the bizarre murder of Felix Pappalardi
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Felix Pappalardi’s career would flourish in the 1960’s and 70’s. While the name may not be instantly recognizable, he was instrumental in the success of big named musicians with Guitar Player magazine referring to him as a Giant among Giants. He would produce and write music for the band Cream before joining the group Mountain as their bass player and was co-lead vocalist. But by the 80’s his career and personal life were in a freefall. Couple that with drugs, infidelity, and guns and well you get a pretty devastating result. Not just that, but what happened to his killer is pretty shocking. That’s what we’re going to explore in today’s video.
Let me know in the comments section your thoughts on today’s story.
Born in 1939 in the Bronx to a father who was a doctor, Felix Pappalardi would study piano and violin and soon enough could play virtually any instrument. He would eventually move to Ann Arbor to study music at the University of Michigan. Despite being a good student, he dropped out of school and hit the road playing with bands before joining the folk scene in new york.it was here he met his wife and musician and poet Gail Collins
By the 60’s Pappalardi soon started working as a songwriter before producing albums for the likes of Joan Baez and the Youngbloods. Then in 1967 he began working with supergroup Cream, the british blues band featuring Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce & Ginger Baker. The band was working on their second record Disraeli Gears. Pappalardi would be enlisted to produce the record, but he would also co-write a few songs with the members and how wife, including the tracks Strange Brew & World of Pain
He would continue to work with Creamon their two subsequent records Wheels of Fire and Goodbye. It was by the late 60’s Pappalardi would befriend and work with guitarist Leslie West who had played in the band the Vagrants before forming the band Mountain. Initially Pappalardi was going to produce Mountain, but they didn’t have a bass player at the time so he joined the group and performed with them most notably appearing the original incarnation of woodstock. West would reveal about Pappalardi to an interviewer “I couldn’t believe how talented Felix was musically,” “I knew nothing… I learned a lot of what not to do because of him, and I learned a lot of what to do because of him.”
But his time in Mountain would be short-lived. He co-write a number of their songs including Mississippi Queen and his wife was credited with writing a handful of songs too. She even designed several of their album covers., Mountain would continue on until 1974 and Pappalardi got back into production work, and the timing seemed perfect considering he was dealing with hearing issues. But by the late 70’s his career wasn’t as hot as it was a decade prior and he soon found himself doing copious amounts of drugs with his wife while also having an open relationship with her.
Mountain drummer Corky Laing would talk to Classic Rock Magazine in 2021 about Felix and Gail’s relationship
When Mountain started out,Felix and Gail were a brilliant, creative team. But Gail got in big trouble with drugs. Gradually, people in the business who knew them knew she was a witch. She was very talented, very smart, but evil. Gail claimed she loved Felix, but they were always fighting. Felix was not a big guy, and Gail would beat the shit out of him. Other times they’d get high, and shoot at the walls in their house.”West would add One night when they were sitting in the living room,” West added, “they heard a continuous buzzing noise coming from inside the walls. Felix was probably high, so he started shooting at the walls from his chair. Turns out that the contractors on the house had stuffed hornets’ nests between the walls after Gail refused to pay a bill. So Felix was trying to shoot hornets.”
It was in 1982 Felix had fallen in love with a singer named Valerie Merians who was 27 and that casual relationship soon turned into something more. Gail soon found out and according to the new york daily news called her inlaws in December of 1982 telling them her marriagewas on the brink of collapsing.
Corky Laing would tell classic rock magazine In the fall of 1982 Felix wanted to re-form Mountain, and he tried to get me to
