Leon Russell Quotes

When I was recording from '70 to '82, I always played piano and laid the tracks down. But I used to talk to the other musicians while the track was playing.

The studio is really fun because I don't make it into the studio unless I've got something I really like. I love working with different musicians in the studio; that's a real joy, working with someone for the first time.

You can see how different artists work, from writing to recording, just from being in the studio environment with them.

I like being in a recording studio. I like watching a song go from the simplicity of the original music.

When I first began to write, I was writing on bass, because I was thinking more Public Image, more dub.

It was kind of easier for me to do records that didn't take a year or two years of my life to write and to make.

I was trying to do the same thing that I always do which is make an interesting record.

Yeah, I came in at the end of the Notorious album, played on about five tracks and then we went on a tour. Then we did another album, Big Thing, and then we started writing songs together in 1989.

I've always been around musicians and always been the songwriter who doesn't end up playing the music.

I have a rough idea when I walk into a studio though.

Ever since I picked up a bass, I've written songs.

I sit down and create atmospheres, start playing guitar or piano and just sing whatever comes out of my mouth.

I always just sit down at the piano and make the main hook - what I want the track to be about melodically - and then I'll build everything else around that. But growing up, I did not play any instruments.

I'm never too ambitious when I go into the studio. I always know that I'm just going into the studio to work on or try to develop an idea that I have for a song.

Each time I've gone to the studio, the songs have got better and I've got more confident.

There was no such thing as production at Starday. We'd go in with the band, we'd go over the song, I'd look over and tell the steel player to take a break or kick it off, and I'd get the fiddle to play a turnaround in the middle.

I learn stuff from making music every time I go in the studio. I'm continuing to try to find new ways to play in a song or be in a song and have a positive impact on a song.

Every album is just a greatest hits of whatever songs are on a pile when I go in to make a record.

Tom would bring in songs, Mike would engineer, and we recorded about 30 songs.

They're mostly done before we went into the studio, although I do like writing in the studio.

It's very demanding to make up your own music.

'Float On' was a fine song, but I was still writing the lyrics on the last day we were working on it and deciding if it was something we wanted to put on the record.

With 'Light,' I collaborated with a lot of different producers and musicians I respected, and we all wrote and worked on material which I then took to an old-school producer, David Kahne, and we put it all together. The lyrics came first - they were written before the music.

I wanted to play rock and roll when I started playing. Nobody at that time ever thought about songwriting. You sang songs, that's all. You sang other people's songs. That's all there were.

I think it's all about making records when you're inspired to make them.