Top 35 Leon Russell Quotes

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.

I had a whole bunch of bad country songs, so I put ’em all on an album.

I’ve grown up on Bob Dylan and all that, but there was a certain standard set up by people before 1955.

I make records all the time. But making records is not quite the same as getting them to the audience.

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.

I studied classical music for a long time, maybe 10 years, and I realized finally I was never going to have the hands to play that stuff.

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’ve always sort of been at odds with radio programmers.

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.

My hobby is silence.

My whole family’s been involved with music, and it’s been so since the minstrel days.

I really am serious abut catfish farming. I’m very interested in aquaculture.

I’ve avoided the press and a lot of stuff that would have made me more visible just because it’s not my style.

I used to play on Phil Spector’s records, and he liked to use three pianists.

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

Words have been the most difficult thing for me. Melodies have been the easiest for me; I have more than enough melodies to go around.

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.

The doctor who pulled me out at birth damaged my second and third vertebrae. But without those tugs, I probably would have been a regular guy selling insurance in Texas or something.

Actually, I didn’t listen to country music very much in Oklahoma. I listened to blues and rock n’ roll.

I like the Beatles very much, and there are certain things about the Stones that I like.

I scarcely talk to reporters at all.

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.

Karen Carpenter was just a singularly amazing singer. There was just not anybody like her.

I have a certain amount of difficulty dealing with too much limelight.

I love bipolar people.

I’m always having people come up to me and say I saved their life – but I don’t remember it!

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.

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.

I’m almost totally politically inactive.

I was afraid of the press.

It’s kind of depressing to make a lot of records and not get the kind of response they deserve.

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.

I was always trying to write standards, songs that anybody can sing. I figured that’s where the money was.

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.

I am happy with what comes, I don’t have expectations of any stature.