Leon Russell Quotes
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I'm just concerned with going about my business and making the records I want to make.
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I belonged to the Columbia Record Club, and that's where my records came from. For some reason, I was in the 'jazz' category. I got Benny Goodman records and Miles Davis, J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding, and that kind of stuff. I really was not a jazz guy at all, but I knew some of those names.
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I had a whole bunch of bad country songs, so I put 'em all on an album.
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When I was in grade school, I had a little duet act with a guy who was a beautiful singer, and somebody recorded it on a wire machine. They played it back for us, and I went, 'I hear Donald, but what is that other ugly voice?' It turned out to be me, of course.
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I started writing rather late in the game. I was fascinated about the story about how Bob Dylan, for 'Nashville Skyline,' wrote between takes. So I'd try to sing new songs off the top of my head. I had rather less than spectacular success on that. But a lot of my songs were done that way.
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Sometimes one misses the sign posts as you're going down the road. They aren't as obvious as they become when you get to the end of the road, so to speak.
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I played on a few Frank Sinatra sessions.
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I don't think there's any danger of me playing Indian music. However, I did a song of George Harrison's 'Beware of Darkness' that was kind of like that. That was an illusion. I was playing that on a thumbtack piano, and Jim Gordon was playing tablas. He's an amazing player. That was as close to India as I ever got.
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I often haven't heard the music since I've recorded it. I don't listen to it. When I do hear it, like at someone's house, I'll listen. I'm probably the most pleased with the stuff I did with New Grass Revival.
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Watching yourself on film, if you've never watched yourself on film before, you want to go crawl into bed and stay there for a week.
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All my writing takes place during the recording of the master tapes. I never do have songs when I start up an album. I actually write them while I record.
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It's like, baseball is a very good game, but it's very difficult to explain to somebody, if you stop and think about it. I just feel my life is like that.
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I had two parts of my body: my left side, which was strong and somewhat dumb, and the other side was weak and hard to control but perhaps smarter. It gave me a very strong sense of the duality of the plane that we live in.
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Songwriting was very tough for me... I would go in and sit and hope for inspiration to come, and it was rarely forthcoming.
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I used to play on Phil Spector's records, and he liked to use three pianists.
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I started playing in nightclubs when I was about 14 in Oklahoma.
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I think probably my main advice to new artists is if you want to be in the music business, you need to be dang serious about it because it's a rough business.
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I have damaged nerve endings on the right side, so my piano style comes from designing stuff I can play with my right hand. And some of it effectively mimics classical stuff.
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The Pentecostals had horns, drums, guitars, huge choirs, and screaming and dancing and all kinds of stuff. That was for me.
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I was on the road with Jerry Lee Lewis when I was 15 - I can't imagine not doing it. That's what I do.
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I am not aware of my public image or what people think of me. I don't evaluate myself that way.
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I'm kind of the Forrest Gump of rock n' roll.
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I got this book called 'How to Write the Popular Song.' I read that and went through all the things they suggested, and I learned how to do it.
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I was with my band at a karaoke bar in Japan when it was very big there, and they got up and made fools of themselves without practicing properly. I didn't understand why they were doing that. It was like they were making fun of the genre by performing badly. But I didn't get up and sing, so I don't know what it feels like.