Leon Russell

“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.”

“I remember reading 'Catcher in the Rye,' but I don't think I got it.”

“I really am serious abut catfish farming. I'm very interested in aquaculture.”

“The Pentecostals had horns, drums, guitars, huge choirs, and screaming and dancing and all kinds of stuff. That was for me.”

“I started out playing 'Chopsticks.'”

“I would have to say Sam Cooke is the one I admired most. His artistry and vocal, just the way he did it.”

“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 duali...”

“I'm happy to have a job. I play a little, write a little, perform some. It's not like it's an engineered, well-manufactured plan or anything. I just do what I do.”

“Songwriting was very tough for me... I would go in and sit and hope for inspiration to come, and it was rarely forthcoming.”

“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 m...”

“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.”

“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 Ka...”

“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.”

“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 t...”

“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.”

“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...”

“I started playing in nightclubs when I was about 14 in Oklahoma.”

“When I was born, I had a birth injury in my second and third vertebrae. It gave me what they called spastic paralysis, which is actually cerebral palsy.”

“One of the features of being a piano player is playing as an accompanist for other people.”

“When you play with another piano player, it's just second nature to play the parts that need to be played.”