Leon Russell died last week at 74. I had no idea he was
hardly five years older than me.
I thought he was a lot older. It wasn’t just the white
beard. That beard and his long hood of stringy hair were already going grey
when I saw him heading The Shelter People at the best concert I have ever seen:
Detroit’s Cobo Hall, 1973.
Hell, he was just in his early 30s. I was 25. Leon seemed
like an older statesman of rock and roll. Apparently, there was a reason I
thought that way. Leon was like a new car with high mileage, as if he had been
across country a few times before that new-car smell had dissipated.
Leon was a teenager when he left Oklahoma for Los Angeles in
the early 60s. Already he could conjure magic from a piano. Rock and roll was
still young but about to explode as The Beatles landed in America. All through
the 60s we heard Leon play, but never knew his name. Leon, the studio
musician was paid by the session, playing on hits by The Beach Boys, Sonny
& Cher, Johnny Rivers, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, the Mommas and the Poppas, The Monkees
and many others. This Christmas, when you hear Darlene Love singing Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) from
the Phil Spector wall of sound A Christmas Gift to You album, that’s Leon’s piano charging up
through the middle of the finale chorus.
In 1964, Dick Clark, the Saturday TV dance program host,
brought rock and roll to prime time with the T.A.M.I. Show. On the show, Jan and Dean, Marvin Gaye and Leslie
Gore needed accompaniment from a house band. Clark hired young Leon to lead the
house band. That, by the way, was where Mick Jagger first saw James Brown
perform, dancing while he sang. The Stones’ singer never just stood in front of
a microphone again.
It seemed to me that by the early 1970s, Leon was at the
centre of rock and roll history.
After playing the Woodstock Festival in 1969, Joe Cocker and
his band toured Europe. At the end of the tour, Cocker’s band, save for Chris
Stainton, had become strung out and disbursed to places unknown. Cocker met
with his manager in New York and said his band was gone and he needed a long
rest. The manager said you open your North American tour in two weeks. Another
musician in the manager’s office told a bewildered Cocker, “better call Leon
Russell.” Two weeks later in Detroit, the Mad Dogs and Englishmen Tour began.
Keyboardist Bobby Whitlock, bassist Carl Radle and drummer
Jim Gordon were in that band. They stuck together after the Mad Dogs tour and
with Leon backed the husband and wife duo, Delany and Bonnie, who attracted a
range of great musicians including Eric Clapton, Dave Mason and Duane Allman. That’s
when Clapton, Allman, Radle, Whitlock and Gordon formed Derek and the Dominos.
About that time, Leon’s pounding piano backed The Stones on
the song, Live with Me, on the Let It Bleed album. Horn players Bobby
Keys and Jim Horn, transitioned from Mad Dogs and Englishmen, to Delaney &
Bonnie to finding permanent gigs with The Rolling Stones.
When Elton John first came to North America in 1970, I
remember reading in Rolling Stone,
John telling the magazine how amazed and nervous he was when he came on stage
and recognized Leon Russell in the front row there to see him.
Leon had recorded an album under the group name, Asylum Choir, with one of the most
original anti-war songs, Down on the Base.
That album showed Leon that his voice too would work on recordings. Leon’s
ability to write arresting and original lyrics would be heard later on many songs,
including Roll Away the Stone on his
first album under his own name, and Alcatraz
and Stranger in a Strange Land on his
Leon Russell and the Shelter People album. His song Hummingbird has been covered by many artists, including George
Benson, who made it a hit single.
Artists who played on Leon’s first solo album include
Harrison and Starr, Clapton and Stevie Winwood, Watts and Wyman from The
Stones, and many others. On I Put a Spell
on You, you can hear Harrison and Clapton talking as they miss the beat in
the opening bars and need to start over.
My friend John Bortolin saw Leon and a small band in a
concert in Detroit some months before the Mad Dogs and Englishman event. John
told me about seeing this concert, and that the man promised Bob Dylan would be
coming back again.
Leon’s piano is heard on Bob Dylan’s Watching the River Flow, recorded early in 1971 and produced by
Leon. Bob Dylan’s voice had been damaged in the motorcycle accident after the
release of Blonde on Blonde, and he
had not recorded nor performed for more than a year since that accident. Leon
and George Harrison encouraged Dylan to perform four songs at the Concert for Bangladesh that Harrison had
organized at Madison Square Garden in August that year. With Dylan, George
played guitar, Ringo played tambourine and Leon played bass.
Joan and I saw the Shelter People tour hit Cobo Hall with
one amazing song after another – the same horn section that later became
staples with The Rolling Stones, the rhythm section played on John Lennon
albums.
The chronology in my memory may be mixed, but the images and sounds in my mind are clear. I have tried to keep up with the Leon saga through Rolling Stone magazine and other media. The
movie, The Wrecking Crew, available
in the USA on Netflix, chronicles the studio musicians in the 1960s who
performed on so many recordings. Some, like Herb Albert, Glenn Campbell and
Leon, went on to become widely known. Most stayed in obscurity while groups
like The Association tried to replicate their records on stage, but failed
horribly.
The last time we saw Leon it was at an outdoor amphitheatre called
Meadowbrook at a university campus in north Detroit. We brought our sons, who
were still in late elementary or early high school. They weren’t impressed
enough to want to sit on a blanket and listen to the music. I insisted. I
thought someday they’d be happy to remember and say, “I saw Leon Russell live.”
