April 17, 1983: Mountain’s Felix Pappalardi Killed by Wife
by Best Classic Bands Staff
Felix Pappalardi in his Mountain days
It was one of those stories so sordid and clichéd that you’d roll your eyes if it had been the plot of a movie: A former rock star gives his wife a gun for protection. She finds out he’s been fooling around with a younger woman, takes said gun and shoots the rock star dead. The End. Roll credits.
It happened though. Felix Pappalardi was the former rock star. Gail Collins Pappalardi was the wife. Her defense was that the shooting was accidental. The jury acquitted her of murder and manslaughter but found her guilty of criminally negligent homicide. She was sentenced to a mere four years and did only two.
Felix Pappalardi was once a big name. Born in The Bronx on Dec. 30, 1939, and classically trained, he’d been a regular among the Greenwich Village folk crowd in the mid-’60s, first as an arranger for singer-songwriters like Tom Paxton and Fred Neil and then producing albums for Joan Baez and the Youngbloods, among others.
His big moment came in 1967 when Cream—the rising British blues-rock trio featuring Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker—hired him to produce their second album. Disraeli Gears catapulted Cream onto rock’s A-list and with it Pappalardi. He also produced their Wheels of Fire and Goodbye albums.
Related: 10 seminal hard rock albums
Pappalardi’s wife, Gail, was also involved somewhat in the creation of Cream music. She co-wrote their songs “Strange Brew” and “World of Pain,” and when Pappalardi moved on to his next endeavor, a new band called Mountain, she was involved with them too—co-writing songs with her husband and contributing her artwork to their album covers. Gail Collins wasn’t just another rock wife; she never wanted to be part of the scenery. She and Felix were a rock power couple in every way.
Mountain (l. to r.): Felix Pappalardi, Leslie West, Corky Laing
Mountain became huge fairly quickly. Pappalardi had produced Mountain, the debut solo album by Leslie West, a plus-sized guitarist (that’s where the band’s name came from) who had formerly led a New York City-area combo called the Vagrants. Out of that solo project grew Mountain the band, featuring West, Pappalardi on bass, keyboardist Steve Knight and drummer N. D. Smart (soon replaced by Corky Laing). They were brand new when they were given a slot at the Woodstock festival—the band’s fourth live appearance—and from there superstardom was theirs.
Their albums—Climbing, Nantucket Sleighride, Flowers of Evil—all sold well and the band notched one bona fide classic rock staple in “Mississippi Queen,” a 1970 hard-rocker that has to place near the top of any list of tunes making optimum use of a cowbell. Mountain is often credited today as one of the bands that paved the way for heavy metal, but their own reign ended only a few years after it had begun, following a U.K. tour in 1972 when tensions, drug abuse and other factors did them in.
Watch Mountain perform “Mississippi Queen” at the N.Y. Pop Festival on Randall’s Island in 1970
Leslie West continued making music in various configurations. (He died in 2020.) But Pappalardi mostly faded from view in the years after Mountain. His hearing was shot from being assaulted night after night by the band’s volume. He continued to do some production work and even joined a re-formed Mountain for a bit, but for the most part, the name Felix Pappalardi was old news by the end of the 1970s.
Gail Collins Pappalardi shortly before her death
On April 17, 1983, though, he was news again. He and his wife had reportedly become serious drug users by that point and although they had what some sources described as an open marriage, apparently it wasn’t that open. When Gail found out that Felix had become serious with a young singer-songwriter, Valerie Merians, she became enraged, reached for the gift her husband had given her, and shot him once in the neck.
As Felix Pappalardi lay on the couple’s bed bleeding to death in his underwear, Gail Collins Pappalardi first called her attorney before dialing the emergency number. When police arrived, she told them she’d been practicing with the firearm, although it was 6 a.m. In court, she broke down on the witness stand, crying and pleading. The judge, aghast, reminded the jury that Gail had shown more concern for herself than Felix when she called her lawyer before the police. The jury shrugged off his admonition.
When Gail Collins Pappalardi was found dead on Dec. 6, 2013, in Ajijic, Mexico, where she’d been undergoing experimental cancer treatments, she was living under an assumed name. In her will she left instructions that her three cats be euthanized, their ashes scattered along with her own.
Related: Our interview with Leslie West
Mountain’s recordings are available here.
13 Comments so far
Jump into a conversationThat is one crazy story I’ve never heard. Wow..just Wow!
I loved Mountain but didn’t know anything about the band. Then I heard Cream read the credits on the album and discovered Felix. Much credit goes to this talented man for many of the songs I still enjoy today, he generated a particular sound that was like the pied piper to me. Thank you Felix and all those associated with him the music they played.
A great band that will be forgotten by many, but not me. They played the long abandoned Eastown Theater in Detroit. They surely were a great band live and Leslie West was imposing with his talent and size on stage.
Joe:
Thanks for bring up the old Eastown, or, should I say the now deceased Eastown Theater.
I saw Mountain there twice, within 30 days of each other.
Loud doesn’t begin to describe the experience, but musically they blew the roof of the venue.
I’m glad I can still hear.
Back in the day I got to see Mountain at an outdoor venue in Bass Lake, In., a bar in Tucson, Az. , and the Morris Civic in South Bend. They never disappointed. Ah the memories!!
I knew The Vagrants (Leslie West) & The Hassles (Billy Joel) back in the mid 60’s. I come from Long Island & these 2 bands were the bands, along with The Young Rascals, that played all the Island clubs. I was only 16 at the time & I knew these bands would be famous. Leslie & Billy were kind & friendly people who trusted their managers & bandmates at the time. Billy got burned by his brother in law big time & Leslie went on to meet Felix who produced his 1st album. I saw Mountain many times & remember the talent of Felix. He played bass, guitar, melotron, piano, vocals & produced many artists & albums. They were known for being one of the loudest rock bands of the day. One night, in Staten Island, around ‘69’ I had 5th row seats and I couldn’t believe how loud it was. Upon leaving & waiting for the ferry to take me back to Wall St. I felt something on the left side of my face. I put my hand on my cheek and felt wax. It was dripping out of my left ear. I am 70 years old now & only have 40% hearing in my left ear as a result of that concert. I wear a hearing aid because of that show but it was a kick ass concert.
As far as Gail Collins goes, I remember the this day back in ‘83’ when she shot Felix & I was phukin angry. I hope she suffered a painful life like Felix did while lying on his bed bleeding to death. She was a selfish junkie that Felix wanted out of his life anyway but waited to long to dump her….Gail Collins is rotting in hell for the crime she got away with. Felix, May you Rest In Peace. Leslie and all of us love you!
Never buy a jealous woman a gun. That’s the moral
Mountain did do a couple of albums in 1974 with Felix and Leslie. I saw them live in Philadelphia together about that time. They were one of the greatest hard rock bands ever!
My Mountain story is thus, 1971 as a freshman at UVM they were one of about 8 bands playing during homecoming weekend. A couple of us did a bunch of chemical entertainment. During Mountain’s thunderous set I was starting to doubt my wisdom when someone handed me a roll of toilet paper. I took it with a questioning look and the guy that handed it pointed to the roll and the to his ears . Ha! Great idea! I’m still almost as deaf as Felix was. On a side note That weekend I got to see Mountain, J Geils, James Gang, Allmans w/ Duane and Berry, Chambers Bros, and probably some others that I have forgotten. The only band I can remember being louder was Mahavishnu a couple years later.
Always known to us as Felix Pepperoni.
“Theme from/for an Imaginary Western” is a magnificent song.
What a beyotch!!! “Make sure to kill my cats because they don’t need to live if I’m not living.” And so Felix doesn’t need to live either. Narcissistic beyotch!!!!
Felix produced a lot by a band called “Natural Gas” in the late 70’s members were Joey Molland of Badfinger Jerry Shirley drummer for Humble pie Mark Clarke of Colosseum and Uriah Heep (co writter of the classic song “the Wizard” and Peter Wood co writer of All Stewart’s Year Of The Cat He played with Stewart, Roger Waters and was a member of Quiver. Great band. However Felix’s production was terrible. The songs sounded like they were recorded from a portable cassette player. The vocals from another room. The lp or the 3 singles never got airplay because of this and the album stiffed. They broke up soon after. Maybe less drugs would have made a difference in the sound quality and saved a talents bad