Leon Russell Quotes
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I'm not as aware of categories in music as some people are. To me it's just music. I'm interested in all kinds of music.
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I wish I had gone into industrial plumbing. That's a joke.
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I was playing with George Harrison one time, and George loves takes. This song was up to Take 160. I said, 'George, do you want me to play the same thing or 160 different things?' It drove me crazy because, in general, I'm ready to play my part.
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My chops have always been sort of weak, because the right side of my body was paralyzed a little bit. It was very limiting. I have to design stuff I can play, and it took me a year and a half to figure out how to hold a guitar pick.
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My hobby is silence.
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I was always trying to write standards, songs that anybody can sing. I figured that's where the money was.
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When I say I don't get involved in politics, I merely mean that I don't talk to reporters about it.
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I like the Beatles very much, and there are certain things about the Stones that I like.
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I've always felt I struck out with Doris Day. Her son, Terry Melcher, was a producer I worked for at Columbia, and one day, he asked me to go to her house to play piano on a song she was doing. So I get there, and she has about 30 dogs running around the place - turns out she's a dog rescuer.
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I've always sort of been at odds with radio programmers.
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One of the features of being a piano player is playing as an accompanist for other people.
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For a couple of years, I'd work from 6 to 11 P.M., then 1 to 5 A.M., and then got up and tried to go to school. That was pretty rough, but I got a lot of experience playing music.
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Oklahoma was a dry state, and consequently, there was no liquor laws. And I was able to take advantage of that by playing in nightclubs at the age of 14. It was real handy.
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All the time I had my success, I didn't know what I was doing. I struggled and struggled and hacked things out without any insight as to why.
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For years, when I was popular, I would face the blank page to write, and I couldn't think of anything that I thought was good enough.
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I love bipolar people.
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Apparently I was a Billboard top touring act of 1973, but nobody told me.
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California always struck me as a police state.
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I was raised in the Methodist Church, which is a very Germanic, military kind of music they have there. I heard this other music on the radio: Pentecostal. That was right up my street.
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I'm always having people come up to me and say I saved their life - but I don't remember it!
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For years and years, I would sit in my studio, and I wouldn't have any inspiration. I'd write one or two songs a year.
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I make records all the time. But making records is not quite the same as getting them to the audience.
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My first job in a country band was after I moved to California.
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Actually, I didn't listen to country music very much in Oklahoma. I listened to blues and rock n' roll.