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Interview: Leslie West on his first show since leg amputation
"Everything is different. I'm different!"
Joe Bosso, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 4:09 pm GMT
Leslie West soars on stage at BB Kings, 31 January 2012. © Joe Bosso
Soundcheck in New York City: Leslie West in onstage at BB Kings, unleashing paroxysms of sound from his Dean guitar. He's leading his two-piece band, drummer Bobbie Rondinelli and bassist Rev Jones, through a furnace-blast version of Curtis Mayfield's People Get Ready. West's voice is sandpaper-soul, gruff but impassioned, and after a last chorus his fingers take flight, dancing about the instrument with teenage-like agility and a grown man's purpose.
In other words, it's just another pre-show ritual for the guitar legend. Only it's not: West is stuck in a wheelchair. The jeans he's wearing are cut off and hanging lifeless where his right leg once was. Seven months after diabetes-related complications resulted in a life-saving leg amputation, West is playing his first public show. He heaves a sigh into his mic and says "OK, let's get me off of here."
At the same moment, Mike Goldberg, a thickly muscled recording engineer who doubles as West's caretaker/assistant, anticipates this directive and commandeers the guitarist's motorized wheelchair and guides it around the amps and cables and down a steel ramp that leads to a nearby dressing room.
"It sounded good," West says to Goldberg as the door closes behind them. It comes out not entirely as a statement but somewhat of a question. Goldberg assures West that everything sounded great.
"Jesus Christ, it's boiling in here!" West says a few minutes later. He's sipping red wine and a Madras while wiping sweat from his forehead with a paper towel. The windowless dressing room is cramped and stuffy, and West isn't thrilled.
"I'd crack the window, but there isn't one," he says. "Is it too much to ask for some air conditioning or something? And what about that ramp? That thing scares me. They say 'wheelchair-accessible' in all these places, but that doesn't mean 'wheelchair-friendly." Here I've come all this way, I've made it here, and I gotta go break my neck trying to get on stage? I don't know..."
