Leon Russell: The Rolling Stone Interview

Leon Russell. The image – if we can narrow it down to one – is aural. He’s always counting off, “One, two, three, four” at the end of those driving, lurchy, churchy rock and roll songs, pushing the endings, topping them with maybe a swirl of screams from his little chorale or with him on the piano, tickling out crazy little figures before a final “One, two, three, four” and a final chorus. Contagious is one word that comes to mind. Religious, another, because this whole, hearty approach has spread. Last week I saw Frankie Avalon, now the father of five, on the Merv Griffin show, singing “The Letter,” and he was using the Mad Dogs arrangement, squirming in his Jackson 5 costume and doing Joe Cocker with his “Venus” non-voice, doing the Leon Russell conducting – the – final – bars thing . . . Contagion.

If rock and roll is color and dynamics, and fusion, and dancing, Leon Russell’s got it down. Plus, he’s showbiz, and he understands pace, production, and the advantages of keeping an audience a little amazed, wondering what it’s all about.

I mean, who are these people? There’s that breath-giving black queen, Claudia Lennear, a former Ikette flowing free, but still foxily Ikettish; her partner in the chorale is Kathy McDonald, a white woman who was asked to be an Ikette by Ike Turner when he heard her during a break at Fillmore West, sitting on the floor singing a fourth harmony line to “Wooden Ships.” She declined the offer, but it didn’t matter – Tina would just not have tolerated her. Kathy, from Seattle, then San Francisco, sings and dances like a waif just unbound, and rock and roll is her freedom.

And there’s this comic figure, Huckleberry Finn-ish, thin in a Dr. Shazam T-shirt and adolescent in this wide, beaded headband with the peace symbol as the crown jewel – that’s John Galley, playing organ with one hand, electric keyboard bass with the other. From the Joe Cocker Mad Dogs & Englishmen expedition, there are the fluffy blonds, drummer Chuck Blackwell and lead guitar Don Preston. Preston and rhythm guitar Joey Cooper also sing, forming the vocal wall with Claudia and Kathy. And Leon, lean, sleepy-eyed conductor behind his piano, working his fingers like a typist, grainy voice barking out the Dixie/hip words. The magnificent seven.

They’ve been together some five months now, since the Mad Dog convention closed in May, and they’re top-billed, as anyone knowing Leon Russell might expect.

Russell’s current golden era began with his work on piano and arrangements for Delaney and Bonnie and Friends’ Original LP on Elektra. That led to Denny Cordell, Cocker’s producer, and to work on the second Cocker album. Plus a song Leon had written for Claudia, “Delta Lady.” Then his own album, on his and Cordell’s new label, Shelter, and his top-billed session men: Clapton, Harrison, Starr, Watts, Wyman, Winwood, Voorman, Cocker, Stainton, B. J. Wilson, and the Bramletts.

Then he reciprocated, helping on the Stones’ ‘Let it Bleed’ and on Clapton’s own album. He assembled, arranged, conducted, and rode shotgun on the Mad Dogs, Cocker’s instant, portable circus of last spring, and when that became a phenonemon, he became mastermixer for the album of the tour. He figures in the film, too, and there may even be a book. (“When the film comes out, the tour will become one of the most sociologically important events of our time,” he says.)

But that’s only Leon Russell of the last year or so. In 1968, he tried to give some signs of his individual creativity with an album,’Asylum Choir,’ on Smash Records, an album that earned raves but little else. Before that, he was a session man among a lot of session men in his adopted Los Angeles, often working out of a studio built in his modest home by Bones Howe.

Leon first split his hometown, Lawton, Oklahoma, to play trumpet with a band in a Tulsa nightclub, saying he was older than his 14 years to keep the job. By 16, he’d jammed with Ronnie Hawkins in Tulsa, and Jerry Lee Lewis was offering his band a touring job. Russell had also studied classical piano, beginning at age three. He split from home again in 1959, at age 17, to go to Los Angeles, working clubs on a borrowed ID card. After a short trip to Oklahoma, he returned to L.A. to stay.

Eventually, he became a full-time session man, at first getting jobs mostly from people who weren’t turned off by his greased-back hair and hoodlum demeanor. But he was a master craftsman, and the workload built: he got calls from Phil Spector, Herb Alpert, and Terry Melcher, and worked hundreds of sessions, playing piano on records by Bob Lind, Gary Lewis, the Crystals, the Righteous Brothers, the Ronettes, Paul Revere and the Raiders, and so many more.

Then – hair growing and mind blowing – he dropped out and laid low, working at a small record company and hanging out mostly at home, building that home studio. And it was there that it would start all over again. Once again, Leon was a magnet, and before long, his studio had accounted for hits ranging from the Beatle-carbonic Knickerbockers’ “Lies” to Cocker’s “Delta Lady.” It was there that he did the Asylum Choir album.

And there, in the playroom-sized studio – now converted to 16-track – on Skyhill Road in the Hollywood hills, is where the energy stays. Reels of wide-band tape fill up closets and bathroom sinks; burlap and sweat often dominate the recording shack, and it isn’t very impressive. There’s neglect for everything but the music machines. But when Leon and his band are working out there, it’s the Fillmore East, and – just the way he likes it – we’re all on stage, hanging over stairways and peeking through the little door. Master chef Leon Russell, doin’ some home cooking!