain’s ‘Nantucket Sleigh Ride’?
in times like these, when the pop charts are focus-grouped, media trained and tuned for mass consumption at an almost military level of precision, I can’t help but be slightly envious of a different time. One that I absolutely wasn’t there for and probably have an entirely false level of understanding of. One when a monstrously heavy hard rock group like Mountain were a genuine commercial concern. Despite writing songs like ‘Tired Angels’, a Lord Of The Rings-themed tribute to Jimi Hendrix, and having all the sex appeal of a Waffle House kitchen.
To be clear. I’m not one to romanticise the past. The early 1970s weren’t all sunshine and rainbows. I’m sure they weren’t even mostly sunshine and rainbows, just ask literally any woman that was there. I’m also sure they’d probably find their niche today, ‘Mississippi Queen’ is a certified banger, after all. However, there’s a difference between the Mastodon level of cult success they’d have today, and the fact that these lads took an album about whaling and made a Gold record out of it.
By 1971, the Long Island rockers had released their aforementioned breakout hit and their debut album Climbing!, and were working on their follow-up album. The band had barely been together two years and already cracks were beginning to show in the band’s unity. While their initial material had been a fairly democratic affair, bassist, vocalist and producer Felix Pappalardi had started to take full control of the band along with his girlfriend, fellow producer and lyricist Gail Collins.
Credit where it’s due: their creative control led to the creation of their second album, Nantucket Sleighride. The record, named after what happens when a harpooned whale pulls the boat that struck it along the water, was built around its title track, a song that only gets darker the more you follow the story behind it. On the surface, it’s a retelling of a true story involving the 19th-century whaling ship The Essex. In an interview with Classic Rock Magazine, guitarist Leslie West elaborated on why the title track has the parenthesis ‘…(To Owen Coffin)’.
He says, “Felix came up with the idea, and Gail wrote the lyrics. Owen Coffin was the youngest guy in the long boat they sent to harpoon the sperm whale. They got dragged out to sea and were close to starvation, so they drew straws, and the kid got the short one. They ate him.” While the song is a fictionalised account, it’s a tragically true story, with corroborating stories published by the five survivors of the 17 sailors who embarked on the journey. The story swept across the nation, inspiring the writer Herman Melville to write the novel Moby Dick as a result.
However, as is always the case with story-songs like this, it wasn’t just the story at hand inspiring the song. West spoke further about this in the same interview, saying, “The opening lines, ‘Goodbye, little Robin-Marie, don’t try following me/Don’t cry little Robin-Marie, ’cos you know I’m coming home soon,’ were about herself and addressed the fact that Felix was cheating with a girl called Robin-Marie.” Despite it though, the band still found a way of turning this into one of the best hard rock jams of the year.
Considering it was 1971, and banging hard rock jams were as common as flares at the time, that’s saying a hell of a lot.
